Republicans are losing in the arena of public opinion. Do they know?

The end of the Republican Party: Flailing against public opinion on major issues, the GOP is out of step and running out of time.

Echo opinion published in The Boston Globe by Renée Graham.

It’s been said that a rat is never more dangerous than when it finds itself trapped in a corner. 

Facing defeat, that rodent won’t perish in docile resignation. Teeth bared, it will lunge at its target determined to inflict as much damage as possible, shrieking and snarling until its last ragged breath.

That’s the Republican Party — a rat in its death throes.

Rampant book banning. Efforts to defund libraries. Criminalizing doctors and teachers for doing their jobs. Black legislators expelled from the state legislature for demanding action on gun violence after a school shooting. Voter suppression. Parents of trans children threatened with having their kids taken away.

With a rotting white supremacist foundation, all Republicans have is anti-democratic election denialism and attacks on children, librarians, and history to distract from its failure to lead this nation anywhere but into the abyss.

After Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, handily defeated Republican Dan Kelly last week in a crucial race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, Scott Walker, a former Wisconsin governor, chalked up the stunning loss to young voters being subject to “years of radical indoctrination — on campus, in school, with social media, and throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”

Counter it with what? Instead of easing up, Republicans have tripled-down on their politics of hate, harm, and retribution. Then they wonder why an all-in embrace of authoritarianism isn’t appealing to Gen Z. And it’s not just young voters being lost. In poll after poll, the GOP is on the wrong side of public opinion on abortion, gun control, and LGBTQ rights. In its rush to abandon democracy, the GOP party is out of step and running out of time.

That’s because Republicans would rather ban drag shows and abortion pills. They’re preoccupied with pulling “The Diary of Anne Frank” from school shelves and requiring teachers to snitch to parents if their child uses a different name or pronoun at school instead of addressing real issues like gun violence.

After a mass shooter killed six people, including three 9-year-olds, at a Nashville school last month, Republican US House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, himself a gun violence survivor, said he prayed for the victims and their families.

But he added, “I get really angry when people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts.” Even when a motive is unknown, this fact is always known — in a nation with more guns than people, there have been more mass shootings than days so far this year.

Yet the GOP refuses to hear anything beyond the roar of their own ambitions. It will continue to cost them the power they so desperately seek. They know this, but have dug too deep into the murky depths of far-right ideology to see daylight any time soon.

So they didn’t push back at the incendiary rantings of the twice-impeached, one-term, now-indicted Republican former president at his recent campaign rally. Donald Trump spewed more than a usual medley of his greatest grievances. Even for the man who became the first president to use “carnage” in an inauguration speech, this was a dark vision of this nation’s future in which he referred to 2024, as “the final battle.”

Donald Trump’s Art of the Fail

Trump claimed “our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They’ve only made us stronger.”

That’s a fantasy for a party that has rarely looked weaker. While Republicans reclaimed the House in last year’s midterms, it was by a much smaller margin than predicted. And, furthermore, the House Speaker Kevin McCarthy can’t control the Republican chaos caucus he empowered in exchange for the gavel, leaving the chamber he leads in a state of paralysis.

Instead, what Republicans are doing now is behaving like tenants who know their lease is running out and probably won’t be renewed. They’re breaking windows, kicking holes in the walls, and stripping out the copper fixtures.

Under the weight of its obsolescence and incompetence, the Republican Party is collapsing. But like that cornered rat, they’re doing everything possible to leave whatever remains of our fragile democracy scarred and in ruins.

So, the best they can do is stay silent as an antiabortion zealot and judge decides that he knows better than the Food and Drug Administration about the safety and efficacy of an abortion drug that’s been in use for more than 20 years. That’s not leadership. It’s cowardice, and voters should remember both the GOP’s stridency and silence.

That stridency — and the mayhem it could incite — will continue to increase. House Republicans want to bully and intimidate Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who indicted Trump. In Tennessee, Republicans expelled two Black Democrats to quell dissent against their legislative supermajority. (Justin Jones was reinstated Monday, and the same outcome is soon expected for Justin Pearson, his fellow state legislator.)

Under the weight of its obsolescence and incompetence, the Republican Party is collapsing. But like that cornered rat, they’re doing everything possible to leave whatever remains of our fragile democracy scarred and in ruins.

Donald Trump has been involved in a litany of crimes and FINALLY an indictment

Opinion echo published in The Boston Globe by Erwin Chemerinsky:

The indictment of a former president of the United States is unprecedented. But Donald Trump is unprecedented. There is much to be worried about in setting a precedent for the criminal prosecution of a former president. But it would be much worse to conclude that anyone, including the president, is above the law.

The indictment by a New York grand jury follows many years of investigation. In fact, the matter went to the US Supreme Court in 2020, which emphatically ruled that a president has no immunity from a state grand jury investigation.

The indictment accuses Trump of violating New York state laws in connection with a 2016 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for her staying silent about her affair with Trump. Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen has stated that he paid Daniels $130,000 at Trump’s direction. Cohen has said that he was reimbursed the money during Trump’s first year in office, with Trump signing checks in between official government business.
The indictment accuses Trump of overseeing the false recording of the reimbursements in his company’s internal records. The records falsely stated that the payments to Cohen were for “legal expenses.” The indictment alleges that this also violated New York’s campaign finance laws.

That means that the grand jury concluded that there is sufficient evidence that Trump committed a crime and should stand trial for it. Of course, he could choose to plead guilty instead. But otherwise, he will be tried and a jury will decide whether he broke the law.

No former president has ever been indicted. There is reason for concern that this opens the door and will inspire Republicans to look for a way to indict President Biden and future Democratic presidents after they leave office. Other countries have seen exactly this pattern, where new officeholders criminally prosecute their predecessors.

Already, Republican leaders have decried this indictment as political. House majority leader Kevin McCarthy sent a tweet describing this as “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.” Representative Elise Stefanik of New York said that Democrats have reached “a dangerous new low. Knowing they cannot beat President Trump at the ballot box, the Radical Left will now follow the lead of Socialist dictators and reportedly arrest President Trump.”

But despite these attacks and the worry of what precedent this might set, New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg did exactly the right thing in pursuing the indictment of Trump. The core of the rule of law is that no person is above the law. If Trump committed a crime, he should be indicted and prosecuted for it. The alternative, which is far more frightening, is to say that once a person has been elected president there is a lifetime “get out of jail free” card that provides full immunity from all criminal charges.

There are only two relevant questions in evaluating the Trump indictment: Did the grand jury have sufficient reason to believe that Trump authorized the payment of $130,000 to Daniels in exchange for her remaining silent about their sexual relationship, as she and Cohen allege? And if so, is there sufficient reason to believe that this violates New York law, including in the fraudulent way it was recorded and not reported under campaign finance laws? If the answer to both questions is yes, and from all that is known it appears so, then the district attorney and the grand jury were completely justified in the indictment.

Some may feel that this is too minor a crime to warrant prosecution. Certainly compared to other Trump offenses, including inciting the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and grossly mishandling classified documents, this seems less significant. But more trivial crimes than this are prosecuted every day without outrage. The first case I argued in the Supreme Court involved a man who was sentenced to 50 years to life for stealing $153 worth of videotapes.

I disagree with those who dismiss as minor Trump’s alleged crime in paying off Daniels and fraudulently concealing it. Trump was using his corporation’s wealth to keep the American people from learning unseemly information about him in the context of a close presidential election. His disregard of the law should be held accountable.

Indeed, what makes Trump different from other presidents is his disregard of the law in so many ways. He is under criminal investigation for other matters and may be indicted for them. Thus, indicting Trump is essential to send a message to all: No one, not even a former president, is above the law.

Erwin Chemerinsky is a professor of law and dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California.