Cagle World

A guy once wrote that, for sheer perverse entertainment, “nothing beats the current spectacle of Republican supplicants quaking at the feet of their master. Nothing better illustrates the sorry state of the party than this abject ritual.”

Oh wait – I’m the guy who wrote that. In 2009. About the GOP’s genuflections to Rush Limbaugh.

Lest we forget, the Republican party’s descent into mindless demagoguery did not begin with Donald Trump. Trump is merely the cherry on top of the GOP’s toxic sundae. The best way to mark Limbaugh’s passing is to remind ourselves that the serial-lying hate merchant was working the turf – and terrorizing Republicans who dared challenge him – long before Trump conned a fatal minority of the 2016 electorate.

There’s no point in sharing a laundry list of Rush’s most detestable remarks – they’re too numerous anyway. Suffice it to say that he marketed MAGA before there was MAGA, tapping into the rabid right’s angry id so successfully that Republican leaders morphed into wimps, living in fear of his aggrieved manly white fans.

See if this sounds vaguely familiar:

In 2009, when Rush was particularly unhinged by the ascent of a black man to the presidency, some Republicans dared suggest that he tone himself down for the common good of all. Georgia congressman Phil Gingrey lamented that it was “easy” for Limbaugh “to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party…You stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing.” The same week, GOP national chairman Michael Steele called Limbaugh’s rhetoric was “ugly” and “incendiary.”

But after Rush lashed back at both guys on the air, their spines magically turned to mush. Gingrey felt compelled to say: “I see eye-to-eye with Rush Limbaugh. I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended…I realize it is my responsibility to clarify my own comments.” And Steele entered a Rush reeducation camp and emerged fully cured: “I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh…There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

And see if this sounds familiar:

In 2012 (you may remember this), a Georgetown Law student named Sandra Fluke Fluke spoke favorably about birth control at a congressional hearing. Rush didn’t like that. On his show, he called her “a slut” and “a prostitute” and said she was apparently “having so much sex, it’s amazing she can still walk.” But when Republican leaders were asked whether they agreed with their de facto party chairman, they hunkered in their bunker while Rush treated Fluke the way a junkyard dog gnaws meat.

Days later, their responses were a mix of defiance and weak tea. Newt Gingrich (whose 1995 ascent to House Speaker was greased by Rush) naturally chose defiance. When asked for comment, he said: “I am astonished at the desperation of the elite media.” But more often, the respondents tut-tutted as if tiptoeing on eggshells.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, when asked about Rush’s attack on Fluke, did the furrowed-brow thing: “It’s not the language I would have used.” The House Speaker, John Boehner, said through a spokesman that Rush’s words were “inappropriate.” And another presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, gave us a word salad: “(Rush) is being absurd. But that’s, you know, an entertainer can be absurd. And – and he’s taking the absurd, you know, the absurd – absurd, you know, sort of, you know, point of view here as to how – how far do you go? And, look, he’s in a very different business than I am.”

So what we’re seeing today – as quaking Republicans like Kevin McCarthy rush to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the loser’s ring, as state and county Republicans censure the few senators who stood up to fascism – is merely the harvesting of the hate ethos that Limbaugh seeded so successfully. No wonder Trump debased the Presidential Medal of Freedom, honoring Rush for his pioneering contributions to cult-think.

I know that when someone dies, it’s best to say nice things. But to borrow the Shakespearean words of Marc Antony, I have come to bury Rush, not to praise him.

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Copyright 2021 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Once upon a time – just a few weeks ago – Republicans in the great state of Texas were talking about seceding from the union. If memory serves, their state attorney general concocted a crackpot lawsuit that sought to overturn the free and fair presidential election, arguing that Joe Biden’s win was illegitimate.

Yep, it looked like Texas wanted to be its own red independent country, practicing its freedom far from the clutches of the socialist White House.

But suddenly, a few days ago, Texas’ Republican leaders did a 180-degree turn. They fell on their knees to President Biden, begging and pleading for his help. Suddenly, Biden was legit!

What the heck happened?

Reality happened.

MAGA propaganda about a “stolen election,” and all the attendant rhetoric about “secession,” is grist for weak minds most of the time. But when real life intrudes in the cruelest of ways – for instance, when mother nature dumps a killer winter storm on a state that can’t handle it and puts people’s lives in peril – all that idiot talk blows away in the wind.

On Saturday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott essentially said: “Please help us, President Biden.” Within hours, Biden answered the call. And on Sunday, oozing gratitude, Abbott shared the good news at home: “I thank President Biden for quickly issuing a Federal Emergency Declaration…This disaster declaration provides Texas with additional resources and assistance that help our communities respond to this winter weather.”

Isn’t that special. By the way, Ted Cruz also pleaded for federal help. This is the same Ted Cruz who opposed federal help for the blue northeastern states that were hammered by Hurricane Sandy. Perhaps Biden should’ve promised federal storm aid on the condition that Cruz be shipped to NASA in Houston and strapped onto the next rocket launch.

By the way, one of the reasons Texas urgently needs federal help is because its main power grid can’t handle the current storm. The reason its main power grid can’t handle the storm is because it’s not linked to the rest of the nation. The reason it’s not linked to the rest of the nation is because it was set up to defy the feds and avoid federal regulation. I kid you not.

And by the way, raging against Washington – then pleading for help – is a longstanding Texas two-step.

Back when the governor was Rick Perry (remember him?), he nurtured his presidential ambitions by fuming that the “oppressive” federal government was always “interfering with the affairs of our state.” Which was amusing, because he was always in constant pursuit of federal bucks – for farmer “drought assistance,” for local law enforcement, for disaster cleanups, for whatever federal money his Washington lobbyists could scavenge. (He paid those lobbyists 30 grand a month).

But this was my favorite Texas two-step: On April 9, 2009, Perry put out a statement boasting about “Texas sovereignty” and state’s rights. On April 10, he put out another statement: “Gov. Perry Calls on FEMA to Assist the State in Fighting Wildfires.”

Anyway, one facet of the latest episode is particularly noteworthy. President Biden approved the plea for federal relief with all deliberate speed – without telling the state to buzz off because it hadn’t voted for him, without ranting that the red governor runs things horribly, without fuming that the state’s election lawsuit didn’t treat him nice, without offering to throw paper towels, without telling Texans who don’t like him to just rake the snow.

Instead, Biden just did his job this weekend – as he promised. This is what it’s like to have a president who believes he’s responsible for helping red and blue states alike – without favor, without partisan tantrums.

And his quick action should blunt the windbag Texas talk about secession and Washington oppression. Until next time.

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Copyright 2021 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Remember back when you were a kid and you were up against a term paper deadline, so you just decided to wing it with swollen prose like “The Civil War has been a big important issue for years and years all across the many states of America”?

On day one of the impeachment trial, that was Bruce Castor – the latest entry in the MAGA annals of ineptitude.

Look, I can muster an ounce of sympathy for the ex-DA from the Philadelphia suburbs. There’s no way at this point that any top-tier attorney will work for the Mar-a-Lago mobster, so naturally it’s going to be a guy who whiffed on Bill Cosby signing on at the 11th hour and lurching through the English language like a drunken sailor.

Granted, if Castor had simply chosen to mimic the Jan. 6 mob by smearing his own poop in the hallowed hall, most Republican senators would’ve still stood firm in their determination to give Trump a pass. But if the ultimate aim was to sway some Americans in the court of public opinion, suffice it to say that Castor was no Atticus Finch.

For instance, Castor said: “President Trump is no longer is in office. The object of the Constitution has been achieved. He was removed by the voters.” Oops! Trump’s whole shtick, the core of his Big Lie, is that he wasn’t removed, and that, quite the contrary, he won in a landslide. That’s why he incited the rabble in the first place.

Castor also had no clue what impeachment was all about: “If my colleagues on this side of the chamber actually think that President Trump committed a criminal offense, and let’s understand, a high crime is a felony, and a misdemeanor is a misdemeanor. The words haven’t changed that much over time.”

Um, try again, counselor. “High crimes and misdemeanors” are not necessarily offenses as defined in our criminal statutes. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers, the term refers to flagrant breaches of political power – offenses that “proceed from…the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

On the other hand, some of what Castor said was indisputably true. For instance, this profundity: “If the individual state legislatures didn’t adopt the Constitution, we would not have it.” And if the sun hadn’t risen this morning, we wouldn’t have daylight.

But, alas, all too often there was a clarity deficit. For instance: “I saw a headline, ‘Representative so and so seeks to walk back comments about,’ I forget what it was, something that bothered her.” It’s hard to say where Castor was going with that, because he never arrived at his destination.

I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to decipher this riff, because I give up:

“Remember, the founders recognized that the argument that I started with, that political pressure is driven by the need for immediate action, because something under contemporary community standards really horrific happened, and the people represented by the members of the United States House of Representatives become incensed. And what do you do with a federal issue if you’re back in suburban Philadelphia and something happens that makes the people who live there incensed? You call your congressman. And your congressmen, elected every two years with their pulse on the people of their district, 750,000 people, they respond, and boy do they respond to you. The congressman calls you back. A staffer calls you back. You get all the information that they have on the issue. Sometimes you even get invited to submit a language that would improve whatever the issue is.”

Remember that grade-school term paper you probably winged back in the day? That last sentence sounds like something I might well have written.

Anyway, it was bad enough that Castor kept name-checking his buddy bond with Sen. Pat Toomey. I doubt that pleased his exiled client, who’s undoubtedly aware that Toomey has publicly called out the fascist action of Jan. 6 for what it was. But what surely must’ve incensed Trump most of all was his praise for the House impeachment managers’ presentation, correctly calling it “well done” and “outstanding.”

But that’s because the impeachment managers came armed with the facts and the law. It falls to the likes of Bruce Castor to work with nothing, and make it sound even worse.

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Copyright 2021 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

It’s so lamentably easy to stew with the ongoing gush of bad news.

Punxsutawney Phil has fled to his hidey hole after glimpsing six more weeks of vaccine chaos. The insurrectionist in exile has hired two new lawyers – one of whom refused to prosecute Bill Cosby, the other was slated to defend Jeffrey Epstein. “Moderate” Senate Republicans, who suddenly care about fiscal conservatism again, want to give suffering Americans one-third of the COVID relief money proposed by President Biden. House Republicans seem to be fine with a member who thinks that Jewish space lasers cause wildfires and that a plane never hit the Pentagon on 9/11. 

All this and more, the usual detritus of our era. But believe it or not, I’ve found some good news!

Lest we forget, the electorate laid waste to the autocratic MAGA grifters and replaced them with credentialed people who actually embrace enduring American values. The new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is Exhibit A. I’m still marveling at what he told the press corps on his very first day:

“President Biden said that he wants truth and transparency back in the White House briefing room, that fully applies in this room as well…I know we’re not always going to see eye to eye, that’s not the point of the enterprise. Sometimes we’ll be frustrating to you. I imagine there are a few times when you’ll be frustrating to us. But that’s to be expected. That’s exactly, in some ways, the point. But you can count on me, you can count on us, to treat all of you with the immense respect you deserve and to give you what you need to do the jobs that you’re doing that are so important to our country and to our democracy…It’s an adventure. I am really, really glad that we’re in it together. Welcome back to the press room. This is your press room.”

Pinch me now.

I suppose we shouldn’t applaud when an American official defends freedom of the press, but it sure beats “enemy of the people.” It’s a step up from Mike Pompeo, the back-bench House Republican hack who failed upwards all the way to the State Department, where he trashed the truth and shredded our moral authority worldwide.

Here at home, we’re locked in a battle between democracy and incipient grassroots fascism. Ultimately, it’s a battle between truth (the lifeblood of democratic self-governance) and lies (the toys of fascists). If lying wins, we will lose our national soul, perhaps forever.

Blinken plays a key role in that battle. A secretary of state’s core nonpartisan mission is to tout American values around the world – and press freedom is crucial to that mission. Blinken, by dint of his instincts and experience, understands that America has no business preaching to other nations about freedom unless it sets an example for all to see.

Pompeo, who lashed out at reporters who dared ask him about the impeachable acts of his boss, abolished regular press briefings and assailed journalists as “unhinged,” never seemed to grasp the State Department’s mission.

One priceless moment came in 2019, when Trump decreed in a tweet that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat. Shortly thereafter, Pompeo appeared on Jake Tapper’s CNN show.

Tapper asked: “Do you think North Korea remains a nuclear threat?”

Pompeo: “Yes.”

Tapper: “But the president said he doesn’t.”

Pompeo: “That’s not what he said.”

Tapper: “He tweeted, ‘There’s no longer a nuclear threat from Korea.’ That’s just a direct quote.”

And how embarrassing it was, for a secretary of state, to be lectured by an interviewer in Kazakhstan.

One year ago, on the eve of a trip to that country, Pompeo had unleashed an F-bomb tirade on an NPR reporter who’d sought to ask him inconvenient questions, and had thrown another NPR reporter off his plane. His foreign interviewer brought up the NPR incidents and asked him: “What kind of message (about America) does it send to countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, whose governments routinely suppress press freedom?”

Pompeo’s answer: “It’s a perfect message.”

Suffice it so say that, on the eve of Antony Blinken’s welcome ascent, the world’s supposedly top democracy was no longer a champion of press freedom. According to the international rankings posted by Reporters Without Borders, America is currently 45th in the world – trailing nations like Botswana, Latvia, Lithuania, and Namibia.

As Blinken said, “This is a critical moment for protecting and defending democracy, including right here at home.” There’s not a moment to lose.

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Copyright 2021 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

I’ll readily admit that the face gracing the $20 bill is not our most urgent issue – not with 420,000 people needlessly dead and 45 Republican senators saying that their insurrectionist in exile should get a pass.

But we can all agree that symbols are important, define who we are as a people and help us craft our national narrative.

So, in that sense, it surely matters whether the face on the $20 bill depicts a racist genocidal white guy who enslaved human beings or a Black woman who repeatedly risked her life to successfully free human beings. The good news is that the Biden administration intends to right a wrong by putting Harriet Tubman where she belongs.

As press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, “The Treasury Department is taking steps to resume efforts to put (Tubman) on the front of the new $20 notes. It’s important that our money reflect the history and diversity of our country.”

Well, yeah. White men weren’t the only people who built this nation. Black women have never appeared on American currency. Tubman, a fugitive slave and heroine of the Underground Railroad, rescued hundreds of African-Americans from servitude. She was a Union spy during the Civil War, recruited ex-slaves for a Union regiment, and led an assault that freed 700 more. In her late 70s she delivered speeches for women’s suffrage, but died seven years before women won the right to vote.

Wait, let me back up a bit. Did Jen Psaki say that the Biden administration wants to “resume” the process to put Tubman on the $20 bill? When did that process start – and why did it stop?

Take a wild guess why it stopped.

Back in 2016, President Obama’s Treasury secretary announced a plan to replace facial incumbent Andrew Jackson starting in 2020. But that plan was quickly shelved during the MAGA occupation. As the MAGA candidate had signaled during the 2016 campaign, when asked about replacing Jackson with Tubman, “I don’t like seeing it. I think it’s pure political correctness.”

In his mind, the reality of racial diversity – and the truth of our national narrative – was “political correctness.” And he was reportedly blunter in conversation with White House aides. According to Omarosa Manigault Newman, the ex-aide who last year wrote the book Unhinged, her racist boss told her what he really thought about Tubman: “You want me to put that face on the $20 bill?”

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was thus tasked with telling Congress that the switch to Tubman was unfeasible because of “security” concerns, something to do with unspecified “counterfeiting issues.” And so the woman who once said that “slavery is the next thing to well” was thereby consigned to the back of the bus.

Besides, the insurrectionist-in-chief loved Andrew Jackson and put the guy’s picture on the Oval Office wall. In his words, “Andrew Jackson had a history of tremendous success for the country.” If living as a member of the landed gentry with slave labor and ethnic-cleansing Native Americans is what constitutes success, then, yes, Jackson was boffo.

As the recent excellent book “Jacksonland” chronicles in great detail, “Jackson’s style of negotiating (with Native Americans) was frank and coercive. In talk after talk over the years, he told native leaders he was their friend, and that he wanted to pay for their land – but that if they failed to sell, white settlers would take their land for nothing.”

Jackson, his family members, and his closest business associates, ultimately stole more than 45,000 acres. Having thus enriched himself prior to becoming president, he worked with his postmaster general to suppress anti-slavery mail from northern abolitionists.

Yes, we’re only talking here about faces on currency. But it’s high time we honored people like Tubman who truly made American great. This was a woman who in her last years preached hope to people of color during the worst of Jim Crow. She once said: “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”

And she was right on the money, where she belongs.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Wednesday, the adults finally got back the car keys. What a relief. You’re probably more exhausted than elated, but I bet you’ve salvaged a smidgen of that residual optimism that has always powered Americans forward.

President Joe Biden will make mistakes, like all human White House inhabitants. But at least he’ll be buttressed by qualified and seasoned public servants who are determined to work for the greater good.

Thanks to our free and fair election, and the verdict of a record 81,283,485 voters, the incompetent hacks and grifters most responsible for driving us into a ditch – and killing over 400,000 Americans – will no longer be diddling on Uncle Sam’s dime.

The big reason why Biden starts his tenure with solid public support – 65 percent in one poll, 60 percent in another – is because he used the transition to triple down on his vow to lead from the top. In a time of unprecedented crisis – the worst health debacle in 100 years, the worst joblessness since the Great Depression – there is no substitute for robust national leadership. The pandemic demands it. This is pragmatic reality, not liberal ideology.

Granted, Biden has been tasked to mop the MAGA slop on more fronts than any of us can possibly comprehend – addressing climate change and income inequality, easing racial tensions, restoring the rule of law, repairing our western alliances, and so much more. But putting vaccines into people’s arms and putting people back to work are the prime issues on which he will be judged in 2021.

Fortunately, the era of idiocy is over. The vacuum at the top has been filled. The new science team actually respects science. And as Biden pandemic “czar” Jeff Zients remarked the other day (in what should be music to our ears), “We’re going to throw the full resources and weight of the federal government behind this emergency” – directing FEMA to create thousands of vaccination sites, using the Defense Production Act to accelerate vaccine production, spending big federal bucks to retrofit schools for safe re-openings, pushing for another new economic stimulus package, just for starters.

Yeah, lots of Republicans on the Hill will balk at authorizing any more money for economic relief, because, with Trump gone, they’re already magically rediscovering their hatred of budget deficits. And yeah, Biden takes office with thin House and Senate leverage. By contrast, both FDR and Barack Obama – two presidents facing transformative tasks – came to power with huge blue congressional majorities.

But Biden has the wind at his back. In the latest Pew Research poll, 79 percent of Americans – including 56 percent of self-identified conservatives – say they want Congress to step up with another stimulus package. It’s simple, really: People in pain want action. And kudos to Biden for not mincing words. As he said last Thursday, while unveiling his $2-trillion rescue plan, “I know what I just described will not come cheaply. But failure to do so will cost us dearly.”

Even if Republicans refuse to cooperate, Biden and his congressional allies have other options. I won’t bore you with the legislative minutiae; I’ll simply say that there’s a procedure called “budget reconciliation,” which could enable Democrats to deliver more help to the American people without any Republican votes. This is the same procedure that enabled Trump and his allies to deliver his massive tax cuts to the upper brackets. If the aforementioned Pew poll is correct, Biden and the adults in the room have a golden opportunity make their case.

At this point, most of us just want results. And after weathering four long years of serial lies (in the words of former Republican aide Peter Wehner, Trump was “a battering ram against reality”), most of us crave an administration that will be straight with us. Biden has pledged to govern in the spirit of FDR, who promised in his 1933 Inaugural speech that he would level with Americans about the economic crisis and the hard road ahead:

“I will address (you) with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly…In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

Biden’s speech Wednesday plucked similar chords, easily hurtling the low bar set four years ago by his predecessor. And I can safely assume nobody will deliver the kind of verdict that George W. Bush shared as he exited the MAGA Inaugural:

“That was some weird s—-.”

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Mike Pence has long believed that his ascent to the vice presidency was the result of divine intervention, that it was all part of God’s plan. If that’s true, then boy oh boy, God is sure messing with his head.

What a divine disaster! For four long years he affixed his lips to the capacious tush of a tyrannical demagogue, but in return, all he got was a MAGA mob calling for his head. One of his old buddies, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, told the press, “I’ve never seen Pence as angry as he was (on insurrection day). I had a long conversation with him. He said, ‘After all the things I’ve done for (Trump),’” this was the thanks he got.

Now the squeeze is even worse. House Democrats gave him an ultimatum: Either he uses his veep powers to invoke the 25th Amendment and oust the terrorist-in-chief, or the House will impeach Trump for inciting violence against the American government.

Even though Pence took an oath to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he isn’t likely to invoke the 25th (doing so would cement his rep as a MAGA traitor), so it looks like he’s destined to be roadkill. He didn’t sign up for any of this. He’s feeling very aggrieved.

This is what happens when you make a Faustian pact with evil.

Pence was an evangelical Indiana governor with cloudy re-election prospects when Trump’s advisers (notably Kellyanne Conway) plucked him for stardom. The self-righteous moralist sealed his fate on July 15, 2016 when he married an amoral opportunist.

In the service of his own long-game presidential ambitions, and with robotic obsequious silence, he then proceeded to bless everything – the “grab ’em by the p-word” scandal, the caging of kids at the border, the hush payments to a porn star, the impeachable pressure on the president of Ukraine, the sociopathic incompetence that has helped kill 350,000 citizens, the relentless lies about our free and fair election process…the list is far too long to recap, and I doubt you have the stomach to endure it one more time.

No wonder conservative columnist George Will has called Pence “America’s most repulsive public figure.” Suffice it to say that Pence will be enshrined in the hall of infamy for standing astride his alpha male, rotely nodding at the latest pearls of Trumpian wisdom, like a bobblehead doll that kids get free at ballparks.

Did Pence somehow fail to notice, in all those years, that the mob boss ultimately threw every loyalist under the bus for the unforgivable sin of not being loyal enough? That every time a loyalist felt compelled to bail (to preserve a shred of dignity, or salvage a reputation, or simply flee), Trump’s predictable response was to feed that person to the MAGA wolves? Did Pence truly believe, or did his God goad him to believe, that he would somehow escape such a fate?

As recently as Jan. 4, while stumping in Georgia for the two (now defeated) Republican senators, Pence was still echoing Trump’s lies about election “irregularities,” and vowing that on Jan. 6, during the Electoral College count, “we’ll have our day in Congress, we’ll hear the objections, we’ll hear the evidence.”

It was only when the clock metaphorically struck midnight – when he was forced to choose between the Constitution and the authoritarian, when he was forcibly hustled from the Senate chamber because the goons stoked by Trump were calling for him to be hanged – did he finally don his big boy pants and draw a line in the sand.

Too late! Whatever happens next, his abject servility will be etched in the history books. Although I suppose things could be worse. The first of Indiana’s five veeps was a guy named Schuyler Colfax. He was dumped by Ulysses S. Grant after one term, and he ultimately dropped dead at a train station. Nobody knew who he was until somebody searched the body for ID.

On other hand, maybe Mike Pence’s fate is worse.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

The domestic terrorism that we witnessed Wednesday was always bound to happen. The feral creature who nurtured it had long signaled us that it was coming.

I watched in horror and fury, as did you, but I was not shocked to see the MAGA rabble running wild. What’s really shocking is that anyone could possibly have been shocked.

Trump’s seditious instincts were always in plain sight. He habitually retweeted violent images and publicly fantasized about “knocking the crap” out of people. He lauded neo-Nazis as “very fine people” and boasted last year that he has “the tough people, but they don’t play it tough – until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very, very bad.” He even declared the Capitol insurrectionists were “very special.”

But the Republicans, who long indulged him, presumably knew better. The desecration of democracy, beamed across the world, is on them. The blood of the dead and injured is on them.

Bystanders like me could see what was coming. Way back in October of 2016, I warned that Trump’s “dissing of democracy will live in infamy,” that he was a “clear and present danger to our democratic values,” and that he’d wreak havoc with “his wingnut peanut gallery, which has a bottomless thirst for his serial lies and demagogic drivel.” But as that 2016 campaign wore on, Republicans excused his extremism and convinced themselves that he could be controlled. As Mitch McConnell said in a podcast, “I’m comfortable supporting him.”

How sickening it was Wednesday to hear Republicans say they were shocked, shocked, that chaos reigned in the U.S. Capitol. The Senate Republicans’ Twitter feed declared, “This is not American. This must stop.” Michael Gallagher, a House Republican who’d voted with Trump 88 percent of the time and who’d opposed the impeachment probe, said on TV (as he sheltered in place), “This is insane. I haven’t seen anything like this since I deployed to Iraq. The president needs to call it off.” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy said, “People have taken this too far…This is unacceptable. This is not the direction in which we should go.”

Gee, I wonder why Trump’s thugs took it “too far.” Is it perhaps Trump’s Republican enablers gave them the green light, egging them on for months by amplifying the loser’s toxic lies about a “rigged” election? A few hours after McCarthy whined that the violence was “unacceptable,” take a wild guess what he did on the House floor. He joined 120 other traitors to democracy, refusing to certify President-elect Biden’s victory.

Even after the looting and vandalism had ceased, Senate and House Republicans still refused to denounce Trump by name. When the Electoral College proceedings re-commenced after six hours of limbo, they still refused to call out his seditious behavior, which violated federal law. They assailed the insurrectionists without identifying why the insurrectionists had acted, or in whose name.

A rare Republican who did so was Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey. Nevertheless, his floor statement was hopelessly muddled. On the one hand, he denounced Trump as a “demagogue.” On the other hand, he made it clear that he’d supported Trump’s re-election. Did he suddenly discover, only in the wake of yesterday’s violence, that Trump was a demagogue? Or did he perchance have an inkling that Trump has been demagogic all along – yet still somehow deserved a second term?

If this government was even minimally functioning, if checks and balances meant anything beyond the high-flown words, Trump would be removed from office forthwith – either in a last-ditch 25th Amendment move, or via speedy impeachment and removal. But it appears – I’d love to be wrong – that nothing will happen. Apparently we must sit tight for 13 more days and hope that Wednesday’s disgrace was just a one-off.

Shame should be forever heaped on the purblind enablers who refused to recognize what had long been inevitable. Perhaps the most prescient warning was voiced eight months ago, by global politics professor Brian Klaas, an expert on authoritarianism. He wrote:

“What will happen if Trump takes to Twitter to say he actually won? It’s not hard to see how deadly that could become…When people in positions of authority and influence invoke the language of political violence and then lose power, violence often ensues. It would be a mistake to assume the United States is somehow immune…nobody should be surprised if Trump tries to discredit the 2020 election – no matter the consequences – if he loses.”

No matter the consequences. Those who long played deaf and dumb have no right to whine now. Nor do they deserve to hold public office. To borrow a phrase from the Old Testament, having sowed the wind, they reaped the whirlwind.

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Leave it to Trump to cap off his catastrophic tenure by tripling down on the criminal behavior that got him impeached in the first place. It’s safe to assume that Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, never imagined he’d be muscled like Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

Spineless Senate Republicans exonerated Trump last winter after he tried to extort Zelensky in exchange for fake dirt that might help him win re-election. They thought that Trump deserved a second chance, that perhaps he’d learned his lesson. But sociopathic liars tend not to be reflective. And sure enough, on the phone this weekend (recorded for posterity), Trump tried to bully Raffensperger into faking the vote tally in order to help him win re-election.

“I have to find 12,000 votes and I have them times a lot. And therefore, I won the state…So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”

By the way, that’s a federal crime. According to 52 U.S.C § 20511(2)(B), “A person…who in any election for federal office…knowingly or willingly deprives or defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process” shall be fined or imprisoned. But since Trump sincerely believes his own lies, since he has apparently convinced himself that his repeatedly certified election defeat was not fair and impartial, he could probably skate on this charge by pleading insanity.

I doubt the recording of his begging and pleading and cajoling and threatening, which reeks with flop sweat, will ever be featured at the Trump presidential library, but so what. Schoolkids for generations to come can find it with a finger tap, and hear for themselves what it was like when the world’s stupidest mob boss – circling the drain, his power on the wane – desperately sought to destroy democracy.

Among other things, Trump claimed the Dominion voting machine company has disassembled and hidden their crooked machinery (a delusional lie), that hundreds of thousands of Trump ballots were burned or shredded (“that’s what the rumor is”), that 4,925 voters came from out of state, that 18,000 fake votes for Joe Biden arrived in “suitcases or trunks,” plus there were “dead people. So dead people voted and I think the number is close to 5,000 people.”

Raffensperger’s response was priceless: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.” For instance, regarding dead people voting, “the actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted.”

It’s actually fascinating to hear Trump in action, because what’s arguably most noteworthy is that he never listens. Confronted with a stone wall of facts, he just flattens himself against it and keeps talking. For instance: “There’s turmoil in Georgia and other places. You’re not the only one, I mean we have other states that I believe will be flipping to us very shortly.” No state is “flipping” to him. Nobody is coming to save him.

But perhaps Trump’s most despicable moment was when he threatened Raffensperger with federal prosecution. He lied that Raffensperger was protecting the (non-existent) election fraudsters: “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you…they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I’ve heard. And they are removing machinery and they’re moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal finds. And you can’t let it happen and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen.”

By the way, Trump appears to have committed a Georgia crime. Under state law, anyone who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage” in election fraud is, by definition, a criminal. Trump won’t be prosecuted for his latest offenses, of course, but what we can say with full confidence is that his Saturday phone call makes his last-ditch congressional allies look like fools.

They’re vowing, in this week’s Electoral College counting ceremony, to dispute Biden’s decisive victory by taking an Orwellian stand for clean elections – yet here was their Leader, in his own recorded words, making it crystal clear that he’s the aspiring fraudster who wanted to steal a clean election. Naturally, the traitors who are poised to do his authoritarian bidding will stick with him anyway, but for those of us in the sane majority, one thing is clear: He will desecrate the White House – our house – until his last moments in office.

But Raffensperger deserves the last word, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom. After weathering Trump’s opening salvo of lies, he merely said:

“Um, we don’t agree that you have won.”

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Nobody deserves to die in a pandemic. But even now – after so much suffering, with so much more to come – millions of Americans still don’t seem to understand that brainless stupidity can put them six feet under.

Case in point: Earlier this month in Louisiana, House Republican candidate Luke Letlow won his runoff race after parroting Trumpian ignorance about COVID-19 and mimicking his hero by staging a series of maskless rallies.

Less than two weeks ago, Letlow announced that he had COVID-19.

By Wednesday morning, Letlow was unable to provide further updates, because he’s dead. At age 41.

Letlow leaves a wife and two small children. I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead. I’ll simply point out that one’s odds of contracting and dying from COVID-19 are heightened if one dwells in a MAGA bubble and throws prudent caution to the winds.

Letlow’s big message – which clicked with Louisiana voters, naturally – was that Donald Trump showed “tremendous leadership and a remarkable ability to get things done,” and that thanks to Trump, “America is defeating COVID-19.” As recently as Nov. 19, after staging multiple maskless meet-and-greets, he warned about the economic damage of lockdowns and said, “We have to learn how to live in a COVID world.”

The chairman of the Louisiana Republican party had this reaction to Letlow’s death: “The world was his oyster. We’re all in disbelief.”

Believe it, buddy. The COVID world is no oyster if you treat masks as a threat to freedom.

Naturally, the freedom lovers still refuse to believe. Social media today is infested with deniers who insist that because Letlow was only 41, surely he must’ve died for a different reason – or because he had underlying health problems. But nope, his hospital doctor said he was healthy as a horse before he was stricken, and that all the factors were “COVID-related.”

Bottom line: A young politician in the prime of health has left his wife a widow, and his children fatherless, after setting a bad example for the citizens he aspired to serve. COVID feasts on blithe stupidity. Letlow’s media feeds featured numerous photos of him greeting the common folk, sans mask. How many people did he potentially infect and put at dire risk? We’ll never know their names.

Joe Biden – the president whom Letlow would’ve staunchly opposed in 2021, had he lived to take his House seat – offered this self-evident observation Tuesday, during his remarks about how Trump has predictably screwed up vaccine distribution:

“Wearing a mask is not a political statement. It is a patriotic duty. COVID is a killer in red states as well as blue states, so I would encourage you all to wear a mask…I’m asking you to make these sacrifices (for) your lives and your livelihood and your kids and your families.”

Letlow didn’t do that. After 330,000 deaths, how many more cautionary tales do people need to hear?

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Copyright 2020 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]