On Tuesday, Rusty Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, became another Republican to give public testimony to the select committee investigating the attempted coup of January 6, 2021.
There's a whole heartland full of people to whom Bowers truly spoke. Part of why his testimony was so powerful is BECAUSE he spoke to them in a way they might accept. Part of that come from acquiescing to ways where he is a lot like them.
— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) June 22, 2022
In this case, it's GOOD he said that.
"Duty To Warn" is an anti-Trump "association of mental health professionals." However (or therefore) DTW fails to understand that the message which can be reasonably taken form Bowers' testimony s that the President's actions were not so heinous that he wouldn't enthusiastically support him again as leader of the Free World (or as Chris Hayes unironically and inaccurately refers to him as then "the most powerful man in the world").
Bowers need not have endorsed Trump to spare himself the kind of harassment indirectly brought to him and his family by the guy to whom he was given a thumbs up. He could have reinforced the idea that he is a conservative Republican by saying that he wouldn't vote for Trump again but would happily support any other conservative Republican for President. If the ex-President were nominated for anther term, Bowers might have added, he would vote for any other conservative on the ballot. Anything but "run, Donald, run."
Noting Bowers' position on 2024 is not "a pointless hypothetical" and Chris Hayes explains why:
Rusty Bowers embodies a key part of this story because there are a few people, more than a handful, faced with a great moral test, who acted with integrity and ultimately that was what saved our democracy in the end.
But the other part of the story is that the Republican Party as a whole, as an institution, in American political life, is a continuing threat to the republic even if some of its members did the right thing when called to against great odds and great pressure. and Mr. Bowers summed that all up when after that testimony he gave, he told the Associated Press that despite everything that happened to him, his family, his community, and the assault on the capital on January 6, he would vote for Trump again. "If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I'd vote for him again," Bowers said "simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the country. In my mind it was great."
Maybe that's posturing but you know, I believe him. Mitch McConnell has said the same thing. I believe him. So has Bill Barr. I believe Bill Barr.
That's it in a nutshell, the problem that we all face. the distance between the genuine individual integrity that Rusty Bowers showed and the nature of this broader force that no one, not even Donald Trump, really fully controls. In the end, then the whole is greater nd worse the the sum of its parts. The whole really is, right now, a mortal threat to our democracy.
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