The Courage of Cassidy Hutchinson

One of the hallmarks of today's Republican Party is the spinelessness and cowardice of the vast majority of Republican office holders who put avoidance of a primary challenge from the lunatic far right above all else, including honesty, decency and basic moral behavior.  Seemingly, there is no limit to the self-prostitution to the hideious party base and, of course, Donald Trump, perhas the most morally bankrupt and unhidged of anyone to have ever occupied the White House.  Thus, as a piece in The Economist, a British publication founded 178 years ago, it is remarkable that we saw courage - some have called it heroism - on display on the part of of former aide to Trump's chief-of-staff, Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified in public to firmly tie Trump to the coup attempt to over throw the 2020 presidential election.  Hutchinson, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are among the few profiles in courage among Republicans who place country over party and still have a moral compass.  For her testimony, Hutchinson is being hit with a barage of lies and disparagement from the foul orange monster and his minions who continue to choose moral debasement over truth and integrity.  Sadly, the Republican Party may be beyond redemption.   Here are article highlights: 

Americans learned something shocking from Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to the January 6th committee this week, but it was not about Donald Trump. The fact that the 45th president is vile and corrupt was clear long before he won the Republican nomination in 2016. What was more remarkable about the 26-year-old former White House aide’s account of events before and during the Capitol Hill riot was that someone so embedded in Trumpworld had the moral compass to provide it.

Matter-of-factly, Ms Hutchinson described overhearing Mr Trump being informed that the maga crowd had guns and in response suggesting it be allowed to keep them. That was before he instructed its members to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell”. She told the committee that she heard Mr Trump had to be restrained by his security detail after he tried to lead the mob there. No one with her proximity to the president had broken ranks so devastatingly. Even though, as she made clear, senior Trump courtiers had known perfectly well what Mr Trump was up to. She recalled Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, warning that “things might get real, real bad on January 6th.” She described Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, advising against Mr Trump’s plan to march to the Capitol because “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement.” So far both men have refused to testify to the committee.

This embrace of the unconscionable by millions of otherwise reasonable Americans is by far the biggest novelty of the Trump era. By comparison, the paranoia and bigotry of the Capitol Hill rioters was old hat. Around a quarter of Americans have always expressed such sentiments. They represent the “paranoid style” in American politics described by the sociologist Richard Hofstadter . . . . The current eruption, Mr Trump’s maga base, represents around half the Republican coalition. Yet the real puzzle is why the other half, including amiable conservatives up and down the country, have gone along with it.

Economic privation was an early explanation—which never squared with the gleaming trucks parked outside Mr Trump’s rallies. Disinformation and racism were more convincing suggestions, but insufficient. Many Republicans knew all along what Mr Trump was . . . . Swathes of white America are resentful and fearful of diversity, rampant liberalism and other big ways in which America is changing, which they blame on the left. This cultural outlook has become the main difference between the two parties. Whereas Democrats are positive about America’s multiracial future, most Republicans say the country is “in danger of losing its culture and identity”.

Provided Mr Trump can be stopped, which seems likelier than not, it is in theory easy to think that the right will return to sanity. Yet the reality looks darker, partly because of the structural advantages that are sparing Republicans the electoral reckoning their dalliance with Mr Trump merits. Republicans are getting more power than the Democrats through the electoral college and Senate with fewer votes. And they were successfully compounding that undemocratic edge through all manner of ways to defy the majority, from judicial activism to gerrymandering, even before Mr. Trump took it a stage further by trying to steal an election.

Among scholars of democracy it has become a truism to predict that America’s will get worse before it gets better. It is hard to disagree. Even without Mr Trump, culture warring will dominate conservatism until Republicans can no longer win power by it. That is why Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr Trump’s closest rival, is spending so much time banning critical race theory and references to single-sex marriage in schools. Yet it is important, in what looks bound to be a protracted battle, to at least celebrate tactical successes—like Ms Hutchinson’s brave performance on the Hill this week. America needs an awful lot more conservative heroes like her.