LEVICK | January 11th, 2021

No ‘justice’ in rep’s vote

In the Warren Times Observer, Pulitzer-nominated writer and historian Tim Gay reflects on how political alignment to Trump can harm business and poison economic development.

When Warren County’s Republican Congressman Glenn Thompson recites the Pledge of Allegiance, does he shut his ears when he gets to “and to the Republic for which it stands”? Does he go wink-wink as he repeats the Pledge’s conviction that America is an “indivisible” nation that guarantees “liberty and justice for all”?

When he takes his congressional oath — as he’s had the honor of doing seven times — does he skip over the part about supporting and defending the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic?”

Maybe the skip-over explains why Thompson and more than 140 of his House and Senate GOP colleagues — not to mention 18 Republican state attorneys-general — believed that, somehow, some way, it was permissible for them to subvert the results of a free and fair presidential election and sully the peaceful transfer of power, a sacred American tradition that has been carried out, unbroken, for more than two centuries.

Fabricating voter fraud and trying to thwart the expressed will of the American people is not patriotism. Nor is maintaining allegiance to an unhinged president who incited a despicable mob assault on the U.S. Capitol.

It all ranks among the most reckless acts of sedition since the Civil War. Thank heavens a succession of courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court — with six Republican appointees, no less! — as well as bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, have repudiated Thompson and his radical confederates.

There is nothing “conservative” about attempting to shred America’s democratic institutions — especially coming from someone who belongs to the party of Abraham Lincoln, the president who gave his life to save the Republic…Read more