Harvard Prof Says GOP Won’t Stand Up to Trump: ‘These Guys Are Going To Be OK With A Violent Seizure Of Power’
Harvard professor Steven Levistky told SiriusXM host and Salon interviewer Dean Obeidallah that Republicans would “rather end democracy” than stand up to former President Donald Trump.— and foretold dire consequences.
On Friday, the host talked with the professor and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die” for the Salon Talks interview series, and asked about the GOP’s shifting reaction to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Prof. Levitsky offered a frightening assessment:
Dean: After Jan. 6, I was as surprised as you. I actually thought the GOP was going to jettison Donald Trump and go, “He’s gone. He lied for two months. He clearly incited this attack. It might be a criminal violation, it might not be, but it was clearly, it was him. He did it.”
A week later on the floor of the House, Kevin McCarthy was denouncing Donald Trump. Then time went on, and now they celebrate the people who did that. Worse, they’re making martyrs of people like Ashli Babbitt, who was killed jumping into a secure area against the directions of an officer who knew there were elected officials behind him in the area. What does that mean to you? What concerns do you have when you hear Donald Trump defend the attackers, calling them persecuted, calling them political prisoners and defending Ashli Babbitt by name?
Prof Levistky: I mean, this is what authoritarian political movements do. I don’t want to go rushing to the comparison to Italian fascism or German Nazis, but this is the kind of stuff that fascist parties did. They glorified, defended, promoted violence. And violence is the path to power, so they became OK with it from top to bottom, from grassroots activists to voters to leaders. They became OK with violent seizures of power. How else do you read Jan. 6 and the reaction, and now the glorification of Jan. 6, other than these guys are going to be OK with a violent seizure of power?
I had the same reaction as you did in the days after Jan. 6. I really was hopeful, listening to Mitch McConnell on the floor of the Senate, listening to McCarthy, that finally this would be the turning point. But I think that the Republicans took a few days, put their finger to the wind and realized that the base was still with Trump. And because of the existence of primaries and because these guys are just too small to stand up for democracy over their own political careers, they went where their base was.
They were unwilling, for whatever reason — with the exception of Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney and a small handful of others, many of whose careers are over — they were unwilling to stand up to the base. Standing up the base means probably ending your political career and they just didn’t want to do it. They’d rather end democracy.
Watch above via Salon Talks.
