The Republican party under Donald Trump has become “a cult of authoritarian personality in league with autocrats and kleptocrats and dictators”, the prominent Democrat Jamie Raskin said, as the former US president saw off Nikki Haley, his last rival for the presidential nomination, and finally won the support of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate.
Raskin was a House manager in Trump’s second impeachment, for inciting the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. After Senate Republicans ensured Trump escaped conviction, Raskin sat on the House committee that investigated January 6.
“The next election wasn’t much on my mind when we were reeling from the violence and the catastrophe of January 6,” Raskin told MSNBC, referring to the deadly riot Trump stoked in an attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden.
“But I think my assumption was that of the constitution itself, which is that someone who participates in an insurrection against the union should never be allowed to hold office again.
“It is disgraceful that a great political party, much less Abraham Lincoln’s [Republican] party, a party of liberty and union, should be reduced to a cult of authoritarian personality in league with autocrats and kleptocrats and dictators all over the world.”
Of 91 criminal charges now faced by Trump, four federal and 13 state charges concern attempted election subversion. The others arise from retention of classified information (40, federal) and for hush-money payments to an adult film star (34, state).
Trump has also been handed multimillion-dollar fines in civil cases over his businesses and a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”, and subjected to attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection. Regardless, he has dominated the Republican primary.
This week, the US supreme court rejected attempts to keep Trump off the ballot. In criminal court, meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers are playing for time, seeking to fend off judgment until Trump can return to power and have cases dismissed.
On Wednesday, Haley, the former South Carolina governor, bowed to the inevitable and ended her presidential campaign, if without endorsing Trump.
Raskin said: “What we’ve seen in this election, and we’ll have to follow what happens with Nikki Haley, is the Republicans break but they can’t bend. In other words, there’s no ability to accommodate other views because everybody has to follow Donald Trump, like a monarch.”
The Marylander also saluted “Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, the Lincoln Project and all of the Republicans who are standing up for the constitution” by opposing Trump.
Cheney, from Wyoming, and Kinzinger, from Illinois, were the only Republicans on the January 6 committee. Kinzinger retired. Cheney lost her seat.
The daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney and a stringent conservative, Liz Cheney has resisted calls to run against Trump as a Republican or on a third-party ticket. On Wednesday, she announced a new political action committee, The Great Task.
Named for a phrase in the Gettysburg Address, the 1863 Lincoln speech that became a foundational American text, the group said it would support candidates for office “focused on reverence for the rule of law, respect for our constitution, and a recognition that all citizens have a responsibility to put their duty to the country above partisanship”.
“The GOP has chosen,” Cheney said. “They will nominate a man who attempted to overturn an election and seize power. We have eight months to save our republic and ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere near the Oval Office again. Join me in the fight for our nation’s freedom.”
