Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Appeasement Got Us Where We Are

It’s time to stand up to the fascists among us.

One shouldn’t use the term “fascist” lightly. It isn’t a catchall for “people you disagree with.” It isn’t even a synonym for “bad political actors.” Mitch McConnell’s brand of politics has, in my view, greatly damaged America; but cynical legislative maneuvers aren’t the same thing as threatening and encouraging violence, and I wouldn’t call McConnell a fascist.

Donald Trump, however, is indeed a fascist — an authoritarian willing to use violence to achieve his racial nationalist goals. So are many of his supporters. If you had any doubts about that, Wednesday’s attack on Congress should have ended them.

And if history teaches us one lesson about dealing with fascists, it is the futility of appeasement. Giving in to fascists doesn’t pacify them, it just encourages them to go further.

So why have so many public figures — who should have known what Trump and his movement were — tried, again and again, to placate them by giving in to their demands? Why are they still doing it even now?

Consider a few milestones on the way to the sacking of the Capitol.

Catherine Rampell RIP, the GOP of ‘Personal Responsibility’

If Republicans will not own their actions that led to the attempted coup, accountability must be forced upon them by voters.

What ever happened to the “personal responsibility” we’ve so often heard Republicans prattle on about?

Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and others aided and abetted our authoritarian president, amplifying his lies about voter fraud. White House officials and their confederates in right-wing media have thoroughly brain-poisoned the GOP base, claiming that shadowy forces stole the 2020 election. In so doing, these quislings all helped foment the insurrectionist storming of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

They should man up and own it.

And yet for their role in Wednesday’s seditious acts, not a whit of personal responsibility is anywhere to be found. In a video released Thursday evening, President Trump claimed to be “outraged” by the mob he himself had beset upon the Capitol. “It is not your fault. It is their fault” came the appalling apologia of Fox News host Tucker Carlson, with the ambiguous “their” seemingly referring to Democrats. Cruz more explicitly blamed random Democrats. Other right-wing personalities and Republican leaders claim the attempted coup was really the work of far-left antifa, even though Capitol rioters were on camera chanting “Trump” and “Stop the Steal” and carrying the Confederate flag. [..]

Let’s review the tape.

Janmelle Bouie: Running Out the Clock on Trump Is Cowardly and Dangerous

Forget the 25th Amendment. It’s Congress that was attacked and Congress that must act.

The most shocking thing about Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol is that it happened. A mob of Trump supporters, some of them armed, stormed and vandalized both chambers of Congress, sending duly-elected lawmakers into hiding and interrupting the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next. [..]

Nearly as shocking as the attack itself has been the response from Congress. On Wednesday night, its members resumed their count of the electoral vote and certified Joe Biden as the next president of the United States. So far so good. But then they adjourned into recess. It was Thursday afternoon before the Democratic leadership — Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the soon-to-be Senate Majority leader, Chuck Schumer — called for the president’s removal. And even then, they urged the vice president, Mike Pence, to use the 25th Amendment to do it, with impeachment as a backstop.

This is backward. A physical attack on Congress by violent Trump supporters egged on by the president demands a direct response from Congress itself. Impeachment and conviction is that response. To rely on the executive branch to get Trump out of the White House is to abdicate the legislature’s constitutional responsibility to check presidential lawbreaking.

Amanda Marcotte: Ignore Trump’s manipulative damage control: He must be impeached again

Donald Trump can’t be trusted to oversee a peaceful transition of power

Thursday night, a clearly reluctant Donald Trump released a video, promising, “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”

Of course, his focus just the day before was on stoking a violent insurrection, making any hope of an “orderly” — much less a “seamless” — transition of power impossible. It was a little like throwing someone’s pet off a balcony, and then promising that, from here on out, you’re going to be the most responsible of dog sitters.

Still, there is no doubt many will be tempted to believe Trump, especially as it’s only 10 days until the inauguration of Joe Biden removes him from office. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has threatened to impeach trump if Vice President Mike Pence doesn’t remove him through the 25th Amendment procedure. The latter is doubtful to happen, the former likely, but in either case, it takes time. The promise that Trump is done acting out and will be a good little sociopathic narcissist is appealing, because any effort to hold him accountable in this short amount of time is a logistical nightmare. That, however, is what Trump is counting on. [..]

There are many reasons that impeachment must go forward, of course, starting with the fact that it’s important to take a stand, even if it’s just symbolic, against politicians fomenting anti-democratic insurrections. The death of Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer who appears to have been murdered by an insurrectionist armed with a fire extinguisher, only heightens the moral necessity of impeachment.

Impeachment is also a matter of prevention.

Jennifer Rubin: Trump can and must be prosecuted

The most serious consequences possible should be pursued.

Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol so stunned the country that we run the risk of not fully processing the unique violation of law that it represents. Imagine not considering whether we should prosecute Islamist terrorists or the Oklahoma bombing terrorists or a mass shooting in a parking lot. The same urgency we would apply in those cases should be applied in holding everyone involved in the attack on the Capitol legally responsible. That includes not only the participants but also all others who incited it.

Not only did the mob’s attack result in deadly violence, it also sought to overthrow our democracy. It was in every sense of the word sedition, as defined in federal law [..]

Once we understand the gravity and uniqueness of the case, we can fully appreciate that not only the direct participants but also those who funded, organized and incited them must be dealt with. If there was a conspiracy (in laymen’s terms, an overt agreement to storm the Capitol), then all members of that conspiracy remain liable for the crimes that ensued.

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Eugene Robinson: We just saw an attempted coup d’etat. Blame Trump. Blame his Republican enablers.

Today’s events were shameful — and inevitable.

Let’s be clear: What happened Wednesday afternoon at the U.S. Capitol was an attempted coup d’état, egged on by a lawless president desperately trying to cling to power and encouraged by his cynical Republican enablers in Congress.

It was perhaps inevitable that President Trump’s chaotic and incompetent tenure in office would end with riots and tear gas. Not since British Major Gen. Robert Ross set fire to the president’s residence and the Capitol building in 1814 have we seen such a scene at the hallowed citadel of our democracy, as an angry and disillusioned mob — whipped into a frenzy by Trump himself — forced its way into the Capitol to disrupt the official certification of Trump’s electoral defeat. [..]

The central act of our democracy — the peaceful and orderly transfer of power — was not allowed to take place. Blame the rioters themselves, who must take responsibility for their own actions. But blame Trump above all. And blame the Republican members of Congress who sought to boost their own political fortunes by validating Trump’s self-serving paranoid fantasies.

David Landau and Rosalind Dixon: Why Trump Must Be Removed and Disqualified From Public Office

Mr. Landau and Ms. Dixon are law professors.

The magnitude of the current crisis calls for two constitutional measures: the 25th Amendment and impeachment.

After a mob incited by President Trump stormed and occupied the Capitol, American democracy needs protecting now — and not just now but in the coming weeks and years as well.

There are reports of preliminary discussions within the administration about invoking the 25th Amendment, a provision in the Constitution that provides a process to declare a sitting president no longer capable of fulfilling his duties. Another call is coming from a surprising source: The National Association of Manufacturers, not normally an organization known for this kind of political activism, said that Vice President Mike Pence “should seriously consider working with the cabinet” to invoke the amendment to remove President Trump and “preserve democracy.” People are invoking the 25th Amendment on the grounds that Mr. Trump is not fit to hold office and incited the chaos that unfolded on Capitol Hill — and may unfold again.

There are also calls from a number of Democratic representatives to impeach and remove the president for his actions around the illegal and violent takeover of one of the most hallowed traditions in American democracy.

The magnitude of the current crisis calls for both of these measures. The threat the president poses to our democracy is not short-lived and must be cut off urgently and decisively — before it leads to even greater degradation to American democratic processes and traditions. It will need to happen quickly, even with other demands pressing on our country’s leadership like certifying the election results, rolling out the coronavirus vaccine and calming a nation in crisis.

Ezra Klein: Trump Has Always Been a Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing

By enabling the president anyway, Republican elites helped make the storming of the Capitol possible.

For years, there has been a mantra that Republicans have recited to comfort themselves about President Trump — both about the things he says and the support they offer him. Trump, they’d say, should be taken seriously, not literally. The coinage comes from a 2016 article in The Atlantic by Salena Zito, in which she complained that the press took Trump “literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

For Republican elites, this was a helpful two-step. If Trump’s words were understood as layered in folksy exaggeration and schtick — designed to trigger media pedants, but perfectly legible to his salt-of-the-earth supporters — then much that would be too grotesque or false to embrace literally could be carefully endorsed at best and ignored as poor comedy at worst. And Republican elites could walk the line between eviscerating their reputations and enraging their party’s leader, all while blaming the media for caricaturing Trumpism by reporting Trump’s words accurately. [..]

The problem isn’t those who took Trump at his word from the start. It’s the many, many elected Republicans who took him neither seriously nor literally, but cynically. They have brought this upon themselves — and us.

Michelle Cottle: Say It With Me Now, ‘Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’

With Raphael Warnock winning and Jon Ossoff leading, the political world has been remade.

Raise your hand if Georgia’s going deep blue was on your 2021 bingo card.

Me neither. But it turns out the state really has evolved — in part thanks to a decade-long push by voting-rights advocates and organizers like Stacey Abrams — into a different kind of political animal than its Deep South cousins. The final tallies from its twin Senate runoffs are still to be determined, but the Democratic contenders, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, are on track to unseat the Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

This is a welcome development for the health of American democracy. At the risk of sounding harsh, both incumbents needed to lose. Not because of their politics or how they served constituents — though there was plenty to criticize in those departments. Rather, Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue proved themselves unfit for office with their cynical, spineless embrace of MAGA nihilism, topped off by their support of President Trump’s crackpot crusade to reverse the results of the presidential vote. Such rank betrayals of democracy should not go unpunished. There will, in fact, need to be more such reckonings if the Republican Party is to find its way out of Trumpism. [..]

Minority leader Mitch McConnell. These four words are music to the ears of those long frustrated by the obstructionism and gridlock that have defined the Kentucky Republican’s reign. Mr. McConnell’s Senate is where ambitious legislation — any legislation, really — goes to die. From the minority, he can still make trouble for the Democrats. And bills will still fail — more often than not, in a Congress so closely divided. But Mr. McConnell’s days as the Grim Reaper of legislation are over. He no longer controls what, or who, gets brought to the floor for consideration. This, to paraphrase a certain president-elect, is a big freaking deal.

Amanda Marcotte: Don’t let smarmy calls for “civility” fool you — most Republicans still side with insurrectionists

Despite the violence and death Wednesday, the majority of House Republicans voted in support of Trump’s coup

Calling for “peace” was the word of the day on Capitol Hill Wednesday, after an insurrectionist mob overran the U.S. Capitol, in what was ultimately a failed attempt to prevent Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election. Some politicians — mostly Democrats, but a few clearly rattled Republicans — meant these words of peace. But some, most obviously Donald Trump himself, did not.

In his repeated messages to supporters Wednesday and into Thursday, Trump made sure to sandwich every mealy-mouthed wish for peace in between carbo-loaded language inciting more violence by continuing to insist that he won “a sacred landslide election victory” and that it’s being “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.” [..]

But how many other Republicans, especially Republicans with power, agree with Trump? How many can we safely assume are full of it when they speak of peace? Well, just look at how many still support his coup. [..]

Empty condemnations of violence are meaningless. What Hawley, Cruz, and the majority of House Republicans are standing for is a belief that elections should be voided if they don’t like the results, and that it’s okay to lie and cheat in order to steal elections. That kind of belief system inevitably leads to political violence, because it shares the same logic as political violence, which is that if you don’t get what you want by playing fairly, you need to break the rules.