Thank goodness for the GOP good guys
That a group of Michigan Republicans were told to hide out overnight in that state’s capitol to secretly select a false slate of presidential electors pledged to Donald Trump brings to mind a scene from “Seven Days in May.”
The movie, which stars Burt Lancaster as treasonous Air Force Gen. James Scott and Fredric March as President Jordan Lyman, involves an attempt by the military to take down the government. The coup fails, but just barely. The climatic scene of the film features a confrontation between the characters played by Lancaster and March that goes like this:
Scott: President Lyman … when this country lost faith in you … you [violated your oath of office] by not resigning and turning the country over to someone who could represent the people of the United States.
Lyman: And that would be [you], would it? … You want to defend [the country]? Then defend it with the tools it supplies you with, its Constitution. YOU ASK FOR A MANDATE, GENERAL, FROM THE BALLOT BOX. YOU DON’T STEAL IT AFTER MIDNIGHT….
The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has uncovered multiple instances in which those plotting against the lawful transfer of power insisted to subordinates on subterfuge and secrecy.
The jackals were afraid they’d be found out.
Even Rudy Giuliani, who along with Donald Trump himself is the public face of the conspiracy to keep the 45th president unlawfully in the White House, dealt secretly, when that was called for.
For instance, the former New York mayor placed a clandestine phone call to the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives sometime after the November 2020 election. Speaker Rusty Bowers and his family were returning from Sunday morning church services, according to testimony the speaker provided to the Select Committee last week.
Giuliani, Trump’s private attorney, broached a novel idea, to say the least: the certification of Republican electors in a state won by Democrat Joe Biden. The Arizona legislature held the power, Giuliani said.
Bowers, a Republican who voted for Trump not once but twice (in 2016 and 2020), replied to Giuliani’s suggestion that the will of voters – Bowers wasn’t buying Trump’s voting fraud claims – be overturned with these words:
“You are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath… This is totally foreign as an idea or as a theory.”
John Eastman, another Trump attorney peddling the same illegal scheme as Giuliani, heard this from Bowers:
“I took an oath. For me to take that [course you suggest] would be counter to my oath.” It would mean doing “something that’s never been done in history, in the history of the United States.”
Eastman persisted. He told Bowers to take the path of least resistance (to Trump) and to “let the courts sort it out.” Bowers answered, “No, sir.”
Bowers said he did “not want win by cheating.” He voiced a spiritual understanding of the Constitution. “It is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired,” said Bowers.
“… And so, for me to [defy the Constitution] because somebody asked me to is foreign to my very being. I – I would not do it. “
Thank goodness for Republicans like Bowers, like Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling of Georgia, like Richard Donoghue and Jeffrey Rosen of the Trump Justice Department, like Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s White House press secretary, and like White House functionaries Cassidy Hutchinson, John McEntee, and Eric Herschmann. Along with the highly respected conservative jurist Michael Luttig and former attorney general William Barr, all have spoken to the Select Committee in favor of the rule of law and the Constitution and reality and against Trump and midnight raids on American democracy.
Bowers made clear his admiration for Ronald Reagan. In MAGA world, Reagan is a discarded figure. But perhaps the Gipper still has some juice left. Like Bowers, all of us should take heart from the opening of Reagan’s first inaugural address, during which he thanked his predecessor, Democrat Jimmy Carter, for “showing the world we are a united people pledged” to individual liberty and to the maintenance of constitutional government.
Reagan called the “orderly transfer of authority” from one political party to another unique in history. It was “nothing less than a miracle,” he said. It defined us.
“Seven Days in May” ends with a ringing declaration of faith by fictional President Lyman in the country and the Constitution. “The whisperers and the detractors are wrong,” the Frederic March character says, “the violent men are wrong.”
May that be the case in real life as well.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.