Being a Better Republican: My New Year's Resolution for 2024

Reframing January 6th

January 6th. Everyone has opinions on it, usually strong opinions one way or the other.

Here's how you reframe the events of January 6th.

First, take the side of the police officers that were harmed and advocate for those who harmed them to face the full weight of the law. Brian Sicknick didn't deserve to die, nor did any of the other officers deserve to be harmed in any way. Lock whoever did those crimes away for a long time. We are the party of law and order, and if someone kills a police officer they should fry.

Second, don't try to convince people that what they saw on TV or in person didn't happen. It happened. Whatever the reason, a crowd stormed the Capitol Building in Trump hats and carrying Trump flags. Acknowledge that.

Denying what happened isn't helping anyone, so let's not do it.

However, we should not swallow the Democrat talking point that January 6th would've ended the American experiment had it "succeeded". Think about it: what would've actually happened had the rioters succeeded in taking over the Capitol entirely and turning it into a hostage/seige situation? The answer is the military would've entered the Capitol within the day and massacred the mostly unarmed rioters. Even if Donald Trump didn't give the order to do that, I guarantee you one of his underlings would have. Case in point: when the National Guard was deployed in real life, it wasn't Trump who ordered it; it was Vice President Mike Pence. If the rioters had actually succeeded in taking over the Capitol, someone, somewhere would've given the order to retake the Capitol.

The point is, even if January 6th had escalated to the point of truly holding the Capitol hostage, there's no way it would've ended democracy. Even if Trump had truly wanted a riot (he didn't), our republic has survived much worse than this. 

In 1864, the Civil War was still ongoing. Even though the country was at war with itself, we still got around to holding an election, which Lincoln won. 

So don't buy the line that January 6th would have ended democracy.

What Trump actually wanted to happen on January 6th was for a loud but peaceful protest to take place (as his tweets from that day clearly said). He hoped that by having MAGA supporters showing up in huge numbers, the protests would send a message that We the People will not stand for elections that are sold as free and fair with no accountability or oversight, and hopefully that would convince the Republican minority, and especially Mike Pence, to reject the electoral votes from states that openly and deliberately flaunted basic election transparency, while demanding we just trust that the election was the freest, fairest, and most secure election in history.

That is the real story of January 6th. A peaceful protest that, for whatever reason, got too rowdy.