EDITORIAL: Capitol riot was not 'legitimate political discourse'

Feb. 10—There are, normally, set roles for the machinery of the republic's two major parties. If it has an incumbent president eligible for re-election, the party's national committee is expected to serve as an arm of his campaign. If not, the national committee holds itself above the fray and lets the White House hopefuls sort themselves out — and once there is a nominee, adopts the former role.

But these are not normal times. The Republican National Committee makes no pretense of neutrality in the coming nomination process. It is acting as if Donald Trump were still president, and to hell with its own bylaws.

Last Friday the RNC, at its national meeting in Salt Lake City, passed by voice vote a resolution censuring the two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. Most notably, and quite preposterously, it described the riot as "legitimate political discourse."

The only purpose to this resolution is to buttress the pretense of the former president that there was nothing noteworthy or illicit about trying to overthrow election results. But it is consistent with the party's steady undermining of election procedures in state after state: phony audits in such states as Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the apparent breaches of machine security in Colorado, the shifting of vote-count responsibilities to partisans in Georgia and elsewhere.

It is long past time for patriotic Republicans to break the silence, for more of them to join Liz Cheney, Adam Kitzinger and Mitt Romney in condemning Trump's efforts to break the norms that govern our elections. Mitch McConnell on Tuesday decried the RNC's resolution and for the first time used the word "insurrection" to describe the Jan. 6 riot.

We hold no realistic expectations along those lines with southern Minnesota's two House Republicans, Jim Hagedorn and Michelle Fischbach. Both returned to the House floor in the wake of the riot to vote to toss out electoral votes for Joe Biden.

Fischbach (whose district includes Sibley County) explicitly backs Trump's big lie of a stolen election; Hagedorn is careful not to contradict it. Both have opposed any and all investigations of the riot.

But there are plenty of other Republican office holders in this area. State Sens. Julie Rosen, Rich Draheim, John Jasinski; state Reps. Susan Akland, Jeremy Munson, Paul Torkelson and John Petersburg.

This nation cannot survive a major party bent on breaking elections, and that is the current course of the Republican Party. Republicans who do not explicitly reject their party's official stance that the insurrection was "legitimate political discourse" implicitly agree. Speak now: Silence is complicity.