My friend Bill and I have been tossing around the question of whether what's going on is a coup attempt. If you think of a coup exclusively in military terms, it was not. And because it was so incompetently planned, and never actually got off the ground, you'd have to call it a coup manqué. That's French for, well, you know...
Four California Republicans signed on to the coup attempt led by State Attorney General Ted Paxton of Texas when he filed a lawsuit to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. Their names are Ken Calvert, Kevin McCarthy, Doug La Malfa and Tom McLintock.
It's one thing when white supremacists from Alabama or Mississippi attempt to halt, or at least slow down, the ragged American plodding toward a more-inclusive national culture since it first formed a government in which only white males could vote. I feel a great sympathy for the progressive citizens of those states who have to live with those retrograde forces with their hands on the local controls, but I don't really feel a strong affinity or sense of responsibility for what goes on there. I do however care very much when I see similar backwardness in my home state of California. I identify as a Californian and when I see abuse by its political leaders, I take it personally. So when I noted that there were actually four of them, I sat up and took notice. And don't take Bill's or my word for it. David Blount, a state senator from Mississippi called it a coup, and so did Attorney General William Tong of Connecticut.
The Spanish word for coup d'état is golpe de estado. And you've got to love the Germans for coming up with an actual onomatopoeia: Putsch! The Putschists (puccisti?) didn't pull it off because all but two members of the Supreme Court recognized that Texas did not have standing, and even those two (Thomas and Alito) said they would reject the effort even if the court had taken the case.
Others are maintaining (see Ross Douthat in today's New York Times Review section) that it wasn't a real coup because they had to know they couldn't get the play through the court and what they were up to was a kind of performance art, designed to drum up support for Trump in the future, rather than a legal move. As far as I'm concerned, however, if it crawls on its belly like a coup and stands on its hind legs like a coup, it's a coup.
Let me move on to the four Californians. I checked out their background to see what makes them tick. What I found had me nodding "of course, of course." Just what I expected. Classic foot-draggers. Modern world? No, not me. Just look at the record the four of them have created for themselves since they were first elected:
1. Ken Calvert - California is a microcosm of American political sentiment, with progressives in the cities and conservatives in the rural areas. Ken Calvert represents the 42nd Congressional District, that rural district east of L.A. and south of Riverside that is solidly Republican. No surprises there. But Calvert's politics are not merely conservative. Among his positions are a strongly anti-abortion stance, and a requirement that teenage girls seeking an abortion must get their parents' permission. He's opposed to the creation of any new gun laws, to the Affordable Care Act, and to amnesty for any illegal aliens living in the U.S. He opposed same-sex marriage rights and marijuana as therapy for returning military, even if approved by their doctors. He admitted to having sex with a prostitute in his car when stopped by the police in his hometown, but was not arrested, because there were no witnesses.
2. Kevin McCarthy - Kevin McCarthy represents California's 23rd Congressional District and has done so for the past thirteen years. He's Boehner's successor as House Minority Leader so he's one of the power brokers. The 23rd is in South Central California, centered in Bakersfield. It borders on the Mojave Desert, is largely rural and 76% white. Republican till the cows come home, in other words. McCarthy voted to defund Planned Parenthood, no surprise. Nor is it surprising that he votes the full party platform, and is known for having boasted that the Benghazi investigations against Hillary Clinton is what brought her down, thus demonstrating that the attacks on her were instrumental ones. It was not about truth-seeking. He was similarly shady about his support for Trump during the impeachment, and also for QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia for a time. He opposed proxy voting in the house to help lower the risk of spreading Covid-19, and tried (and failed) to sue Nancy Pelosi for even suggesting the idea. He proposed a bill that would make the Hyde Amendment permanent, a means of preventing government funding for abortion. He does not accept that there is scientific consensus on climate change and consistently opposes both domestic and international efforts to deal with such. He was primary author of efforts to strip 60 million acres of public lands of protection against logging, mineral and fossil fuel extraction. He supported Israel's annexation of the West Bank. He's one of the leaders of the efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. When Trump suspended DACA, he opposed efforts to protect these child immigrants. He opposed same-sex marriage and efforts to legalize marijuana.
As I write this, the little voice in my head asks me, "Why are you stating the obvious. The guy's a Republican, for Christ's sake!
3. Doug La Malfa - Represents California's 1st Congressional District, the technical name for which has to be "serious boonies" - the northeasternmost corner of the state. It has gone Democratic at times, but La Malfa has represented the district since he was first elected in 2012 and reelected four times. He is a fourth-generation rice farmer, and is the recipient of the largest amount of money ever from government agricultural subsidies. He also oversees agricultural subsidies as a member of the House Agricultural Committee. (But note the ambiguity in the reporting on that issue by the local paper.) He's got an A rating from the NRA and the Human Rights Campaign calls him "one of the most 'anti-LGBT' politicians in congress." He was an early supporter of the effort to overturn Affirmative Action and favored giving local law enforcement the right to act as immigration enforcement officers. He succeeded in getting a law passed which prevents the state from seizing guns even in a national emergency. He opposed the teaching in schools of the history of the gay rights movement and efforts to overturn the Electoral College system. He rejects, like McCarthy, the consensus on climate change.
Again - a Republican. And you expected maybe a Quaker?
4. Tom McLintock - Represents California's 4th Congressional District, the great "Empty Quarter" of the state, from Truckee down to the edge of Sequoia National Park, the part of the state comprised largely of national forests, including Yosemite, and arguably the most beautiful part of the state. Urban it is not. McLintock only today addressed Congress and made great sense in criticizing the lockdown as being unfairly applied. Problem is, rather than addressing the unfair application of the law, he argues for lifting the lockdown entirely, despite the fact that it is now roundly recognized throughout the world as being an appropriate measure as the Corona virus continues to spike. In 2008, McLintock voted against Prop. 2, which would have prohibited the confinement of animals in cages too small to allow them to stretch out their legs. "Farm animals are food, not friends." (Wikipedia on Tom McLintock). The following year he promised to vote against any taxes that would support legislation to prevent global warming. In his five terms in office he sponsored three bills, one to help the Miwok Indians and two to rename post offices. He doubts the science on climate change and is opposed to same-sex marriage. He has, however, supported the legalization of marijuana. He would like to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
There. A quick-and-dirty overview of some of our proud California congressmen of the Republican persuasion, and further confirmation of the rural-urban divide in America. (I won't make any attempts to bring in wealth or religion or race as explanatory factors, which I'm not sure I could do. What does show up, though, nice and clearly is the urban-rural divide.) I would question those who justify these Trump-no-matter-what-he-does supporters on the grounds they are afraid of losing their seats in the future. All of these guys come from totally Republican areas. The question is going to be whether supporting the Trump coup attempt will hurt them in the future. That depends on how far right and uninformed or uncaring the citizens of these districts are. I'm hoping they can be made aware of what wretched representation in Congress they have saddled themselves with.
I don't know what I expected to accomplish by laying these facts out. I just wanted to know what these advocates of a legal coup looked like up closer than I would normally want to look at them.
I'm not sorry I did. It reminds me once again that people who claim there is no real difference between Republicans and Democrats are out of their ever-lovin' minds.
And that may be the cherry on top of all the obvious understatements I've made in the last one hundred years.
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