[guest post by Dana]

As I’ve mentioned before, I am no longer a member of the Republican Party. These days, I no longer recognize the Republican Party. I have watched it morph into a strange, foreign body that has spent at least four years doing ridiculous contortions to defend Trump’s words and deeds, no matter the cost to the party’s reputation. The refusal to hold him accountable, to let him assume responsibility for all he has said and done, and the God-awful infantilization of a sitting president was just one disgrace too far. Crystallizing today’s GOP was the Republican Party’s recent reaction toward Liz Cheney when she voted to impeach Trump. Instead of applauding a sitting member of Congress for putting the Constitution and ethics above partisan loyalty, she was immediately condemned and now faces possible removal from her leadership post. The GOP tagline should be Party First, no matter what! It’s fitting.

With that, let’s take a look at what three different state GOP parties have been up to since the recent debacle at the Capitol:

The Oregon GOP passed their own sham of a resolution condemning Republicans who voted to impeach Trump:

“Our party is speaking out in condemnation of the profound betrayal by the ten House Republicans who supported impeaching President Trump last week without any investigation, hearing, shred of due process, and in contradiction to the known and emerging facts,” said Bill Currier, Oregon Republican Party chairman. “This type of sham process has become the norm for Democrats, but no Republican should support or give in to such an abuse of our Constitutional system.”

Included in their sham resolution were the following:

Whereas history tells us that after George Washington appointed Major General Benedict Arnold to command West Point, Arnold conspired to surrender the fort to the British;

Whereas the ten Republican House members, by voting to impeach President Trump, repeated history by conspiring to surrender our nation to Leftist forces seeking to establish a dictatorship void of all cherished freedoms and liberties.

Whereas the actual transcript of President Trump’s speech contradicts Democrat claims of “incitement of insurrection”

Whereas there is growing evidence that the violence at the Capitol was a “false flag” operation designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans; this provided the sham motivation to impeach President Trump in order to advance the Democrat goal of seizing total power, in a frightening parallel to the February 1933 burning of the German Reichstag

and

Whereas this false flag effort will support Joe Biden plans to introducing new domestic terrorism legislation likely placing more emphasis on themes from the post-911 Patriot Act such as allowing those charged with terrorism to be automatically detained before trial, outlawing donations to government-designated terrorist groups, allowing electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists, letting the government use evidence from secret sources in those trials, and perhaps new provisions such as codifying putting conservatives on a secret no-fly list without recourse to due process and restricting free speech, similar to the Sedition Act of 1798, which criminalized making “false statements” critical of the Federal government

and

Whereas the way of life and the entire economic future of Oregon and America is under attack, and we should be able to count on our elected officials to protect us from all enemies, foreign and domestic…

To tell you the truth, while the Oregon GOP was bad enough, the Hawaii GOP was…well….see for yourself:

Yesterday, damage control was the focus as the GOP sought to distance themselves from Q’Anon and the now-resigned official who tweeted the conspiracy-love tweet:

Even though a high-ranking Hawaii Republican Party official has resigned over controversial tweets supporting QAnon followers, it hasn’t stopped the controversy for the local GOP.

Edwin Boyette, vice chair for communications for the Hawaii Republican Party, said his tweets on party’s Twitter account were “errors in judgement.” The party’s chair said the tweets don’t represent the views of the organization’s.

“Those tweets were unauthorized,” said Shirlene Ostrov, chair of the Hawaii Republican Party.

“I think everyone can recognize that those tweets are isolated incidents and the person has since been removed.”

Longtime Republican state Rep. Gene Ward issued this statement:

“Fortunately, he resigned before he was to be censured, reprimanded and removed,” Ward wrote.

“Let me be clear, that statement was made by an overzealous party officer that was unauthorized, unfounded and was total nonsense not reflecting the views of our party leaders or any elected officials.”

And yet, Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, chair of the Democratic Party of Hawaii said that there have been tweets on the official GOP Twitter account that support views by an “alleged holocaust denier”:

The tweet — which has since been taken down by the party — referred to Mainland blogger Tarl Warwick as someone whose “commentary and analysis is generally high quality.”

Years ago, Warwick questioned the actual death toll at Auschwitz.

“Whatever the death toll was you cannot say every death was the result of execution,” Warwick said.

“The actual chamber that would have been the gas chamber is a far smaller unit with some pumps in it. The famous Auschwitz shower was quite literally a showering station. They’ve got like swimming pools at these places.”

Finally, the Arizona GOP stooped to new lows under the guidance of GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, who won another two-year term. And while Sen. John McCain was no doubt rolling over in his grave, I’m pretty sure he was also giving his longtime party the royal bird at the same time:

The Arizona Republican Party sent a clear signal Saturday that its leadership remains loyal to former President Donald Trump when it voted to publicly punish Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, all of whom opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, or in the case of Flake and McCain, endorsed the Democrat before the election.

The decision to censure those three Republicans — in addition to re-electing controversial chairwoman Kelli Ward — solidified the rightward shift of the official party, while also reflecting the deep fractures among Arizona Republicans over the future of the GOP, which suffered bruising defeats at the ballot box in 2020 in this increasingly purple state.

Reactions by the three who were censured was anything but shame, as was the intention:

Ducey’s political director, Sara Mueller, discounted the power of the state party’s actions, namely on the censure of the sitting governor. “These resolutions are of no consequence whatsoever, and the people behind them have lost whatever little moral authority they may have once had,” said Mueller.

Cindy McCain tweeted:

It is a high honor to be included in a group of Arizonans who have served our state and our nation so well…and who, like my late husband John, have been censured by the AZGOP. I’ll wear this as a badge of honor.

— Cindy McCain (@cindymccain) January 24, 2021

And from Jeff Flake:

If condoning President Trump’s behavior is required to stay in the AZGOP’s good graces, I’m just fine being on the outs.

He also tweeted a photo of himself with Gov. Ducey and Cindy McCain at last week’s inauguration:

Good company pic.twitter.com/1pdgVGE5Ps

— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) January 24, 2021

It’s pretty clear that any number of state GOPs continue to remain loyal to Trump, and will shun those who do what is right. Just how long his influence will be felt in state GOPs is really anyone’s guess. Obviously, I think the sooner his presence and influence is crushed within the party, the better for its members, and the country at large. Certainly, in the aftermath of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Trump has seen deep-pocketed donors distance themselves from him, as well as any number of former associates, aides, and team members. But still, there are some who are determined that his influence on the GOP continues:

Russ Vought, who led Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, plans to announce two pro-Trump organizations Tuesday, aiming to provide the ideological ammunition to sustain Trump’s political movement after his departure from the White House.

…The Center for American Restoration and an advocacy arm, America Restoration Action, will try to keep cultural issues that animated Trump’s presidency on the public agenda, according to people familiar with the matter.

…Vought is teaming up in the effort with Rachel Semmel, who ran communications for Trump’s OMB, and Ashlea Frazier, his former chief of staff.

The Center for American Restoration will be organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and explore issues including voter fraud and the role of big technology and social media companies in disseminating information.

America Restoration Action will be set up as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group, with more of a focus on policy advocacy.

–Dana