Though he has been out of office for 17 months now, Donald Trump lives on, rent-free, in the skulls of the left. Four of the lovely Amanda Marcotte’s last five Salon articles are all about Trump, Trump, Trump!,, and, as always, the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer feel Mr Trump knocking on the inside of their skulls as well. I will admit it: I missed this bit of dumbness from the Inky on Tuesday, but they were good enough to tweet about it to alert me:

Liz Cheney’s lonely fight against the extremist wing of the GOP | Editorial

Cheney’s work on the committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, has come at great professional and personal cost, including death threats.

by the Editorial Board | Tuesday, June 14, 2022

It shouldn’t make headlines when a member of Congress upholds their sworn oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) stands out as one of the few elected Republicans in Washington willing to put country before party.

The vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol understands that the peaceful transfer of power is the linchpin of our democracy. She also fully grasps the historic importance of ensuring accountability for the months-long effort by Donald Trump and his minions to steal the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

Can we tell the truth here, since the Inky omitted it? Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) is not on the committee because the GOP appointed her, but because Speaker Nancy Pelosi did, to try to make it seem as though this was bi-partisan. There are two, and only two, Republican members, Miss Cheney and Rep Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) on the committee, the only two Republicans who voted to establish it in the first place. Mr Kinzinger, one of just ten Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump, could see the handwriting on the wall, and decided not to seek re-election.

I can’t just copy-and-paste the entire editorial, but you can read it if you follow the embedded link. The Editorial Board lament that Miss Cheney has lost power and prestige within the Republican caucus, and that she’s very likely to lose the Republican primary for re-nomination for Wyoming’s at-large House of Representatives seat.

The Inquirer Editorial Board does not typically agree with Cheney’s policy positions. She is a hard-line conservative who voted with Trump 93% of the time. But we agree that Trump is a danger to democracy, which is why we’re taking the unusual step of endorsing Cheney in the upcoming congressional primary.

This is where it truly got funny. The Editorial Board absolutely refused to endorse any Republican candidates in the Pennsylvania GOP primaries, due to their pro-life positions, but here they’ve endorsed Miss Cheney, who is pro-life herself, because Mr Trump is living so loudly within their skulls.

While most of our readers can’t vote for Cheney, they can donate to her campaign, send a message of support, encourage friends in her district to vote for her, and talk with friends and family about the ongoing threat to democracy that the Trump wing of the GOP represents.

In the 2020 presidential election, President Trump received 193,559 votes, 69.94% of the total, compared to Mr Biden’s 73,491, or 26.55%, and the Cowboy State provided Mr Trump’s largest percentage margin in 2020. The vast majority of Wyoming’s residents will never read or even hear of the Editorial Board’s position, and even if they do, the silly thing is behind the Inquirer’s paywall!

Friday will mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Nixon’s abuse of power and obstruction of justice were also a threat to democracy and the rule of law, but Republicans in Congress placed the Constitution and country above politics. Their actions were bolstered by public opinion shaped by the same set of facts. In today’s America, where right-wing pundits spin the truth Trump’s way on Fox News and the internet, it’s more difficult to reach consensus.

Watergate was an actual, serious — and completely unnecessary — crime, something that the Capitol kerfuffle really isn’t. The left want to call it treason, sedition, an insurrection, but the kerfufflers weren’t even armed. It’s kind of difficult to stage some sort of coup d’etat without any guns. Even Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch was better planned than January 6^th as far as insurrections go.

Cheney’s lonely fight for her fellow Republicans’ support suggests Congress cannot be counted on this time. If the House Select Committee’s attempt to bring Trump to justice fails, it will be left to voters to remind candidates and incumbents who have dismissed the ongoing attack on our democracy that the people will have the last word.

Of course, the neither the House Select Committe, nor the House of Representatives as a whole, nor the Congress as a whole, can “bring Trump to justice”. The Congress has no power to issue indictments, and the two futile impeachments have demonstrated that a third attempt would be just as much of a waste of time and money. Meanwhile, the public are suffering under an 8.6% inflation rate, the economy contracted 1.4% during the first quarter, and store shelves are occasionally empty. This House Select Committee farce is very much about trying to deflect the voters’ attention away from the failures of the Biden Administration today by trying to focus them on 17 months ago. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who absolutely hates Republicans for denying him a Supreme Court seat, and his minions at the Department of Justice, do have the power to indict former President Trump on whatever crimes for which they can find evidence, but it’s laughable to picture being able to seat an impartial jury against him.

Republicans agitated for President Trump’s entire term to bring Hillary Clinton and her minions to justice, and it never happened. President Gerald Ford, with his pardon of former President Richard Nixon, pretty much established that the United States was not going to put former Presidents on trial, so the House is now engaged in something not that dissimilar from the Moscow show trials.

From 1861 to 1865, we were engaged in what Abraham Lincoln called a “great Civil War,” but, after the defeat of the Confederacy, no one was brought to trial for treason or revolution against the United States. Robert E Lee was charged, but never tried. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured, and held in irons in a casemate at Fort Monroe for two years before any trial, but was eventually released on bail; no trial was ever held, as President Andrew Johnson, on Christmas Day of 1868, issued a blanket “pardon and amnesty” for treason to “every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion.”

The Editorial Board and the Democrats want to treat the Capitol kerfuffle more harshly than the Civil War, which saw a million Americans, civilian and military, sent early to their eternal rewards.

The Editorial Board concluded:

(I)t will be left to voters to remind candidates and incumbents who have dismissed the ongoing attack on our democracy that the people will have the last word.

In the end, that much is true. And while the general election is still 4½ months away, and anything can happen, the probabilities are that the voters will have that last word by ending the Democrats’ majority in the House of Representatives and quite possibly the Senate as well. If the Republicans regain control of the Congress, will they hold show trial hearings over the Mrs Clinton and her campaign and the faked ‘Russian collusion’ scheme? They could, and today’s Democrats have set the precedent to allow them to do so.