Video: On the PBS NewsHour, Conservative Legal Icon Michael Luttig Declares, “We cannot function until the Republican Party comes to its senses.”

Conservative legal icon, retired judge Michael Luttig, had some VERY strong words this evening on the PBS NewsHour, mostly aimed at his (former?) party, the Republican Party.  Check out the video below, as well as highlights including the following.

By the way, as I listened to Luttig, I kept thinking about how basically ZERO elected Republicans – including here in Virginia – have spoken as Luttig did this evening, clearly (or at all!) calling out the danger and menace of the Republican Party as it’s morphed into a dangerous, far-right, authoritarian, anti-democracy, anti-rule-of-law, anti-constitution, extremist outlier in the world. And it’s also worth noting that the U.S. political media has BADLY failed to convey the urgency and magnitude of what this country’s dealing, instead mostly “both sides-ing,” normalizing, drawing false equivalence (e.g., with the Hunter Biden case, which Luttig notes is “not similar in any way at all, let alone in gravity or consequence…to what the former president has now been indicted for”), and – as Judy Woodruff continues to mindlessly do – talk about “polarization,” as if it’s symmetrical, or as if THAT’s the problem in our country, as opposed to ONE PARTY – the Trumpified, far-right “populist” Republican Party – going completely off the rails into far-right extremism. Yet the media seems paralyzed, or maybe terrified (or both) to do its JOB.

Finally, for more background on what’s happened to the Republican Party, definitely check out Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s superb book “Strongmen“; Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder’s excellent book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century“; Jan-Werner Muller’s “What Is Populism?“; etc. For better or worse, this is the world we live in right now, so it’s crucial IMHO to understand it – and understand how to stand up for our democracy, our freedoms, our constitution, etc.

• “As of today, and for the past 2 1/2 years since 1/6/21, it has been the Republicans who have reprehensibly failed us as Americans. On January 6, the former president and [his] Republican allies and supporters declared war on American democracy.”
• “The former president sought to overturn an American election which he had lost. For four years, these claims have corroded and corrupted American democracy and American elections.”
• “Never again will the world be inspired by…America’s democracy in the way it has been since our founding almost 250 years ago.”
• “All that matters is the president will be tried for these grave offenses. Had he not, it would have made a mockery out of the constitution and the rule of law.”
• If Trump’s acquitted, “We could expect that he and his supporters could claim there was vindication that the election was stolen from him. Were that to be the case, I don’t believe American democracy could be saved, at least in the near future.”
• “The issue with Hunter Biden and the issue with the former president are not similar in any way at all, let alone in gravity or consequence. It is the incumbent president’s son, and the personal conduct he is being accused of is of a pedestrian nature by comparison to what the former president has now been indicted for.”
• “Any leader, Republican or Democrat, who has not spoken against January 6 and the former president’s role in it has betrayed their oath…This is far above and beyond politics. As we now know, it is literally crimes against the United States of America.”
• “It’s critical to American democracy that you have two very strong political parties who are competing against each other on the issues, the public policy issues before the nation. We can’t have one party who is supporting and defending what occurred on January 6, together with the President of the United States who caused January 6. We can’t have that. We cannot function until the Republican Party comes to its senses. In my view, I don’t consider the Republican Party a political party in the United States at the moment.”
• “What we need to do is remove out of power from our elected officials who have betrayed us as Americans and send to Washington others who better understand…that their power is our power.”