According to a Washington Post survey reported in Sunday’s Globe, 220 of the 249 Republican members of Congress continued to remain silent regarding Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and another two considered Donald Trump the winner. Conventional wisdom and myriad talking heads seem to think that these Republicans are so fearful of the terrible tweeting thumbs of Trump that they must remain mute lest the tempestuous one unleash his wrath—and that of his base—on them. So these Republicans must bide their time until the storm passes and they can once again find their tongues and spines.
Are these supposed representatives of the people such cowards? Have they all lost the courage of their convictions—the ones they convinced their voters that they had? Or did they lack such convictions to begin with?
After all the destruction Trump has brought to our institutions of democracy and all the outrages he has visited upon our sensibilities, it is high time we consider that, for these men and women in Congress, he is doing precisely what they approve of, and that they are not quivering cowards but rather full-throated supporters of his actions. That goes as well for any elected conservative who keeps quiet; their silence makes them complicit.
William Miller
Roslindale
