How Republicans are making America like Colombia

The U.S. Capitol building. (Public domain photo by Noclip)

By Rich Moniak

According to a recently published pre-election assessment, “the prevalence of allegations of electoral fraud aimed at discrediting the process” is one of the “principal weaknesses undermining the country’s electoral ecosystem.” In particular, the president’s “preemptive attacks” on the “electoral institutions are irresponsible and risk destabilizing the country at a critical juncture.”

Those conclusions could have been written by independent observers of America’s democracy under President Donald Trump. 

But they refer to Colombia. 

Sen. Dan Sullivan is the chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI) that produced the assessment. Its Board of Directors are almost all Republicans. With the exception of former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, they must all be blind to the irony of carrying out a mission to advance democracy around the world while feebly allowing ours to retreat.

When Trump was tried by the Senate five years ago for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, Sullivan and two other IRI board members — South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst — helped form the Republican bulwark that acquitted him. Only Romney, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and five others voted to ban him from ever holding public office again. 

Now, despite the fact that the Constitution gives Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign nations,” the party that once prided itself as champions of free trade has been defending the “dumbest trade war in history” Trump kicked off more than a year ago.

And even though only Congress can declare war, they voiced no objections when Trump started one with Iran without even consulting them. 

I’m not going to recap his conflicting justifications and military objectives for the war. Or his numerous mission accomplished declarations contradicted by threats to bomb Iran back the “stone age” and destroy its “whole civilization.” 

But to show how badly the war has damaged American credibility with our allies around the world, consider his wildly conflicting responses to Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. 

Two weeks into the war, CNN reported the administration “significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness” to close it and “failed to fully account for the potential consequences.” 

The White House tried to push back. 

"This story is 100% FAKE NEWS," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X, adding the goal to destroy Iran’s “navy, missiles, drone production infrastructure, and other threat capabilities” was “quite literally intended to deprive them of their ability to close the Strait.” 

Since such intentions failed to keep it open, it’s rather obvious CNN’s reporting was accurate. 

Trump first "Hail Mary" attempt to undo the damage he caused was to offer U.S. government backed risk insurance and order U.S. Naval escorts for all shipping lines that use the Strait. 

When that accomplished nothing, he hoped other nations would join the effort. They refused, largely because he never consulted them about his decision to wage a war in clear violation of the United Nations Charter.

Trump responded by saying their help wasn’t needed. Two weeks later, with the Strait still closed, he told them to open it themselves. 

“Iran has been, essentially, decimated,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”

There’s no way such incoherent desperation impressed any of our allies. 

They must also have a pretty low opinion of the Republican majority in Congress for tolerating Trump’s erratic approach to Russia’s war against Ukraine for more than a year.  

Under President Joe Biden, Sullivan consistently argued America wasn’t doing enough to help Ukraine. But he’s spent the last 14 months biting his tongue while Trump did a lot less. 

Last April, Sullivan and Graham introduced “hard hitting” Russian sanctions legislation. Despite having more than 80 co-sponsors, the Republican leadership wouldn’t bring it up for a vote without Trump’s blessing. Then they looked the other way when he eased sanctions on Russian oil in hopes of offsetting the price spike caused by Iran’s closure of the Strait. 

“The obvious winner is Russia,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in the Washington Post last week. 

Our European allies understand that. Having the benefit of observing America without partisan lenses, they must also recognize Trump is a malignant narcissist who can’t accept having lost an election and is similarly incapable of admitting his war with Iran is anything but an astonishing success story. 

But Trump couldn’t make problems with Columbia’s democracy sound so much like our own without the help of the spineless Republicans in Congress. 

• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.