When Reading about Abraham Lincoln, in 2021

“As historian James Oakes writes in his new book, The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution, the Republican Party was once home to a tight union of moral principle and constitutionalism.”

At the close of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, just days before the former president would release a bizarre tirade against him, Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made a bizarre political stand of his own. Having just voted to acquit President Trump for inciting the January 6th insurrection against the Congress as it certified President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, Senator McConnell slammed the former president on the floor of the Senate, deeming President Trump “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.” Yet, Senator McConnell could not bring himself to vote “guilty.” In Senator McConnell’s telling on the floor of the Senate and in a subsequent Wall Street Journal op-ed, the Constitution precluded him from holding the former president accountable via convicting him for the high crime, the deep violation of the public trust, which he had committed on the lead-up to January 6th and on that very day. Senator McConnell intones that impeachment was off the constitutional table since President Trump had left office, though civil and criminal repercussions could be in order.

Senator McConnell claims to have upheld the Constitution. In reality, he hid behind a false apparition of it. As The Dispatch editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg remarked, “McConnell’s theory is that he can have it both ways: simultaneously denounce Trump and provide him cover in the hope of reconciling the divisions in the party that cannot be reconciled.” In the long-term, the GOP cannot be both the party of American conservatism (constitutional and otherwise) and Trumpism. Something will have to give. A choice will have to be made. Senator McConnell and others like him have long thought that they can split the baby, that they can have it both ways. Even the sickening violence of January 6th has not convinced them of how erroneous—and dangerous—this view is.

Slowly but surely, the Republican Party would do well not only to cast off its anti-constitutional, Trump-deranged, cultish elements but also the enabling ranks led by Senator McConnell. If the GOP is to have a positive rather than a corrosive effect on our politics, the future of the party must be forged by political leaders actually wedded to our constitutional order like Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse and Utah Senator Mitt Romney.

Doing so would not just be good for our country and the party; it would square the GOP with its historical inheritance.