The folks who run the stately, yet sedate, white colonial just a block from the Capitol have revealed that they now need to make one little style tweak to get their grand old party headquarters up to date.
They’ve just got to get themselves a new, extra-wide brass name plaque.
Because this was the winter of their grand coming out. Their famous four-story building is now the headquarters of the Republicans-In-Name-Only National Committee.
By an overwhelming voice vote on Feb. 4, the 168 members of the Republican National Committee made that official by censuring two of their most conservative and patriotic fellow Republicans – Reps. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois – for participating in a House investigation of the riotous Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. That was the day a mob supporting defeated President Donald Trump smashed and bashed their way into the Capitol, causing several deaths, and massive injuries to police and others. They were trying to halt the constitutional ritual congressional certification of the Electoral College vote totals.
The Republican National Committee censure resolution called the House investigation a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
Yet a few prominent Republicans have dared to tell it like it is – knowing they would forever incur Trump’s wrath. Most importantly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “We saw it happen. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”
McConnell forced all those who now work in the building that has been a political home to so many of Washington’s most famous Republican patriots to recognize the political and constitutional shame they have brought upon their party. “The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority,” McConnell said. “That’s not the job of the RNC.”
Things have changed in sadly deplorable ways at the RNC. Decades ago, it was one of the first institutions I came to know as a young Newsday Washington correspondent. I scheduled a series of get-acquainted dinners with each of the members of Congress from Long Island, New York, who I’d be covering. Republican Rep. Jack Wydler said he wanted to show me the RNC and then eat at the Republicans’ Capitol Hill Club. I said OK, as long as Newsday paid and he didn’t. What I didn’t say was that I figured this would be about as boring as a night could be.
Not so. On the way out, Wydler led me to a table where two couples were dining and did the intros: “Marty, this is Jerry and Betty Ford and George and Barbara Bush.” They invited us to join them for coffee. Ford was the Republican House leader when I told him that as Newsday’s new guy I’d have to spend Sundays chasing some big LBJ exclusive. So I asked Ford who on his staff he wanted me to phone and bother on Sundays to get a Republican reaction to whatever. Ford reached for my notepad and wrote down a phone number. I thanked him, then saw he’d not told me the aide’s name. “Who should I ask for?” I said. He replied: “Well you better ask for me – it’s my home.”
I spent many Sundays getting to know a future president. Meanwhile, I also set up a lunch with Bush, who soon became the RNC chairman. I got to know another future president, chatting with him in the chairman’s office at the RNC.
Neither ever asked me how I voted, or what I thought about whatever. We developed the sort of friendships that occasionally happen between journalists and the folks we cover. But we always were sure that never got in the way of our jobs.
Early on I put that to a test with Ford. In that LBJ “Great Society” era when Republicans were known as the party of “no,” Ford and his colleagues unveiled what they titled “Constructive Republican Alternative Proposals.” After all the substantive questions were asked, I observed that as a newcomer I knew Washington was a city of acronyms. “Since ‘Constructive Republican Alternative Proposals’ is such a long name,” I asked, “don’t you expect newspapers will just use your program’s initials?”
Eyes widened. Ford pondered, looked at his paper – then guffawed. We were not yet living in Hate City, let alone Hate Nation. Ford and Bush, two patriots who knew every inch of that historic RNC building, would have deplored the un-American censure of two conservative genuine Republicans by the group that now operates as Trump’s RINO-NC.
