WN: All so tragic!
But for some comic relief:
excerpts:
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Rep. Peter Meijer cites Gerald R. Ford as his inspiration these days, not because the former president held his House seat for 24 years or because his name is all over this city — from its airport to its freeway to its arena — but because in Ford, the freshman congressman sees virtues lost to his political party.
Ford took control after a president resigned rather than be impeached for abusing his power in an attempt to manipulate the outcome of an election.
“It was a period of turmoil,” said Meijer, who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Ford’s greatest asset, he added, was “offering — this word is becoming too loaded of late — a sense of morals, moral leadership, a sense of value and centering decency and humility.”
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“God is forgiving, and — I don’t know — we’re forgiving people,” Geri Nichols, 79, of nearby Hastings, said as she spoke of her disappointment in Meijer. “But he did wrong. He didn’t support our president like he should have.”
Under an unseasonably warm sun, her boyfriend, Gary Munson, 80, shook his head, agreeing: “He doesn’t appear to be what he says he is.”
For all its political eccentricities, Michigan is not unique. Dozens of congressional candidates planning challenges next year are promoting the false claims of election fraud pressed by Trump. But western Michigan does have one distinction: It is home to 20% of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump — that is, two of 10.
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“People think people who support Trump are like ‘Trump is our God,’ ” said Audra Johnson, one of Meijer’s Republican challengers, explaining why she refuses to get inoculated against the coronavirus with a vaccine the Trump administration helped create. “No, he’s not.”
“People are terrified,” Johnson added over grilled cheese and tomato soup at Crow’s Nest Restaurant in Kalamazoo. She added, “We’re heading toward a civil war, if we’re not already in a cold civil war.”
In March, a Republican-led state Senate inquiry into Michigan’s 2020 vote count affirmed Biden’s Michigan victory by more than 154,000 votes, nearly 3 percentage points, and found “no evidence” of “either significant acts of fraud” or “an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity.”
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“The challenge is if you believe that Nov. 3 was a landslide victory for Donald Trump that was stolen, and Jan. 6 was the day to stop that steal,” he said. “I can’t come to an understanding with somebody when we’re dealing with completely separate sets of facts and realities.”
At a recent event, he said, a woman informed Meijer that he would shortly be arrested for treason and hauled before a military tribunal, presumably to be shot.
“People are willing to kill and die over these alternative realities,” he said.
Yet at least one of his primary challengers is amplifying that alternative reality. Johnson, a pro-Trump activist, splashed onto the scene in 2019 as the “MAGA bride,” when she appeared at her wedding reception over the July 4 weekend in a Make America Great Again dress.
She helped organize armed protests of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions at the state Capitol in Lansing and traveled with a convoy of buses to Washington for Trump’s Jan. 6 protest against election certification.
While she said she did not enter the Capitol that day, she said she knew people who knew people who did — peacefully, she insists.
“Honestly, they’re terrified that the FBI is going to come knock on their door,” Johnson said.
Please click on: Pro-Impeachment Republicans Face Voters’ Wrath
