This action is not just the GOP folks demonstrating fear of man, cowardice or political expedience. It’s not even merely a sincere hope for unifying the conference.

/1 https://twitter.com/jenniferjjacobs/status/1348032696333774849

It’s an request, if considered, that fits a long historical pattern of the country accommodating the seditious interests and acts of southern actors.

That tendency began with the concessions to slaveholding states in the constitutional convention.

/2

It continued with the country’s abandonment of Reconstruction and it’s turning a blind eye to the south’s racial terror and political sedition in counter-Reconstruction and the rise of the Klan.

/3

It continued still with the “all deliberate speed” language of Brown and the various post Civil Rights retrenchments further slowing progress toward equality.

/4

Whether Trump should be impeached is a separate question from unifying the country. Leaders should simply do what’s right in each case. But the history is clear: Unity is not won by accommodating the feelings and desires of people who act treasonously toward the country.

/5

That kind of accommodation has only allowed those forces to regroup and launch the same attacks against the union at a later date. In the meantime, the law abiding and the truly patriotic suffer setbacks and threats to peace and justice. It should not be brokered any more.

/end