OPINION | The assault on the Capitol and why the Republican Party must be refounded | CNN

Editor's Note:

Carlos Alberto Montaner is a writer, journalist, and CNN contributor.

His columns are published in dozens of newspapers in Spain, the United States and Latin America.

Montaner is also vice president of the Liberal International.

The opinions expressed here are solely his.

(CNN Spanish) -

Four policemen were the first called to testify before a committee of the United States Congress.

There will be many more.

The process continues.

The four, among dozens of policemen, were on Wednesday, January 6, trying to stop the rebellious mob that was trying to take over the Capitol. They were Aquilino Gonell, Michel Fanone, Daniel Hodges and Harry Dunn. I suspect it was chance that brought them together in the television appointment on July 27, but they are a good representation of the diversity of the country. Their testimonies were moving. They even brought to tears a young Republican congressman from Illinois named Adam Kinzinger.

Democratic leaders are trying to get the country to relive these events, while most Republicans do not want such a thing to happen and want to boycott the process. Kevin McCarthy, today the minority leader in Congress, claimed that he had not seen the statements of these four policemen. The same declared Mitch McConnell, his equivalent in the Senate. If they didn't see and hear them, they should see and hear them. It really seems very important to me that these facts are examined. Why? Because it is not possible to organize the coexistence of a Republic if there are doubts about its legal foundations.

On the events that occurred on Capitol Hill on January 6, there are two important issues that fed the mob: the lie that Donald Trump has sold to his followers that Joe Biden is fraudulently occupying the presidency of the country and that the elections were rigged. None of that is true.

And those who believe it and acted on that belief on January 6 are guilty of total irresponsibility. While the inducer of this monstrous behavior has an obvious criminal responsibility, similar to the one who shouts "fire" in a packed theater, without any proof that this danger exists, or those who spread the absurd theory that the State implants a chip in them. people who receive vaccines against covid 19. Fortunately, more than 60 judicial entities, made up of Republicans and Democrats, every time they have knocked on their doors, they have not found significant evidence of the electoral fraud denounced by Trump.

Of the four testimonies, I was keenly interested in that of the policeman Harry Dunn.

It is about a portly black man who had to endure racial insults in the midst of the tumult, "something that I had never been called while wearing the uniform of the pubic force."

At that time, or shortly after, a supporter of the excesses was walking through the Capitol with a southern flag, that is, "slave owner."

In my opinion, there the change of the Republican Party is revealed, 156 years after having won a terrible Civil War, and 153 years after having granted freedom and the vote to slaves (although in practice the problems to exercise their right continued into the 20th century), has allowed the Democrats, the party that was defeated, to seize the ideology of Abraham Lincoln and take on the defense of black people and other minorities.

Lincoln helped found the Republican Party after the collapse of the Whigs. It is necessary to refound it to be able to reach the XXII century of our era with a good expression of bipartisanship. We need it.