The Republican National Committee’s dismissal of Jan. 6 as “normal political discourse” shows the depth to which the party has fallen during the Trump era, said a one-time member of the House GOP leadership, former Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma.
Watts, from 1995-03, represented a House district based in southern Oklahoma City, stretching down to the Texas state line. Watts became the most prominent black Republican of his era and often was a prominent public GOP face in political and policy fights with President Bill Clinton and congressional Democrats.
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A former star quarterback at the University of Oklahoma, Watts was elected to the House in the historic Republican Revolution class of 1994, which ushered in the first GOP majority in 40 years. Watts, in an interview with the podcast Pro Politics with Zac McCrary, said he always saw himself as a Jack Kemp-style Republican, focused on economic growth and opportunity for all people.
But Donald Trump’s presidency has degraded Republicans’ moral authority, Watts said.
“I just think it tells you how far from where we are when the Republican Party chairwoman says that Jan. 6 was ‘normal political discourse,’” Watts said on the podcast. “If there’s any Republican or any Democrat or any independent who believes that, then God help us.”
Watts was referring to a February RNC resolution that censured Republican Reps. Liz Cheney (WY) and Adam Kinzinger (IL) for participating in the House select committee investigating Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. The resolution condemned the pair for the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” That language drew blistering criticism by Democrats and some Republicans for seeming to justify political violence on Jan. 6.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote in a subsequent Townhall op-ed that “violence is not legitimate political discourse” but that she remained firm on censoring Cheney and Kinzinger.
Watts’s condemnation of the national GOP apparatus is part of a broader, searing critique of the Trump-era party. Republicans have lost their way in ignoring Trump’s boorish and potentially illegal behavior due to political expediency, he said.
“I still believe character matters. I think character will trump strategy every time,” Watts said.
The comments are notable from a one-time congressional party leader, who in 1997 delivered the party’s rebuttal to Clinton’s State of the Union speech — and in 2000 was frequently mentioned as a possible running mate for the Republican presidential standard-bearer, Texas Gov. George W. Bush. (The role went instead to Rep. Liz Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, a former White House chief of staff, Wyoming congressman, and defense secretary who became vice president under President George W. Bush.)
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Watts first became a national figure as a star quarterback for the University of Oklahoma. Watts became starting quarterback of the Sooners in 1979 and led them to consecutive Orange Bowl victories. After graduating from college, Watts played for five years in the Canadian Football League. Five years later, he returned to Oklahoma as a youth minister and later entered politics.
In the House, Watts was mostly a Republican loyalist. But in the podcast interview, he recalled clashing with party leaders in their attempts to end affirmative action. Still, Watts, in late 1998, would go on to be elected Republican Conference chairman by his GOP colleagues, deposing the incumbent, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, a future House speaker.
