GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. – Rep. Peter Meijer cites Gerald 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."
"Sometimes when you're surrounded by cacophony, it helps to have someone sitting there who isn't adding another screaming voice onto the pile," Meijer added.
Six months after the Capitol attack and 53 miles southeast of Grand Rapids, on John Parish's farm in the hamlet of Vermontville, Meijer's problems sat on folding chairs on the Fourth of July. They ate hot dogs, listened to bellicose speakers and espoused their own beliefs that reflected how, even at age 33, Meijer may represent the Republican Party's past more than its future.
The stars of the "Festival of Truth" on Sunday were adding their screaming voices onto the pile, and the 100 or so West Michiganders in the audience were enthusiastically soaking it up. Many of them inhabited an alternative reality in which Trump was reelected, their votes were stolen, the deadly Jan. 6 mob was peaceful, coronavirus vaccines were dangerous and conservatives were oppressed.
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.
The other one, Rep. Fred Upton, 68, took office in an adjacent district west and south of here the year before Meijer was born, 1987. But the two find themselves in similar political straits. Both will face multiple primary challengers next year who accuse them of disloyalty — or worse, treason — for holding Trump responsible for the riot that raged as they met to formalize the election results for the victor, President Joe Biden.
Both men followed their impeachment votes with ones to create a bipartisan commission to examine the Capitol riot, two of 35 House Republicans to do so. Both face a backlash from Republican voters who are enraged by what they claim are an effort by the FBI to hunt down peaceful protesters, a news media silencing conservative voices, a governor who has taken away their livelihoods with overzealous pandemic restrictions and a Democratic secretary of state who has stolen their votes.
Many of their grievances have less to do with Trump himself than the false claims that he promoted, which have taken root with voters who now look past him.
"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 June, 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."
In his Capitol Hill office, Meijer said that in one-on-one discussions with some of his constituents, he could make headway explaining his votes and how dangerous the lies of a stolen presidential election had become for the future of American democracy.
"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."
One of Upton's challengers, state Rep. Steve Carra, has introduced legislation to force a new audit of the election in Michigan more detailed than one already conducted, which not only concluded that there was no fraud but called for those making such false claims to be referred for prosecution.
"When Fred Upton voted to impeach President Trump, that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me," Carra said.
Meijer's district had been held for a decade by Justin Amash, a libertarian-leaning iconoclast who was fiercely critical of Trump and was the first House Republican to call for his impeachment. Amid the backlash, Amash left the Republican Party in 2019 to try to run as a libertarian. Then, when Amash found no quarter, he retired. The question vexing Meijer is not so much his own future, but his party's. That is where he looks wistfully to Ford.
"Was he necessarily the leader on moving the Republican Party in a direction? I can't speak to what his internal conversations were," Meijer said. "But in terms of giving confidence to the country that Republican leadership could be ethical and honest and sincere, I think he hit it out of the park."
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