A
GOP senator reveals just how deranged many in his party have become
Opinion by
Columnist
Dec. 9, 2020 at 9:38 a.m. CST
Sen. Patrick J.
Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, has done something truly extraordinary. He
has now stated in unequivocal
terms that it’s unacceptable for his fellow Republicans to try to subvert the
will of American voters to keep President Trump in power illegitimately.
Why have so few other
Republicans proved willing to take this simple step?
Toomey’s declaration
contrasts sharply with a new development in the Georgia runoffs. GOP Sens.
Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue just announced their support
for a deranged lawsuit filed by Texas that seeks to overturn popular vote
outcomes in four battleground states that Trump lost.
Those Georgia moves
capture a broader state of affairs: It appears that untold numbers of elected
Republicans are trying to inspire in GOP voters a state of what you might call
permanent warfare against our democratic institutions and the opposition’s
voters alike.
This war footing
doesn’t permit acknowledgment of the opposition’s claims to legitimate
political representation. It treats efforts at the wholesale subversion of
unwanted electoral outcomes as an acceptable tool of political competition.
This is what Toomey’s
new declaration throws into sharp relief.
“It’s completely
unacceptable,” Toomey told the Philadelphia Inquirer, referring to
Trump’s efforts to get numerous GOP-controlled state legislatures to appoint
pro-Trump electors to the electoral college, in defiance of the state’s popular
vote outcome.
“The president should
give up trying to get legislatures to overturn the results of the elections in
their respective states,” Toomey continued.
Compounding the
heresy on display here, Toomey even dared to reveal that he had personally
congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory, in a conversation
Toomey described as “pleasant.”
Some Republicans
support Trump’s efforts
Our discourse on all
this is deeply confused. News organizations sometimes emphasize that few
elected Republicans have affirmatively endorsed Trump’s
efforts to get state legislatures to overturn popular vote outcomes. This
creates the impression that they are quietly tolerating a Trumpian tantrum that
they hope will pass, as if the problem here is their mere spinelessness.
But the more important
point — and this is almost never conveyed with clarity — is this. While it’s
good that some state-level Republicans have rebuffed these efforts, a great
many other elected Republicans have refrained from declaring them wholly
intolerable, which would demonstrate that they must be unequivocally
condemned as existentially destructive to democracy.
By doing exactly
this, Toomey has exposed this deficit.
It’s also rarely
conveyed with clarity that some Republican senators actually do tacitly support
efforts to overturn the election results. This includes Loeffler and Perdue.
Loeffler has suggested that by trying
to get rogue electors appointed, Trump is merely exercising his “right” to take
“legal recourse,” which is nonsense, because that tactic lies outside what the law allows.
A demented lawsuit
What’s more, Loeffler
and Perdue have now endorsed this new Texas lawsuit. It literally asks
the Supreme Court to step in and invalidate Biden’s electors in Georgia,
Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, on the fictitious grounds that the voting
was administered fraudulently in them — echoing claims that numerous courts
have shot down already.
This could clear the
way for GOP state legislatures in all four states to appoint Trump electors,
overturning the results, as Trump himself has repeatedly demanded.
This is insane. As
University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck points out, the suit seeks to
exploit the fact that the Supreme Court does have jurisdiction to hear disputes
between states, but it does not automatically hear such complaints, and in this
case, it won’t. The high court already declined to hear a
somewhat less crazy lawsuit seeking to overturn results in Pennsylvania.
But the fact that
this is a stunt doesn’t make it less disgusting that Loeffler and Perdue have
endorsed it. Their statement declares that
they “fully support” this lawsuit on the grounds that Trump has “every right”
to exercise his “legal recourse.”
Again, here they are
declaring this effort to subvert the will of the voters to be a legitimate
tactic. Since one of the states is Georgia, this is in effect a declaration of
war on their own state’s electorate.
“The central argument
here is that we should let the election be decided by unelected judges and
partisan state legislators, rather than the 150 million Americans who cast
legitimate ballots,” Vladeck told me. “That would be the end of democracy as we
know it.”
The future of the
Trumpified GOP
We hear a lot of
pious talk about the need to restore solidarity and national unity these days.
But as Will Wilkinson points out, such calls should
be seen in the context of ongoing efforts to overturn the election: They ring
particularly hollow when many major figures on the right are essentially
demanding the majority’s “abject submission to the minority’s will.”
Indeed, as Laura Field demonstrates, if Trump can keep
exerting influence over the GOP, one can envision him — and the Republicans
carrying his mantle — seeking to maintain among supporters a kind of permanent
state of warfare against the legitimacy of our institutions and of the
opposition. It will be rooted in retributive rage against our system and its
voters for rendering its verdict against Trump.
Philosopher John Dewey wrote that democracy
is sustained by “faith” in the fundamental worth of other human beings, faith
that is demonstrated in all sorts of routine ways. This faith is rooted in a
“generous belief” in the “possibilities” of others, in their “capacity” for
“intelligent judgment and action.”
What we’re seeing now
in this ongoing support for election subversion is at bottom a form of very
profound contempt for those possibilities — a very profound contempt for other
human beings; for fellow Americans.
Toomey has hinted at
another way. But far too few elected Republicans seem interested in following
it.
