Trump’s
Republicans have gone around the bend
Opinion by
Columnist
Dec. 9, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. CST
President Trump’s
legal team, cheered on by grossly irresponsible Republican officeholders and
activists, vowed to fight on to the bitter end on Tuesday. That had extra
significance because Tuesday was “safe harbor day,” after which any slate of electors
certified by states must be considered valid by Congress and the courts,
according to federal law. But Trump’s lawyers, who have more
than 50 cases for
absolute want of evidence, insist they will press on beyond the safe harbor
date. Should we expect them to cease and desist even after the electors meet on
Dec. 14 to cast their votes? Please.
Trump continues to
put pressure on state officials, most recently the Republican House leader in Pennsylvania, to overturn the
will of voters. (He previously reached out to the Wayne County, Mich.,
canvassing board and Republican leaders in the Michigan state legislature.)
This is a coup attempt, plain and simple — however far-fetched. A lonely
Republican, Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who already announced he will not run
for reelection, denounced such efforts. “It’s completely unacceptable and it’s
not going to work and the president should give up trying to get legislatures
to overturn the results of the elections in their respective states,” Toomey
said.
Most Republicans
remain mute, but at least one was champing at the bit to join in
Trump’s preposterous abuse of the legal system. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)
“volunteered” to argue before the Supreme Court on behalf of Rep. Mike Kelly
(R-Pa.) to throw out mail-in ballots. Kimberly Wehle at the Bulwark, a Never
Trumper site, excoriated the Texan:
“You got that right.
Cruz — the strict constructionist — is eager to stand before the U.S. Supreme
Court to argue that the Pennsylvania legislature had no power to allow
universal mail-in voting, but does have the power to throw out
every single vote cast in Pennsylvania and impose its own political will on the
citizens of Pennsylvania, who chose Joe Biden for president by a nearly
82,000-vote margin over
Donald Trump.”
Thank goodness, the
Supreme Court rejected the appeal on Tuesday with no dissents.
Trump has no
incentive to stop his efforts to overturn a valid election. To the contrary,
with blowhards like Cruz available to provide a patina of respectability, and
nearly all elected Republicans refusing to recognize the election results, he
has every reason to hit up his fans for more donations and to continue
insisting he is the rightful winner. When three Republican members of the
inauguration committee refuse to recognize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and
when the Arizona Republican Party retweets a right-wing extremist’s declaration
that he is “willing to give up my life for this fight,“ we see that far
from being isolated, Trump is right at home in today’s deranged Republican
Party.
The willingness to
overturn the most sacred element in our democracy, a free and fair election, to
engender favor with a losing president defines the pathetic state of the GOP.
The actions from
Republicans indicate that they stand for nothing but keeping power at all
costs. They promote cynicism, inspire armed protesters (as we saw in Michigan), lend
legitimacy to those threatening state officials (in Georgia, for instance) and
set a new standard for every losing president: Defy the will of voters, abuse
the courts and undercut a fundamental tenet of democracy.
My ongoing plea to
level the Republican Party so that an authentic, pro-democracy party can emerge
in its place has unfortunately been entirely vindicated. It is not only Trump
who must leave office but all those aiding and abetting his unlawful attempts
to retain power.
