Republicans created an anti-democratic mob
Opinion by
Columnist
November 23, 2020 at 9:30 a.m. CST
CNN’s
Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” summed up the state
of the Republican Party on Sunday: “State election officials and judges
throughout the country are serving as protectors of our democracy at a time
when, frankly, Republican leaders in Washington, D.C., are failing miserably at
the job, as are administration officials who have proven willing to degrade
themselves, to serve the president’s brittle spirit instead of the Constitution
and the American people.”
If
Republicans do not want to take advice from him, perhaps they will listen to
some of their own members. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) pulled no punches:
TAPPER:
Do you still have confidence that President Trump will eventually do the right
thing?
HOGAN:
Well, I have confidence that, on January 20, the president-elect is going to be
sworn in, but I’m not sure I could say that I’m confident that the president’s
going to do the right thing.
Look, I
thought the pressuring of the legislators to try to somehow change the outcome
with electors was completely outrageous. And, quite frankly, I mean, we used to
go supervise elections around the world, and we were — we were the most
respected country with respect to elections. And now we’re beginning to look
like we’re a banana republic.
It's
time for them to stop the nonsense. It just gets more bizarre every single day.
And, frankly, I'm embarrassed that more people in the party aren't speaking up.
TAPPER:
Well, let's talk about that.
I mean,
I wish I could say otherwise, but you're in the vast minority in the Republican
Party in, A, acknowledging that Joe Biden is the president-elect and will be
sworn in on January 20, and, B, calling on President Trump to concede.
Why do
you think so few of your colleagues are willing to demonstrate even basic
integrity and honesty here?
HOGAN:
Well, I just don’t think there are a lot of profiles in courage, frankly, Jake.
I mean, you — we all know how vindictive the president can be, how powerful his
Twitter account is, and how he can really pressure Republicans and go after
them.
Very few of us are
willing to stand up. But there are more and more, I mean, a number of my
gubernatorial colleagues, a number of senators, quite a few House members. And
I think that’s slowly growing every day. And I think the others are quietly
talking and telling the president their advice about what he should do. He’s
just not following any of the advice.
After
watching a clip of his father, Rep. Lawrence Hogan (R-Md.), speak out against
President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate scandal, Hogan conceded that
only a few Republicans such as Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) are “standing up and
speaking out pretty strongly. But there’s an awful lot of them that are not.”
He added that “history will judge everybody, just as they did during
Watergate.”
Former
national security adviser John Bolton added his voice to the small chorus of
Republicans declaring we are past the point of any reasonable legal challenges.
He also indicted weak-kneed Republicans:
Biden
will be sworn in. I think the real question now is how much damage Trump can do
before that happens.
I mean,
right now, I think Trump is throwing rocks through windows. I think he's the
political equivalent of a street rioter. I think he's given up on the legal
issues. This is not a matter of litigation and law. He's lost, I think, all but
two out of 34 cases that have been brought around the country.
I think
what he’s trying to do now is sow enough confusion that he can break through
what’s called the safe harbor provision in the electoral college process. I
think he’s playing for as much time as he can, hoping that something will
happen.
But I think this is now —
this is not a legal exercise anymore. As we saw on Friday, when the Michigan
legislators were called to the Oval Office, this is now an exercise of raw
political power.
He laid
into senior Republicans who need “to join those who have begun to come out and
say Trump’s behavior is inexcusable." The Republican Party, he said, is
“not going to be saved by hiding in a spider hole,” reminding his fellow party
members that Trump’s legal theories are a joke. (“He doesn’t have any evidence.
He doesn’t have any legal theories.”) And he added a noteworthy caution: “The
longer Trump rambles through our electoral system causing damage without Republican
opposition, the more the Democrats are going to say that it is a Republican
Party characteristic, and that you can’t trust them with the instruments of
government. … But until people hear that, I think they will continue to be
deterred from coming back to the Republican Party.”
I fear
Bolton is naive to think Republicans can hang on to Trump voters by explaining
to them that “you can lose an election fair and square, even though it hurts.”
But they cannot win national elections — or state elections outside deep-red
states — by refusing to adhere to democratic principles and accept reality. If
the majority of Republican voters, who do not form an electoral majority but
are critical for Republicans’ victories, really do not believe in democracy and
cannot be convinced of blatantly obvious facts, Republican politicians will
remain trapped in Trump’s parallel political universe. The elected Republicans
who have allowed Trump’s authoritarian tactics (compulsive lying, attack on the
truth, racism, fearmongering) to become the norm in their party will have no
one to blame but themselves.
Republicans
who failed to take on Trump not only created a monster, but also misled their
own base, rendering them unable and unwilling to accept the results of an election.
These politicians and right-wing media personalities are as responsible as
Trump for the MAGA masses who believe they are persecuted, regard pressure on
election officials as fair game, buy into crackpot conspiracy theories and no
longer accept the premise of democracy.
The
Republican lawmakers who tell their base that Democrats want to take away
Thanksgiving or hate Christians reinforce the white grievance mentality that
Trump whipped up. The Republican senators and House members who mouthed Russian
propaganda and simply lied to the public about the evidence of Trump’s
impeachable conduct made their own voters more ignorant and antagonistic toward
factual evidence.
The
lawmakers who scream that Facebook (where the top-performing posts often come from
conservative pundits) is out to get Republicans or that climate change is a
hoax have turned their base into an unhinged mob for whom facts are irrelevant.
The
problem is not merely Trump; nor is it the cowardly elected Republicans who
refuse to stand up to his treacherous attempt to steal an election. The
disturbing and more difficult conundrum is that they’ve turned tens of millions
of voters into gullible consumers of Trumpian nonsense. Even if elected
Republicans wanted to speak truth to the MAGA crowd, I am not certain many will
listen.
