Republicans already doubting election results
Don’t say they didn’t warn us. If Donald Trump loses again to Joe Biden in November, the attempt by MAGA Republicans to overturn the result — in essence, to negate the will of the voters — could be even worse than last time.
Trump’s denial of his 2020 defeat has had a deeply corrosive effect on our democracy, with a majority of Republicans still deluded into believing the election was stolen. The damage might be ameliorated if prominent GOP officials, who do know better, at least expressed confidence in the democratic process and pledged to accept the outcome of this year’s vote, no matter who wins.
Surely, that’s not too much to ask of men and women who owe their jobs to the same electoral system that Trump claims is hopelessly corrupt. Right?
Wrong. Witness the pathetic performance by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., on NBC’S “Meet the Press” last week. Host Kristen Welker tried six times to get Scott to say, yes or no, whether he would accept the result of the November election. Scott refused to give an answer. Instead, he served up a heaping bowl of word salad, tossed with a vinaigrette of oil and ambition.
“This is an issue that is not an issue so I’m not going to make it an issue. ... At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump. And I’m excited to get back to low inflation, low unemployment. ... I’m not going to answer your hypothetical question when, in fact, I believe the American people are speaking today on the results of the election.”
Scott’s evasiveness is understandable because he is auditioning to be Trump’s running mate, but it is not excusable. He knows that cases of proven voter fraud — or even formally alleged voter fraud — are vanishingly rare. He knows that recounts and audits consistently show that votes are tallied accurately. He knows that all the conspiracy theories about the 2020 election spun by MAGA fabulists such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell have been proved utterly false and, in some cases, expensively defamatory. Still, with his nonanswers, the senator undermines the legitimacy of U.S. democracy.
Other Republicans hoping to be Trump’s vice presidential choice have been equally shameless. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum was shifty on CNN’S “State of the Union” when asked about the possibility of violence if Trump loses, declining to answer and instead saying he is “looking forward to next January when Vice President (Kamala) Harris certifies the election for Donald Trump.” Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said she would have to “see if this is a legal and valid election” before voting to certify the November result.
And Rep. Byron Donalds, R-fla., went even further — all the way to 2028. He said if he were the sitting vice president at the time of that year’s election, he would decline to certify the results “if you have state officials who are violating the election law in their states.” In other words, he would do what Vice President Mike Pence quite properly refused to do: impose Trump’s will over that of the American people.
All of this could be written off as nothing more than politicians being craven — hardly a new phenomenon — if not for the damage it does. A sobering study released last month by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University found that 62% of Republicans and 22% of independents believe Trump was the “legitimate” winner in 2020. Hardly any Democrats share that view.
Those “deniers” add up to about onethird of voters overall. If that much of the electorate believes a presidential election was stolen — despite multiple recounts and dozens of court cases proving it was not — we have a serious problem.
The Johns Hopkins study concludes: “A political party that has undermined its own voters’ faith in elections is a destabilizing force in a democracy — especially one in which only two parties are realistically competing. The strong viewpoints that deniers hold, and the distinctive identity that they have formed, demonstrate that reviving our democracy will require more than any given result at the ballot box, or providing accurate information to voters on how the election process works. It will require a functioning, responsible conservative party that still believes in democracy.”
No such party now exists in U.S. politics. And for that failing, Trump is only partly responsible.
No one is forcing Republicans such as Scott, Burgum, Stefanik and Donalds to pretend to believe Trump’s lies. No one is forcing them to weaken faith in our elections. Whatever happens in the days and weeks after Election Day, many leading Republicans deserve to share the blame.