Republican revolt is brewing on fighting election
Some Trump supporters join chorus of political, military, corporate leaders calling to uphold vote
WASHINGTON — Republican divisions deepened Monday over an insurgency in the party’s ranks seeking to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, as lawmakers weighed their fear of alienating President Donald Trump and his supporters against the consequences of a precedent-setting vote to reject a democratic election.
With a Wednesday vote looming on whether to certify the election results, the last-ditch bid to deny Biden the presidency has unleashed open warfare among Republicans, leaving them scrambling to stake out a defensible stance on a test that carried heavy repercussions for their careers and their party.
On Monday, as Trump ratcheted up his demands for Republicans to try to block Biden’s election, elder statesmen of the party and some rank-and-file lawmakers rushed to provide political cover for those disinclined to go along.
In the House, seven Republicans, some of whom are part of the conservative Freedom Caucus that normally aligns with Trump, released a statement arguing at length against the effort.
“The text of the Constitution is clear,” the lawmakers, led by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, wrote. “States select electors. Congress does not. Accordingly, our path forward is also clear. We must respect the states’ authority here.”
Chief executives and other leaders
from many of America’s largest businesses also weighed in, urging Congress to certify the electoral vote.
“Attempts to thwart or delay this process run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy,” they said in a statement signed by 170 people, including Laurence D. Fink of BlackRock, Logan Green and John Zimmer of Lyft, Brad Smith of Microsoft, Albert Bourla of Pfizer and James Zelter of Apollo Global Management.
And John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator and paragon of the party establishment, denounced the electoral challenge, calling it part of a “populist strategy to drive America even farther apart by promoting conspiracy theories and stoking grievances.”
“Lending credence to Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen is a highly destructive attack on our constitutional government,” Danforth, a mentor to Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, the instigator of the effort in the Senate, said in a statement. “It is the opposite of conservative; it is radical.”
Those rebukes followed a message from former defense secretaries warning Trump against enlisting the military to keep him in office.
Yet Trump’s efforts won a high-profile convert Monday, when Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia announced just hours before Trump was to appear at a rally on her behalf that she, too, would vote against certifying the election results.
Complicating the calculation for fretful Republicans were fresh revelations about Trump’s own efforts to subvert the election results by pressuring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to overturn Biden’s win. Proponents of the electoral challenge, who have sought to portray their position as principled and apolitical, conceded Monday that leaked audio of the call has made their task more difficult.
The gambit is all but guaranteed to prolong what is typically a brief and routine recap of each state’s electoral votes, set to begin at 1 p.m. Wednesday, prompting a bitter, hourslong debate that will culminate in a vote — or perhaps several — on whether to certify Biden’s election. Democratic leaders, on a private caucus call Monday, counseled lawmakers to avoid focusing on Trump during the discussion and instead highlight the lack of evidence of fraud.
“I don’t think we need to go all night,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader. “We have members from each state who are ready to discuss … the status of their state, what happened and what the courts said.”
Still, more Republicans announced Monday that they would back the objections to certifying the results. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, a rising star in the party who led Republican efforts to recruit women to Congress over the past two years, said she owed it to voters who believe the election was rigged to support the challenge.
“To the tens of thousands of constituents and patriots across the country who have reached out to me in the past few weeks — please know that I hear you,” Stefanik said in a statement.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, and his deputies have made clear to colleagues that they strongly oppose the effort to reverse the election results, but Hawley has said he will force a vote and at least 12 other Republican senators plan to back him.
The party fissures have extended to the House, where the top Republican, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, has not revealed how he plans to vote Wednesday but has said he is supportive of those who want to have a debate, while Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, has argued vociferously against the move.
That has created something of a freefor-all in the House. Lawmakers have been left to weigh on their own whether to vote to protect the sanctity of the election and risk incurring the wrath of their constituents, or move to overturn the results in a doomed loyalty test that could badly damage their party.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said in an interview that he and the other conservatives who came out Monday against the challenge were hoping to put forward a “constitutionally grounded” argument from a “pro-Trump perspective” that their colleagues could adopt.
“I think there are a lot of people of the same mind as us, but they were looking for some kind of grounding or maybe some kind of cover,” Massie said. “I feel like there are people getting sucked into the other vortex as the hours go by.”