‘Serious warning signs’
Republicans rush to reassure voters as Trump again threatens not to honour election result
United States President Donald Trump declined for a second straight day yesterday to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election, repeating baseless assertions that the voting would be a “big scam”, even as leading Republicans scrambled to assure the public that their party would respect the Constitution.
“We want to make sure that the election is honest, and I’m not sure that it can be,” Trump told reporters yesterday before leaving the White House for North Carolina.
The President doubled down on his stance just hours after prominent Republicans made it clear that they were committed to the orderly transfer of power, without directly rebuking him. “The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, wrote on Twitter yesterday.
“There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792.”
Democrats were far less restrained, comparing Trump’s comments to those of an authoritarian leader and warning Americans to take his stance seriously.
“You are not in North Korea; you are not in Turkey; you are not in Russia, President, and by the way, you are not in Saudi Arabia,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “You are in the United States of America. It is a democracy, so why don’t you just try for a moment to honour your oath of office to the Constitution of the United States?”
Chris Edelson, an American University professor who has studied the expansion of presidential power during national emergencies, said Trump’s comments represented a unique threat to a central pillar of democracy. “It’s impossible to underscore how absolutely extraordinary this situation is — there are really no precedents in our country,” he said. “This is a President who has threatened to jail his
political opponents. Now he is suggesting he would not respect the results of an election. These are serious warning signs.”
Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian, said, “This may be the most damaging thing he has ever done to American democracy.”
Over the past four years, establishment Republicans have tried to adjust to Trump’s disruptions, either ignoring his comments or dismissing them as a temporary news-cycle diversion rather than a threat to the democratic process.
Yesterday they appeared to be trying to reassure the public about the electoral system while withholding criticism of Trump, a balancing act that shows their political codependence — one that has led GOP lawmakers, with few exceptions, to faithfully execute his wishes.
Other Republicans followed McConnell yesterday and issued
statements conveying an implicit criticism of the President’s stance. Trump’s comments follow a series of battleground state polls that show him trailing former VicePresident Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger. The President’s standing has not recovered since the coronavirus pandemic began, despite his repeated efforts to focus voters’ attention on other issues, from the economy to social unrest to the new Supreme Court vacancy.
Trump initially sparked alarm on Thursday when, asked about a peaceful transition, he said, “we’re going to have to see what happens” — remarks that intensified the growing partisan controversy over the legitimacy of the elections. As he has many times before, he questioned the integrity of the voting system, repeating that scepticism yesterday, “We have to be very careful with the ballots . . . you know, that’s a whole big scam.”
There is no evidence that mailing ballots to voters increases fraud in the voting process, though there have been scattered instances of the Postal Service’s failing to deliver ballots among other mail that did not reach its destination.
At the Capitol yesterday, Republican
senators and members of the House could not avoid questions from reporters about the president’s sentiment, but party members elsewhere exhibited little appetite for engaging in a discussion.
Just four of the 168 Republican National Committee members responded to emailed questions about the remarks, and only one of the 26 Republican governors — Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas — agreed to address the issue.
“Our common commitment to democracy and the rule of law,” he wrote, “is not dependent upon the actions of any one individual. ”
Republican congressional aides scrambled to respond to Trump’s remarks on Thursday, settling on an informal strategy that affirmed broad constitutional principles and trod lightly around Trump, the most powerful and popular member of their party. They also tried to throw
the question back at Democrats by seizing on Hillary Clinton’s recent remark that Democrats “should not concede the election” until all legal options had been exhausted.
Senator Susan Collins, a moderate facing the most challenging reelection fight of her career — in a state that is becoming more favourable to Democrats — was the rare Republican to refer directly to Trump in questioning his actions.
“I don’t know what his thinking was, but we have always had a peaceful transition between Administrations,” Collins said. “The peaceful transfer of power is a fundamental tenet of our democracy, and I am confident that we will see it occur once again.”
Democrats, seemingly powerless to stop the court nomination, accused Republicans of enabling Trump in the interest of short-term political gain.
Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said his Republican colleagues had an obligation to denounce any suggestion Trump would not participate in a peaceful transfer of power.
On Thursday, Trump merged the two story lines involving the court and the legitimacy of the election.
He said he expected voting disputes to be decided by the Supreme Court and urged a swift confirmation for a successor to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Two leading Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have echoed his call for a swift action, citing the court’s potential role in deciding the election outcome.
Former Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who has been helping Vice-President Mike Pence prepare for the election debates, struck a defiant note, writing on Twitter: “Smart candidates never concede anything before an election. They focus on what it takes to win.”
Senator Rick Scott of Florida said he had introduced a law requiring every state to count and report its final results “within 24 hours after polls close on Election Day”.
The federal Government has no role in overseeing elections; they are conducted and certified by local officials, who abide by a variety of rules about how and when ballots must be returned in order to be counted in a presidential election.
Still, the debate exposed a divide in the party that the flurry of GOP statements — and attacks on Democrats — could not obscure, and Trump’s comments caused deep uneasiness among some stalwarts of the besieged Republicans.
“This isn’t the typical Trump outrage that comes and goes,” said Brendon Buck, a former top adviser to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who stepped down in 2019.
“Senators are stating their principle here because it’s obvious to everyone that he is, in fact, planning to dispute the results if he loses, no matter how lopsided. Calling him names isn’t going to stop him, but they are trying to save themselves some trouble later by making clear they’re not going to flirt with crazy conspiracies that make a mockery of our democracy.”
This is a President who has threatened to jail his political opponents. Now he is suggesting he would not respect the results of an election. These are serious warning signs. Professor Chris Edelson American University