Let's not reward the blatant liars with votes
WASHINGTON >> “First off, folks, let me be very clear tonight. The election in 2020 was rigged and stolen.”
That baldfaced lie was former senator David Perdue's opening line Sunday in a primary debate against the fellow Republican whose job he is trying to take, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.
The shocking thing about this falsehood is that nobody should be particularly shocked. It would have been more surprising if Perdue had told the truth.
The GOP has made clear that it intends to run a “post-truth” campaign in the November elections. No Republican who goes along with this abominable strategy — no Republican who doesn't publicly denounce it — deserves your vote. Not a single one of them.
It is no exaggeration to say that what the onetime Party of Lincoln is doing constitutes a dire threat to the very idea of democracy.
A contest between liberal and conservative philosophies is healthy. An asymmetrical clash between one party grappling with nuanced reality and another party deliberately spewing paranoid fiction is dangerously corrosive to the fabric of the nation.
If the warp of our differences is no longer held together by the weft of an agreed-upon chronicle of events and a bipartisan encyclopedia of facts, there is no basis for meaningful political discourse. We can only speak past, not to, one another.
It must be acknowledged, because it is the simple truth, that this is not a “both-sides-are-to-blame” crisis.
The Democratic Party is engaged in politics as usual, with the customary pull and tug between its progressive and centrist wings. The GOP has gone rogue in a way that is un-American and without modern precedent.
Republicans tolerated Donald Trump's lies for years. But this tendency to excuse mendacity shifted from bad habit to mortal sin with the party's embrace of that “big lie” about the election Trump lost to Joe Biden. Perdue was especially brazen in the way he trumpeted the proven falsehood.
But no less guilty are the many other Republicans who perpetuate it by mumbling about “irregularities” in the 2020 vote — or by remaining silent.
Their complicity in the lie is not excused by the fact that Trump will try his best to end their careers if they dare speak the truth. They know the difference between right and wrong, and they are opting for personal gain over public service. They should be ashamed of themselves.
The stolen-election lie is just the beginning, though. It establishes a post-truth ethos in which other lies become not just acceptable but also routine.
Last week, for example, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) flatly denied a New York Times report that he had told GOP colleagues, in a phone call after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, that he planned to advise Trump to resign. Those who were on that call knew he was lying. None came forward publicly to say so.
When the Times and MSNBC released a tape recording of the Jan. 10, 2021, call — in which McCarthy pledges to tell Trump, “It would be my recommendation you should resign” — the only public GOP criticism of McCarthy came from Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has already broken with the leadership and serves on the House Jan. 6 committee, and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who accused McCarthy of insufficient fealty to Trump. Most mainstream Republican members of Congress said nothing at all.
Democrats, understandably, were less constrained.
“Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Sunday. “This is outrageous. And that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now — that they say one thing to the American public and something else in private.”
Warren did not exaggerate. The whole GOP campaign for the fall elections promises to be built on lies — about critical race theory, about gay and transgender people, about purported attempts to “cancel” conservative voices.
I know from private conversations that there are prominent Republicans who are deeply concerned about what their party is doing — but say nothing publicly. The party's aim is to regain power, and truth is mere collateral damage.
The Democratic Party can be messy, disorganized, clumsy, starry-eyed and overly wonkish, prone to showing up at a political knife fight with a sheaf of briefing books. However, right now, the Democrats are the nation's only hope for getting our democracy back on the rails.
My personal views are obviously on the progressive side, but I believe journalists must stand, above all else, for truth, no matter where on the political spectrum it comes from. The Republican Party no longer acts as if truth matters.
And this state of affairs can't be blamed entirely on Trump. Republican elected officials have a choice and are choosing to lie. Voters must choose to send the liars home.
No Republican who doesn't publicly denounce this abominable strategy of lying deserves your vote. Not a single one of them.