The Downward Spiral of the GOP Continues
In 2000, The conservative majority in the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 to stop the Florida recount, handing George Bush a 271 electoral vote victory, despite losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes.
In 2010, Mitch McConnell famously said “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
In 2016, Donald Trump won 304 electoral votes and became president-elect, despite losing the popular vote by 2,868,686 votes. There was one recount in Michigan that lasted for about 2 days before a judge shut it down.
In October 2019, in the midst of impeachment proceedings, Trump tweeted that the impeachment was “a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the…People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”
Now, in 2020, Republicans are responding to a Biden win (306 EVs, 7+ million popular vote margin) with the most absurd circus yet.
Sen. Josh Hawley and his coalition in the House and Senate — a younger, more extremist wing of the party — are seeking at the 11th hour to invalidate millions of votes under the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
It won’t work, of course, because Democrats control the House (thank you for voting) and because even Mitch McConnell, Pat Toomey, and others see this as a doomed but dramatic charade. But that’s not the point. The leaders of this last-ditch effort to invalidate the election know that they don’t need to win, they just need to put on a show for their most ardent, conspiracy-crazed supporters. They will do that, having learned from Trump himself, and it will have consequences.
And so the pattern continues: Republicans will continue to push for more and more radical solutions when their grip on power is threatened. After calling the [constitutionally provided] process of impeachment a coup, they are now searching for any oxygen to fuel a coup of their own — even after being defeated in court on nearly 60 separate occasions.
It’s bad, and it can only get worse as long as the Republicans insist on catering to an aging minority of Americans. Instead of changing tack or growing their coalition, they are choosing to scorch the Earth of our democracy, leaving nothing behind for their democratic colleagues. It follows from the decisions they have made since 2010 under McConnell (if not even earlier under leaders like Gingrich or Nixon), and I can’t help but wonder what will come next.
Ultimately, there is no way for a minority to win, rule, and control a democracy that does not include disenfranchisement, intimidation, or violence. The GOP will have to decide how much farther they want to go before they draw the line (if they even have control of their furious, aggrieved base anymore). All the rest of us can do for now is organize, educate, and vote against them.
