By this point it is clear that the top brass of the Republican Party is simply going through the motions of participatory democracy. Like a fraternity or sorority, they insist they will decide who gets to participate.
The narrative that Republicans are cowards in fear of Trump and his supporters is nonsense, says Greg Sargent, citing the endless recount in Maricopa County, Ariz. “It is a deliberate action plainly undertaken to manufacture fake evidence for the affirmative purpose of further undermining faith in our electoral system going forward.” Forward? This effort goes back as far as 1964’s Operation Eagle Eye. The voter fraud squad has worked for decades to convince Republicans election results cannot be trusted if Democrats win. The fraud is itself a fraud.
Sargent writes about the appearance on “Fox News Sunday” of Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), the chair of the Republican Study Committee. Banks both admits Joe Biden won in 2020 fair and square and that he still had “serious concerns” about the validity of the eletion.
Sargent writes:
This is not the act of a “coward” who “fears Trump,” and would vouch for the integrity of the election if only he could do so without consequences.
Rather, it is the act of someone who is fully devoted to the project of continuing to undermine confidence in our elections going forward.
This is for purely instrumental purposes. Republicans are employing their own invented doubts about 2020 to justify intensified voter suppression everywhere. Banks neatly crystallized the point on Fox, saying those doubts required more voting restrictions — after reinforcing them himself.
Indeed, with all this, Republicans may be in the process of creating a kind of permanent justification for maximal efforts to invalidate future election outcomes by whatever means are within reach.
As I said, a whole lotta pretext goin’ on.
Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg adds two other points. Republicans are not hostages to Trump and the threat of primaries: “What should really be scary for Republicans, however, is that Trump could turn against the party in general elections, where he wouldn’t need to convince very many voters to stay home to deal a devastating blow to the party.”
Then, Republicans are now a real threat to the republic’s continued existence. Many now refuse to support the rule of law:
What we know is that when Trump attempted to subvert the election, a number of Republicans in key positions refused to go along. We know that, for the most part, those individuals won’t be able to stop a similar effort in 2024, and that the party has sent clear signals that standing up for the constitution and the rule of law was unacceptable.
It matters to few how clownish this effort seems if it accomplishes the goal of leaving Republicans in control, even of something that was once a democratic republic and is no longer. Better to reign in Hell.