Just Pretending to be Patriotic: The GOP in 2020
The Grand Old Party and the Senate Majority Leader position themselves as great patriots, defenders of “freedom” and “the American Way.” Certainly President Trump has (literally) wrapped his arms around the flag in ways that his followers adore, for Republicans see themselves as much more patriotic than Democrats.
Republicans from the top of the ticket to the “down ballot” candidates warned in 2020 that a Biden victory or a Senate controlled by Democrats would usher in lawlessness, open borders, and socialism. (That somehow sways many voters who only dimly understand what socialism is, with social programs like Medicare and Social Security remaining very popular with large majorities.) The GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said six days after the election that the President should not concede to Biden at this point.
As McConnell sonorously intoned, “President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”
Hmmm. Well, for this “perfectly legal but wrong” column a week after the 2020 election, let’s recognize much of our tradition in Presidential elections is not about law, but about what’s good manners, common civility, and right and wrong. All but a few Republicans have pointedly sided with Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election. To make that posture seem right, McConnell said, “Let’s not have any lectures about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.”
Nonsense, as Jesse Wegman wrote on Nov. 10 in the N.Y. Times: “Hillary Clinton conceded the 2016 election less than 24 hours after polls closed, even though Mr. Trump had barely eked out wins in three decisive swing states and was trailing badly in the popular vote. So did other top Democrats, including, crucially, President Barack Obama, who called Mr. Trump before sunrise to congratulate him and to ‘invite him to come to the White House tomorrow to talk about making sure that there is a successful transition between our presidencies.’”
Thus, McConnell, Trump and the overall Republican response to Biden’s election is not just morally wrong, but a serious threat to the very freedom and “the American Way” that the GOP claims Democrats want to destroy. Despite the likely failure of Trump’s various lawsuits and the eventual vote for Biden in the Electoral College, the G.O.P. has again taken the stance that a Democratic president is somehow illegitimate. This was first done when Bill Clinton won the Presidency with only 43% of the popular vote; Ross Perot siphoned off enough right-leaning votes to hand Clinton a plurality. Republican leader Bob Dole stated flatly that because Clinton did not get a majority of the popular vote that he had no legislative mandate to govern with.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-11-08-op-186-story.html
The ugly irony of #StopTheSteal in 2020 is that there is no evidence that Democrats did any of the tricks that the GOP used in 2004, especially in Ohio, which delivered a decisive and dirty result that put George W. Bush over Democratic candidate John Kerry. To read this account is to see just how brazen the Ohio GOP was in stealing the vote.
https://www.commondreams.org/views06/0601-34.htm
Along with “birtherism” to de-legitimize Obama, and proud obstructionism by McConnell to “make sure that Obama is a one-term President,” the Republican party now looks on Democrats as somehow illegitimate, as though there can be no loyal, patriotic opposition. The GOP has explicitly tried over the past decade to limit the number of people that vote, suppressing votes on the spurious grounds of “voter fraud.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/29/trump-suppress-vote-win-433460
And Trump has said that the more voters there are, the less likely Republicans can win elections.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/30/trump-voting-republicans/
Yet the GOP keeps telling Americans that the Democrats can’t be trusted with the economy, foreign policy, and certainly not our precious freedoms: indeed, Democrats are painted as unpatriotic haters of freedom, and unfit to govern. But as Allen Sumrall writes, “One of the most basic attributes of a liberal democracy is that losers willingly cede power to the winners. Elections are meaningless unless all candidates or parties involved recognize the process as appropriate and legitimate. Yet, for that process to work effectively—for elections and to have any efficacy—those involved must recognize their electoral opponents as legitimate.”
If there were widespread voter fraud, Trump and the GOP’s unwillingness to concede and their determination to context the election in the courts would make sense. But there is no widespread voter fraud, and the same ballots that left the GOP in charge of the same statehouses, holding onto Senate seats, and increasing their numbers in the House are the same ballots that are fraudulent? McConnell embraced and celebrated Republican victories up and down the ballot, but votes for president-elect Biden on the same ballots are not? As my father would say, “Horsepucky.”
What is all this that about? If you believe in Democracy, and in one person, one vote, why repeatedly claim fraud when there is so little of it? The answer, seemingly, is that the GOP simply cannot accept that Democrats have any right to win elections and govern. But our freedoms are only as good as our ability to freely and fairly cast our votes. We are not free if we cannot freely choose those representatives who will set policy for this nation.
The United States is the world’s oldest continuous democracy. Why does it seem like the Republicans no longer embrace it? How can they wrap themselves in the flag when they don’t care if Democracy flourishes here, and actively strangles voter trust and participation?
The survival of American democracy, and the “freedom” that Republicans claim to cherish, depends, above all, on those who lose elections accepting the results and working harder to gain the trust of the American people. Legally, yes, the President has options, and nothing in the laws or the Constitution requires him to concede at this point. But the vast majority of his lawsuits are not founded on evidence of any substance. Common decency and a love of America would end this dangerous charade, and the longer it goes on, the more we should fear that our freedoms are being taken away by the party that is tending toward autocracy and fascism, and away from the cherished values of democracy.