The big problem with the silence of the Republicans while Trump questions the result of the elections

Republicans in Congress are engaged in a risky but calculated bet that once President Donald Trump has exhausted his legal challenges to the election, he will face defeat to President-elect Joe Biden.

But the opposite happens.

As one Trump court case after another falls by the wayside, Trump is redoubling his efforts to disrupt the election result. Instead of accepting the reality of the vote, the president is using the weight of his office to try to crush him.

On Friday, he summoned Michigan state legislators to the White House after personally contacting Republican officials before next week’s deadline to certify the election results. Others from Pennsylvania can also be invited.

Republicans are waiting while everything unfolds. What started as a Republican strategy to give the president the time and space he needed to process his defeat is now turning into an unprecedented challenge to the election result like nothing since the Civil War.

“It’s gotten to the point where the Republican Party has let Trump’s pout go on too long,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Rice University in Texas.

With their silence, Republican lawmakers are taking a deeper step with the president they have been trying to appease for four years.

Some have spoken. But primarily Republicans are allowing Trump as he launches a baseless attack on the election that threatens to erode civic confidence and impede Biden’s transition to the White House. It could define careers for years to come.

“He’s making the future stars of the Republican Party look small and small,” Brinkley said. “All of these senators will bear a dark mark on their legacy for coddling Trump after his defeat.”

Republicans started with a simple premise: If Trump was concerned about fraudulent voting, as he widely claimed, go to court and make the case.

It was a way of buying time, giving Trump the opportunity to present evidence and perhaps convince some of his most ardent supporters of the result. Biden has now won 80 million votes to Trump’s 74 million.

But in state after state, from Arizona to Georgia, Trump’s cases are failing. Trump forced a count on Friday in two Wisconsin counties. More legal action is expected there and cases are pending elsewhere. Nowhere has there been evidence of widespread electoral fraud on a scale that could alter the outcome.

Republican lawmakers will soon be forced into a moment of truth with key deadlines.

States are expected to certify election results by Dec. 6, and Republican lawmakers have been regarding the Electoral College deadline of Dec. 14 as their own exit from Trump’s presidency.

That’s when Republican lawmakers think they can begin to say publicly what many of them already suggest privately: that Biden did, in fact, win the election.

But there is no guarantee that your bet will work. Rather than slide toward that result, Trump is digging, moving beyond the Republican argument that it’s about counting legal votes and stopping illegal ones to try more broadly to reverse the results.

Trump has spoken openly about stacking the Electoral College, where voters are often determined by outcome in the states, with his supporters.

“I won, by the way,” Trump said Friday at the White House. “We’ll find out.”

Almost none of the top Republican leaders in the House or Senate responded directly Friday when asked by The Associated Press if they think states have any reason not to certify their election results.

Only Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives and daughter of the former vice president, said that if Trump is not satisfied with the outcome of the legal battles, he can appeal.

“If the president cannot prove these claims or show that they would change the outcome of the elections,” Cheney said in a statement to the AP, “he should fulfill his oath to preserve, protect and defend the United States Constitution while respecting sanctity.” of our electoral process “.

A key lawmaker, Sen. Pat Toomey, from the Pennsylvania battlefield, “believes that states should certify their results” in accordance with electoral laws, his spokesman said.

Once the states certify, he said, “these results must be accepted by all parties involved.” In Pennsylvania, state law “is unequivocal: the winner of the state popular vote receives the votes of the state electoral college.”

With the Capitol still partially closed due to the Covid-19 crisis and gaps for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, lawmakers can deflect many questions about their positions.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, said Friday that he wasn’t really familiar with what Trump was doing by inviting Michigan lawmakers to the White House.

“I’m not really worried about him discussing the situation with elected officials,” Hawley said on Capitol Hill as he opened the Senate for a cursory session.

When asked if Trump could overturn the election, Hawley did not compromise: “Anything is possible.”

Republicans are calculating that it is better not to provoke the president, he may do something harsher, but let time run its course.

It’s a strategy they’ve used during Trump’s presidency, keeping him close so as not to alienate his supporters, whom they need for their own re-elections, and not to get too involved when he tests the nation’s civic norms.

With the upcoming Senate second-round elections in Georgia deciding which party controls the Senate in January, Republicans are in debt to Trump supporters to vote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to portray the extraordinary week as normal.

“In every presidential election we go through this process,” he said. “What we all say about it is irrelevant.”

McConnell said that once the state certifications happen, “if they happen,” the elections will end.

“One of the beauties of the American electoral system is that we have 50 different ways of doing it,” he said. “Decisions about how elections end happen in 50 different places.”

The office of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, referred to his comments earlier this week when he said “the states should finish their work.” Meanwhile, the state accounts continue to arrive.

Georgia certified its results Friday after a manual recount found that Biden won by a margin of 12,670 votes, the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992.

Michigan is scheduled to certify its results Monday.

Pennsylvania will soon follow.

Voters will cast their votes on January 6, two weeks before the January 20 inauguration.