US elections: Republicans begin to line up behind Donald Trump

Despite President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday (US time) that President Donald Trump is “100 percent within his rights” to question the results. electoral, since Republican legislators are behind the White House.

The Republican leader’s comments, his first public comments since Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, show how reluctant Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have been to challenge the president, even in his defeat.

Most Republicans refuse to congratulate Biden or suggest that Trump should accept the result, even though there is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud.

“Our institutions are built for this,” McConnell said at the inauguration of the Senate. “We have the system in place to consider concerns and President Trump is 100 percent within his right to investigate allegations of wrongdoing and weigh his legal options.”

McConnell said the process will unfold and “come to a close.”

Republicans are closing the Trump era the way they started it, joining the president in breaking civic norms and sowing uncertainty in institutions, now in a way that threatens the nation’s normal transition of power.

Privately, Republicans on Capitol Hill say they are in a tough spot, wary of crossing over to Trump and his most ardent supporters, but uncomfortable in questioning the durability of the nation’s electoral system. The head of the General Services Administration under Trump has refrained from formally beginning Biden’s transition to the White House, damaging the traditionally peaceful transfer of power.

Trump has refused to admit the presidential race and is organizing legal fights in several states, but there has been no indication or evidence of voter wrongdoing or widespread election fraud.

The president’s refusal to accept the results means that electoral disputes could drag on for weeks as states certify their counts or advance until mid-December, when the Electoral College is ready to vote.

With the Senate majority at stake, Republicans dare not risk alienating Trump or his supporters before Biden’s inauguration on January 20.

In Georgia, where Trump is behind Biden in the vote count and both Republican senators are forced to participate in the January 5 runoff elections that will determine control of the party in the Senate, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler they jointly called their state’s electoral system a “disgrace” and demanded the resignation of the Georgia secretary of state.

Many Republicans have set a December deadline, signaling how long it took to resolve the disputed 2000 race before Democrat Al Gore surrendered to Republican George W. Bush.

“In the end, we want all legal ballots to be counted,” Congressman Steve Scalise said in an interview. “Go back to Bush v Gore, it was the second week of December when it was resolved … so there are still questions that need to be resolved and that process is unfolding.”

Unlike the 2000 election, when a few hundred votes in Florida separated Bush and Gore, Trump is launching a wide web of legal challenges in states where Biden has thousands of votes ahead of him.

Some Republicans privately mock Trump’s legal team, led by personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and doubt that the president has a credible route to challenge the election results.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday that Republicans’ refusal to endorse the election results is “extremely dangerous, extremely poisonous to our democracy.”

Schumer said electoral demands can be valid but must be based on evidence and facts. He dismissed Trump’s challenges as “frivolous.”

“Joe Biden won the election fairly,” Schumer said.

McConnell and the Republicans rejected that conclusion, saying that the election results were not yet finalized.

“Let’s not have lectures, or conferences, on how the president should immediately and happily accept the preliminary election results,” McConnell said.

Pressed if there was any evidence of voter fraud, Republican Senator John Cornyn, who just won re-election in Texas, objected.

“That’s not really my, my role,” Cornyn told reporters on Capitol Hill. “There is a process that is available, and I do not envy the president that he uses that process, but in the end, they will have to present some facts and evidence.”

Privately, Republicans on Capitol Hill have said they are trying to give Trump the time and space he needs to face the election results.

“Well, I think you have a right, a constitutional right, if there are legal challenges that you want to present,” Sen. John Thune said. “Let those unfold.”

Republican lawmakers are hesitant to pressure Trump to give in to Biden, knowing it would anger his base of most devoted Trump supporters. But they are not openly encouraging the president’s unfounded claims of fraud, even as they fan the flames of doubt in the electoral process by allowing questions to linger.

“Stay out of the fray,” as one Republican aide put it. If it takes a little longer to bring the election to a conclusion, said another Republican aide, “so be it.”

Whichever position the Republicans take, “you’re going to enrage half the country,” said another Republican on Capitol Hill.