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The first Republicans in Congress gave Donald Trump a week to admit he lost the presidential election. They then asked the lame duck president to have his day in court, where the Trump campaign amassed a Record of 1-51 wins and losses in challenging the victory of Democrat Joe Biden.
The Republicans then pointed to the so-called “safe harbor” deadline of December 8, when states would certify their respective results, as the date Trump would surely be forced to admit his loss. But that deadline came and went on Tuesday, seemingly unnoticed by the White House.
Now, some members of the Republican leadership are beginning to realize that Trump is working on a calendar of his own, and that the political limbo they now inhabit, unable to take the basic step, as elected officials in the United States of America. , of recognizing the rightful winner of a free and fair election, could never end, assuming they won’t muster the courage to contradict Trump.
“I don’t know if he’s ever going to concede,” John Thune, Senate Majority Whip, he told Politico on Wednesday. More than 200 Republicans in Congress, about 90% of the total, will not publicly say who won the presidential election, the Washington Post found.
The Republican silence has given Trump a window to expand his attacks on American democracy. The lies tweeted by the president about bogus voter fraud have escalated in the past month to include the simple message on twitter “#CANCEL”.
The majority of Republican voters who think the election was rigged, despite the Trump administration’s own findings to the contrary and no supporting evidence, continues to grow.
The stakes are clear. As Trump himself said on Wednesday: “How can you have a presidency when a large majority thinks the election was EQUIPPED?”
Some Republicans are clinging to the hope that upcoming events in the transfer of power (future dates on the election calendar) will cause Trump to change course and ease the pressure on them. Next Monday, December 14, the electoral college meets to cast votes based on state certifications of the result.
On January 6, Vice President Mike Pence, in his capacity as President of the United States Senate, will preside over a ceremonial meeting of a joint session of Congress in which electoral votes are added and Joe Biden is formally declared as the next President. . .
Rep. Alex Mooney, a West Virginia Republican who introduced a House resolution Tuesday that does not encourage Trump or Biden to relent until all investigations are completed, expressed his faith that the congressional count would convince Trump and it would end the silence of his colleagues.
“The end is when roll is called here,” Mooney told the Associated Press.
But the five weeks since the election are rife with misleading speculation by Republicans about the supposedly imminent moment when Trump would admit reality and they could safely follow suit.
“I think the goal here is to give the president and his campaign team some space to show that there is real evidence to back up any claims of election fraud,” a senior Republican Senate adviser told Reuters on Nov. 10. “If there is, they will be quickly litigated. If not, we will all move on. “
“At some point this has to give in,” a second aide told Reuters at the time. “And I give it a week or two.”
The result is a risky showdown like no other in American history. The refusal to agree on the facts of the election, which was called for Biden by the main decision-making departments of the media, including the Associated Press and thus The Guardian, on November 7, threatens to undermine Voter confidence, chiselling the legitimacy of the Biden presidency and re-stacking civic norms.
Trump sent his party down this unprecedented path by claiming the elections were “rigged,” but the Republican leadership has allowed doubts to be filled with doubts during the past four weeks of silence.
The president has personally asked some local elected officials to reconsider the results. Now, the disputed election has taken on a political life of its own that the party leadership may not be able to crush, even as Trump’s legal challenges crumble and state and national officials declared it the safest election in American history. .
Republicans say that right now it makes little political sense for them to counter Trump’s views so they don’t risk a backlash from his supporters, his own constituents, at home.
They are relying on Trump voters to push Georgia’s January 5 runoff elections that will determine control of the Senate. And while some Republican lawmakers have acknowledged Biden’s victory, most prefer to remain silent, letting the process unfold “organically,” as one aide put it, in January.
But election experts warn of long-term damage to the highly prized American system.
“It clearly hurts confidence in the election,” said Trey Grayson, a former Republican Kentucky secretary of state and former president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.
“My hope,” he said, is that by December 14 “there will be more voices, but my instinct is that it won’t be until 6” (January).
Edward Foley, an election expert and professor of constitutional law at Ohio State University, said it was true that the winner of the election is not officially the president-elect until Congress declares so with its Jan.6 vote to accept. the results of the electoral college.
“I’m less worried at the moment, but that happens,” he said.
For Americans to “have faith” in the election, the losing side has to accept defeat. “It’s very, very dangerous if the losing side can’t get there,” he said.
“It is essential that the parties follow that spirit, even if an individual, Mr. Trump, cannot do it, the party has to do it,” he said.
“What’s so disturbing about the dynamic that has developed since Election Day is that the party has not been able to get that message across because it is following Trump’s signals.”
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