WASHINGTON – When a distraught constituent approached her Tuesday night at a restaurant in the nation’s capital, Congresswoman Nancy Mace faced an impossible task that emerged from President Trump’s false promises: getting them to understand why she and other Republicans in the Congress could not simply overturn the election results.
Driven by Trump’s fictitious claims that the election had been stolen from him – and that lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence could win him over for another four years in power during Congress’ official electoral count – the voter had come from the house from Mace state of South Carolina to witness this. Now, the voter, shaking and in tears, demanded to know why Mace, a first-term congresswoman, refused to join the effort.
Calm but firm, Mrs. Mace tried to explain that it was not the role of Congress to subvert the results of an election – and that doing so would challenge the constitution.
“It doesn’t matter what I said,” Mace said in an interview. “They didn’t believe it.”
Similar scenes – sometimes painful, always unsolved – repeatedly occurred in Washington this week in the hours before and after a violent crowd instigated by Trump invaded the Capitol, while Republican voters loyal to the president cornered Republican lawmakers who voted to certify the outcome of the elections. elections, demanding answers and promising revenge.
The clashes – and the chaos scenes that took place on Wednesday – brought Republicans face to face with the consequences of their years-long alliance with Trump, providing human evidence on the downside of their profound influence on voters who form the base. your party.
This helps explain the intense anger that has led many Republicans to turn late on Trump, after years of empowering him and seeking validation. But it also reflects the enigma the Republican Party finds itself in, in debt to voters who internalized the president’s falsehoods and were encouraged by his divisive speech.
“Their hearts, minds and wallets have been tapped,” said Mace, his voice rising with fury. “Millions of people across the country that they lied to. These individuals, these hard-working Americans really believe that Congress can bring down the Electoral College. “
Many Republican members of Congress fueled this belief this week by opposing Biden’s victory in battle states and supported the vote challenges that illustrate his party’s split. In the House, more than half of the Republicans, including the two main party leaders, voted in favor of the challenges, while in the Senate, less than 10 Republicans did so and the leaders were vehemently opposed.
The videos that emerged from the impasses dramatized the enormous distance between the elected Republicans in Washington, who are increasingly desperate to distance themselves from the president and his voters, who say they will never leave him.
On Friday, Trump supporters swarmed Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, at her gate at Ronald Reagan National Airport, calling him a “traitor.”
“You know you were manipulated, you know you were manipulated,” shouted a woman as he was being led by a security guard. “You human being trash. It will be like this forever, wherever you go, for the rest of your life. “
A similar scene took place on Tuesday night at Salt Lake City Airport while Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, waited to fly to Washington. A woman without a mask approached him and called him “a disgusting shame” for not being at the president’s side. Once on board, Romney was greeted by Trump supporters shouting “Traitor!”
Some Republicans, like Senators Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Todd Young of Indiana, both of whom voted to certify the victory of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., tried to argue with their voters, analyzing their concerns point by point in scenes captured on video outside the Capitol.
The Presidential Transition
But Cramer and Young failed to persuade them that what the president and many of his Republican colleagues said was wrong – that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud and there was no way for Congress to overturn the results.
“The vast majority of people in this country will lose faith in the government” if Biden’s “fraudulent” victory is affirmed, an older North Dakota man told Cramer on Tuesday, with a serious face. “I’m about to do that.”
In the end, neither side had moved and there was nothing more to do, its voters decided, except to pray for the country and the senator.
“I was very sad,” said Cramer later. “They think that there is a remedy in this place for what ails them, and the reality is that it doesn’t exist. They came here thinking that, somehow, if they spoke loud enough ”, the results could change.
Mr. Cramer reasoned that, like so many others, his constituents “believed because they wanted to believe” that the result could still be nullified. But he showed a flicker of frustration, referring to his 12 Republican colleagues who had led the effort to challenge Biden’s victory, but did not “admit that he will not succeed”.
“We need to be careful about what we make people believe is possible, when we know it isn’t,” said Cramer.
Mace said he hoped that “the eyes of the American people would be open” after Wednesday’s violence, and that lawmakers, including in his own party, would be more aggressive in invoking falsehoods and dangerous language.
“I have been more vocal than ever in the past 24 hours and I had no intention of doing so,” said Mace. “But now is not the time to sit back and allow this to continue. You have to stop, and that’s enough. “
Whether Republican voters will hear, however, is another question. The crowd of protesters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday included white supremacists, people carrying and wearing Confederate symbols and many with “Q” paraphernalia, signifying belief in the pro-Trump conspiracy movement QAnon that falsely claims that Mr. Trump is fighting against a satanic cabal of Democratic Pedophiles.
Before the crowd hit the Capitol on Wednesday, Young was confronted by a crowd wearing pro-Trump clothes outside a Senate building.
“You should represent our opinion,” said a woman plaintively.
“When it comes to the law, our opinions don’t matter – the law does,” Young told her in a video conversation. “I value your opinion. In fact, I share your concerns. I share your belief that President Trump should remain president. I share that belief. “
“The law is important to us!” one man fired back while the others agreed. “It doesn’t matter to Democrats.”
Mr. Young was exasperated.
“I took an oath under God – under God!” Mr. Young said, his voice shaking with emotion. “Haven’t we taken it seriously in this country yet?”