President Trump
Donald TrumpKelli Ward rejects Arizona Republican Party race audit request Gun sales boom amid pandemic uncertainty, Biden’s vote for gun reform Top Trump impeachment lawyer, Bowers leaves team: reports MOREThe unprecedented efforts to undermine the clear and conclusive results of the presidential election have elicited a surprising reaction from his followers – from the angry mob that attacked the Capitol to state legislators across the country.
Days after Trump stepped down, state Republicans introduced a series of measures that would give lawmakers the power to overturn voters’ will, both in the 2020 presidential race and in future elections.
Some of the bills are aimed at the 2020 presidential election.
In Pennsylvania, state senator Cris Dush (R) introduced a resolution declaring the presidential election of his state to be illegal and null, and the results invalid. Dush’s legislation would have revoked the certification of the presidential voters promised to President Biden and replaced them with a ticket elected by the Republican-controlled General Assembly.
Others would give legislatures the ability to cancel certification of the results of future presidential elections in their states.
In Arizona, State Representative Shawnna Bolick (R) introduced a bill last week that would allow the state legislature to cancel certification of the results of a presidential election if it disagrees with the certification issued by the Secretary of State.
Other efforts are not related to the presidential elections, but would change or undermine measures approved by the majority of voters.
In November, 61 percent of Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment that would raise the minimum wage from $ 8.56 an hour to $ 15 an hour by 2026. This week, state senator Jeff Brandes (R) introduced legislation to modify this amendment, allowing employers to pay wages below the minimum for workers under the age of 21, workers previously convicted of a crime and those in indefinite categories of “others difficult to hire”.
In the same election, 54 percent of South Dakota voters passed a constitutional amendment allowing legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes. Governor Kristi Noem
Kristi Lynn NoemIdaho advances constitutional prohibition of marijuana legalization in the state SD governor to challenge the amendment that legalizes recreational marijuana Eric Trump warns of primary challenges for Republicans who are not opposed to election results. (R) ordered the State Highway Patrol to sue to overturn the amendment, after Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg (R) refused to intervene.
None of these measures are being offered by back-benchers.
Bolick chairs the Arizona Chamber of Ways and Means Committee. Dush heads the Pennsylvania committee that oversees local government. Brandes chairs the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee. Noem is considered a potential candidate for the presidency in 2024.
The new efforts are part of a trend that may be accelerating amid a wave of disinformation about the 2020 presidential election.
In recent years, the Florida legislature has undermined Amendment 4, a constitutional amendment that should restore the voting rights of criminals who have served their sentences. The amendment was approved by voters with 64 percent support.
Missouri lawmakers who opposed an independent redistricting commission approved by voters with 62% of the votes in 2018 put another version – which restored the Republican legislature’s control over the process – in the vote in 2020. This repeal passed 51% of the votes.
Former Maine governor Paul LePage (R) refused to implement the expansion of Medicaid, even after 59 percent of its constituents passed a 2017 electoral measure accepting the expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
The efforts of a growing faction of Republican leaders are of concern to those who once led the Great Old Party, but who are now adrift and marginalized.
“There has always been a dark side to the conservative movement, the Republican Party. You always had the types Know Nothings, America Firsters, John Birch Society, Pat Buchanan. But they were not in charge. The people responsible were Bush, Dole and McCain, ”said Chris Vance, a former president of the Washington State Republican Party and a senior member of the center-right Niskanen Center. “The extremists would be in the corner of the room, but they were not in charge. Now they are in charge. “
The rebuke to democratic values stems from a deeper and darker view of the shock that defines modern American politics, fueled by the pulpit and podium among conservative evangelicals and increasingly far-right politicians who lead the Republican Party’s descent into populist nativism . To hear them say, more traditional Democrats and Republicans are not just the opposition, they are an existential threat to the future of the American experience.
Trump served and acts as a voice that validates the darkest corners of conspiratorial republicanism. He classified Democrats – especially women, and more particularly black women – as “dogs”, “crazy”, “sick” and “savages”, among a litany of other invective. In 2017, his son Eric said, “They aren’t even people to me” in an interview with Fox News.
“Many of today’s Republicans see Democrats in the same way that their Macartist grandparents saw Communists,” said John Pitney, political scientist at Claremont McKenna College and a former senior official with the Republican National Committee. “For them, Democrats are not legitimate opponents who want to defeat, they are mortal enemies that they must destroy.”
Even those who initially won conservative positions in the movement in the pre-Trump era were dragged away. In conversations in recent weeks with legislative leaders, all of whom demand that their names be withheld when asked about the darker limits of their base, a state mayor and an election committee chairman expressed a desperate sense of exasperation at their own inability to control those who reject reality and threaten democracy.
Both lawmakers publicly acknowledged that Biden won his states. But both also claimed that their separate efforts to review electoral integrity stem from the concerns of their constituents – concerns that their own side has embraced and ignited.
“They are willing to do anything to stay in power. I mean literally anything. I hope they continue to do these things. I hope they will present bills across the country to reverse the correspondence in the vote. I hope they attack the electoral college, ”said Vance. “The only thing that keeps them in the game is our very strange system that allows the minority to rule.”