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January 6th has become a rallying cry for millions of proud patriots who hope that the Congress will reject globalist Joe Biden’s ill-begotten electors and restore President Trump to four more years in the White House. Are Republican Senators suddenly our knights in shining armor? Sadly, we do not believe this to be the case. It appears that Republican Senators have chosen to do nothing more than a publicity stunt that they believe will mollify and pacify the Republican base and boost their respective standings in the horserace for the 2024 elections.
Why do we believe this to be the case?
First, just take a look at the joint statement released by Republican Senators, which are so watered down with qualifications and weasel words that they amount to almost nothing.
The 2020 election … featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.
…
By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.
And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%). [Office of Sen. Ted Cruz]
Here’s Senator Ron Johnson’s personal statement.
There’s so many irregularities here. There’s so many allegations that need a full investigation. That’s really why I signed on Ted Cruz’s effort. Let’s at least do a 10-day emergency investigation. Let’s organize this, let’s lay it out for the American public. [Office of Sen. Ron Johnson]
Instead of actually alleging fraud himself, Johnson is just requesting a “full investigation” of “allegations” by other people, allegations Johnson and his colleagues will never have to the courage to repeat themselves.
Republican Senators refuse to say, “This election was rigged from the start, and Joe Biden’s electoral college ‘victory’ is therefore illegitimate.” Instead, they are as meek as possible. They do not call the Democrats’ dramatic expansion of early voting and ballot harvesting what it is: the perfect weapon to steal an election right out from under the public’s nose. Instead, Republicans sound practically apologetic from the beginning: “Please, Democrats, we’d just like to maybe have a short investigation of the election, just to make sure everything was fair.”
These Republican Senators do not have the courage to actually declare that the election was hopelessly rigged, the results are unreliable, and that Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.
Check out Kelly Loeffler’s statement:
“Elections are the bedrock of our democracy and the American people deserve to be 100% confident in our election system and its outcomes. But right now, tens of millions of Americans have real concerns about the way in which the November Presidential election was conducted — and I share their concerns.” [WRCB]
Loeffler, just like her colleagues, wishes to hide behind “the concerns” of “millions of Americans” so that she doesn’t actually have to stand for something.
The jig is up. These Republicans Senators want to pacify the “concerns” of “millions of Americans” who support Trump by limply and halfheartedly protesting the election for a few hours before the Republican Party rolls over and certifies a Joe Biden win.
The Republican Party is not united. They do not have the will to declare Biden’s “victory” illegitimate and President Trump the winner, even though they do have that power. And anyone telling you otherwise is a liar or deceived.
If the dozen or so Republican Senators who plan to object were serious about defending President Trump, they would be putting the heat on Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate surrender caucus, as well as the quisling Republican legislatures and governors that certified Joe Biden electors despite rampant fraud and improprieties in the administration of the November elections.
But they won’t. They instead want to kick the can down the road just long enough to avoid admitting or accepting blame for the final outcome. At heart, none of them want to take real risks for the sake of Trump and his voters. They prefer a position of secure inferiority under a Biden administration to actually wielding real transformative power, and they prefer accepting an illegitimate defeat to taking any kind of risk to win a legitimate victory.
To understand how fake this one only has to imagine the Republican senators getting their wish. Suppose Democrats called their bluff and agreed to an “emergency 10-day audit” by a Congressionally-appointed commission. What would happen? Obviously, nothing. It would take several days just to organize the commission, and it would be completely impossible for it to assess the dozens of allegations spanning more than a half-dozen states. The time to launch such an investigation was two months ago. At this point, the commission could have only one possible outcome: Announcing that it did not have enough time to evaluate the evidence and was unable to find comprehensive proof of voter fraud. The election “audit” would simply give further legitimacy to Joe Biden’s claimed victory.
The senators all know this, of course. The grandstanding on Wednesday won’t be about actually contesting the election. Instead, the senators have their own agendas. Sen. Josh Hawley’s statement makes this obvious:
Following both the 2004 and 2016 elections, Democrats in Congress objected during the certification of electoral votes in order to raise concerns about election integrity. They were praised by Democratic leadership and the media when they did. And they were entitled to do so. But now those of us concerned about the integrity of this election are entitled to do the same. [Office of Sen. Josh Hawley]
Senator Hawley doesn’t even lead his statement with allegations of voter fraud or other wrongdoing. Instead, his first priority is simply pointing out that Democrats have done the same thing. Since when did the Democrats become the moral exemplars of D.C., the holy denizens of the Inner Party sanctum who we all look towards for moral guidance?
If Senator Hawley’s goal is stopping election fraud, it’s a pointless statement. Instead, Hawley is covering his rear. Rather than actually mount a bid to change the election, he is trying to establish himself as the most Trump-aligned senator while also ensuring he isn’t attacked too much for this stunt after it inevitably fails. “How can it be bad to challenge election results if the Democrats do it too?” he cries out meekly and impotently.
Hawley’s statement continues:
I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws. And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden. At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections. [Office of Sen. Josh Hawley]
This rhetoric is as weak as it gets. There is no fraud claim here at all. Instead, “some states” are simply accused of violating their own election laws. The claim is preposterously passive: There is no claim of ill intent, and no claim that the election result changed. Democrats could entirely accept Hawley’s claim and nothing about this election would have to change.
But changing this election isn’t Hawley’s purpose anyway. Instead, as the statement makes clear, Hawley is using this moment to blast Big Tech and to advocate passing new laws for future elections. Those are two perfectly worthy goals. But they won’t do anything to help Donald Trump’s voters right now.
Revolver doesn’t say this simply to attack the senators involved. Rather, it is important to be honest about what will unfold this week. This is not a credible effort to investigate the results of the election or change the final outcome. This is a stunt, an act of political theater. It will not stop Joe Biden from becoming president in two weeks. And even the participants acknowledge it:
Accordingly, we intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed.
We are not naïve. We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise. [Office of Sen. Ted Cruz]
None of this will help further the Trump movement for any of the goals it fought for. In fact, this fake effort to “stop the steal” will simply have the effect of legitimizing a Biden victory. The election will face a challenge, but that challenge will fail. The MAGA movement will have its catharsis moment, while Republican leaders who secretly wanted Trump to lose anyway will piously vow to “never again” let such a steal happen.
Why is the GOP so eager to look so weak? Because if you can believe it, the alternative is even more pathetic. Making a serious play to keep Donald Trump in office at this point would require real political aggression. It would require rallying the president’s supporters into the streets by the millions to oppose an illegitimate transfer of power. It would require wielding the instruments of state against powerful adversaries in the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and even the military. It would, in short, require taking real action instead of delivering canned press releases. It’s exactly what the modern GOP has become incapable of.
Even an all-out effort would probably fail, and that failure could bring serious consequences: The president’s supporters might face professional ruin, criminal prosecution, or even violence. Great leaders, of course, are willing to risk ruin and even total destruction for the sake of their nation, but America hasn’t had great leaders in Congress for decades. Republicans in Congress don’t even want to fight this battle. They were defeated before it even began.
And that is the real reason nothing will happen on Wednesday, and nothing of substance will be coming out of the Senate. At the very least, the Republican Senators could expose the charade for what it is by speaking truth to power. It wouldn’t prevent Joe Biden from becoming president, but at least the truth would be laid bare for all to see. But in the process of revealing that the American ruling class is illegitimate, they would also reveal that the Republican Party is worthless, and totally unable and unwilling to install its own party leader for another four years in office. To a Republican officeholder, perhaps that would be the one fate worse than death.
Ultimately, there is no one coming to save President Trump. Not the state legislatures, not Republicans in Congress, and not Mike Pence. In the next few weeks, the president will either have to take extraordinary and unprecedented actions to remain in office and save the country, or he will leave office on January the 21th.
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