A cadre of Repub­li­can Unit­ed States Don­ald Trump-lov­ing Sen­a­tors said today that they will join an effort begun by extrem­ist right wing mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to object to the cer­e­mo­ni­al accep­tance of the Novem­ber 2020 elec­tion results on Jan­u­ary 6th, point­less­ly turn­ing what would ordi­nar­i­ly be a cus­tom­ary cer­e­mo­ny into a lengthy, embar­rass­ing, and dam­ag­ing spectacle.

The par­tic­i­pants in the announced plot are Ted Cruz (Texas), Ron John­son (Wis­con­sin), James Lank­ford (Okla­homa), Steve Daines (Mon­tana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Mar­sha Black­burn (Ten­nessee), Mike Braun (Indi­ana), and Sen­a­tors-elect Cyn­thia Lum­mis (Wyoming), Roger Mar­shall (Kansas), Bill Hager­ty (Ten­nessee), and Tom­my Tuberville (Alaba­ma).

“We do not take this action light­ly,” the Repub­li­can sen­a­tors’ state­ment, cir­cu­lat­ed by Ted Cruz’s office, said. “We are act­ing not to thwart the demo­c­ra­t­ic process, but rather to pro­tect it. And every one of us should act togeth­er to ensure that the elec­tion was law­ful­ly con­duct­ed under the Con­sti­tu­tion and to do every­thing we can to restore faith in our Democracy.”

The pres­ence of the bold­faced line above (empha­sis mine) demon­strates that these Repub­li­cans know what they are doing is wrong and harmful.

When a group like this goes to the trou­ble to pre­emp­tive­ly deny the very thing that they are doing, it shows that they feel con­scious­ness of guilt.

There should be con­se­quences for this sedi­tious behav­ior. The afore­men­tioned sen­a­tors are most­ly learned men. Many are alum­ni of some of the most pres­ti­gious law schools in the coun­try. And some, most notably Ted Cruz, have even been on the receiv­ing ends of put-downs from the man whose cor­rupt, wretched regime they are now going to des­per­ate mea­sures to keep in place.

There was once a time when Cruz called Don­ald Trump “a patho­log­i­cal liar” and a “nar­cis­sist”. But no more. Cruz is now a full-blown Trump enabler.

Elec­tion offi­cials say the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion was one of the smoothest in his­to­ry. There is no evi­dence that sug­gests there is any­thing amiss with the results in what the Repub­li­can sen­a­tors call “the dis­put­ed states”.

The prob­lem for these Repub­li­cans is that the results did not favor their can­di­dates, Don­ald Trump and Mike Pence. Their argu­ment essen­tial­ly boils down to, the process did not pro­duce the out­come we want­ed; there­fore, there must be some­thing wrong with the process, even though we can’t tell you what that is.

Lack­ing any evi­dence for their argu­ment that the elec­tion results should sim­ply be dis­card­ed, the Repub­li­can sen­a­tors are demand­ing that the (nonex­is­tent) fraud they believe exists be hunt­ed down until it is found.

The ulti­mate goal is to cre­ate a mech­a­nism for chang­ing enough Elec­toral Col­lege votes to keep Trump in pow­er. Nev­er mind what the vot­ers said and did.

“Con­gress should imme­di­ate­ly appoint an Elec­toral Com­mis­sion, with full inves­ti­ga­to­ry and fact-find­ing author­i­ty, to con­duct an emer­gency ten-day audit of the elec­tion returns in the dis­put­ed states. Once com­plet­ed, indi­vid­ual states would eval­u­ate the Com­mis­sion’s find­ings and could con­vene a spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion to cer­ti­fy a change in their vote, if needed.”

If need­ed. Ha!

I’ve pre­vi­ous­ly remarked here how Repub­li­can calls to hon­or the “will of the vot­ers” are utter­ly lack­ing in sin­cer­i­ty giv­en that Repub­li­cans don’t care one bit about the vot­ers’ will when it goes against them.

But what we’re see­ing now is more than just hypocrisy. This is part of an effort by ene­mies of the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion and Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy to destroy our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment. These Repub­li­cans are unwill­ing to con­done or par­tic­i­pate in a peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er from one admin­is­tra­tion to anoth­er because they do not want Don­ald Trump to leave office. They want his cor­rupt, evil regime to remain in place per­ma­nent­ly. That is painful­ly clear.

Con­trast the behav­ior of Trump, Pence, and these Repub­li­can sen­a­tors with that of John McCain and Mitt Rom­ney, the 2008 and 2012 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nees. McCain and Rom­ney knew that they had been beaten.

They con­ced­ed, and they with­drew from the elec­toral are­na with dignity.

They did not insist that the results must have been fraud­u­lent because they did­n’t win. In McCain’s case, this allowed for a peace­ful and order­ly trans­fer of power.

It’s easy to for­get that even in 2008, there were some states with extreme­ly close out­comes. For exam­ple, in 2008, Barack Oba­ma won North Car­oli­na by a sliv­er, 2,142,651 votes to 2,128,474 votes. Dit­to in Indi­ana: Oba­ma got 1,374,039 votes to McCain’s 1,345,648 votes. In Flori­da, Oba­ma got just over 50% of the vote, with 4,282,367 votes to McCain’s 4,046,219 votes.

Did McCain cry “Fraud!” and demand that an Elec­toral Com­mis­sion, with full inves­ti­ga­to­ry and fact-find­ing author­i­ty, con­duct emer­gency audits of the returns in these and oth­er states? No — because he accept­ed that he had lost a free and fair elec­tion. He and his strate­gist Steve Schmidt (who is now a new­ly mint­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­er) under­stood that the elec­tion would pro­duce a win­ner and a los­er. It would be the job of the win­ner to gov­ern. It would be the job of the los­er to accept the result and sup­port the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er to the winner.

Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy has endured (and yes, this sys­tem of ours is a democ­ra­cy — a demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic, to be pre­cise) pri­mar­i­ly because pow­er has repeat­ed­ly been peace­ful­ly and will­ing­ly trans­ferred in the after­math of elections.

We are still work­ing on mak­ing elec­tions as free and as fair as they can be in this coun­try. It’s an ongo­ing project, to be sure, but the 2020 elec­tion saw broad and high par­tic­i­pa­tion. Joe Biden and Kamala Har­ris received a total of 81,281,888 votes, while Don­ald Trump and Mike Pence received 74,223,251.

And not only did Biden and Har­ris eas­i­ly win the pop­u­lar vote, they eas­i­ly won the Elec­toral Col­lege, with 306 votes. That’s the same num­ber Trump got, and he called it a land­slide, even he won the three states that col­lec­tive­ly put him over the top (Michi­gan, Wis­con­sin, and Penn­syl­va­nia) by razor-thin margins.

Biden and Har­ris won back all three of those states and added Ari­zona and Geor­gia, two states Barack Oba­ma nev­er won, to their column.

In anoth­er era, this would have been con­sid­ered a whol­ly uncon­tro­ver­sial elec­tion. But today’s Repub­li­can Par­ty just does­n’t believe in democ­ra­cy or repub­li­can­ism. It believes in seiz­ing and main­tain­ing pow­er and in prac­tic­ing cult worship.

Abra­ham Lin­coln and Ted­dy Roo­sevelt would be hor­ri­fied by what the par­ty they once led with courage and fore­sight has turned into.

A once mighty and admirable Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion — found­ed in part on the noble cause of end­ing slav­ery — has trag­i­cal­ly dis­ap­peared. In its place is a con­spir­a­cy against the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion and Amer­i­can democracy.

This con­spir­a­cy will need to be defeat­ed to secure the future of the Unit­ed States. This demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic was entrust­ed to our care to keep.

And keep it, we must.