The Republican party is in the process of self immolating in the service of an impeached, one term president, who lost the popular vote by 7 million and the electoral college by 74. Part of the reason is that the senators who have agreed to go along with Josh Hawley on his mad quest of challenging the electoral college results on January 6, are suffering from Sessions Syndrome, which is a malady wherein the sufferer experiences not only night terrors but waking daymares, believing that Donald Trump will primary and destroy them. Sufferers of Sessions Syndrome are known to mutter, as they lurch around their homes and offices, banging into the furniture, “if he can do it to Jeff, he can do it to anybody.” The afflicted are also known to leaf through periodicals ranging from the National Enquirer to Sports Illustrated to TV Guide, trying to assess whom Donald Trump might pick as their successor.
Ted Cruz is co-producing this political burlesque show, coming to a TV set near you in three days, which will secure the net result of changing not one damn thing with respect to the 2020 election nor the inauguration of Joe Biden — and they all know it — but it will placate Trump and much more importantly, position them front and center for the base to admire. Or so they believe. The larger issue is that the GOP is seriously fragmented right now over this matter, and that’s putting it charitably. The battle lines are drawn, and this carnival act is going to do far more harm than good. And I wouldn’t expect Ted Cruz or any of them to figure that out until it’s way too late.
Cruz is ludicrously invoking the 1876 election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford Hayes as the rationale and boilerplate for the machinations that he intends to put forward in the next few days. This is another one of those situations which would be truly comical — and will appear as such to future generations — but for the fact of its destructive and pernicious portent in real time. Washington Post:
First, the analogy to the Hayes-Tilden dispute is altogether inappropriate. In 1876 there was a genuine basis for contestation. Republican supporters of Rutherford B. Hayes were correct to claim that Democrats in the South had terrorized and disenfranchised Black voters; Hayes clearly would have won if the equal right to vote, as guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, had been enforced. Democrats, in turn, defended Samuel J. Tilden’s claim to victory in the disputed states by correctly observing that Republican canvassing boards had carried out vote-counting fraud to yield higher totals for Hayes.
Nothing remotely approaching those circumstances occurred in any state this year; just because Trump keeps tweeting false allegations does not mean there is something to investigate. And as for the group’s contention that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t consider Trump’s fraud claims, well, that’s irrelevant: State courts were the proper venue for those claims, and they all dismissed them as baseless, as Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) observed in his own condemnation of the Cruz-led move Saturday.
Now the *logic* of referencing Hayes-Tilden falls swiftly apart under the barest scrutiny. In 1876 Congress was deadlocked over a close election. The Senate backed Hayes, the House backed Tilden and so a commission was formed. There is no deadlock in 2020. Both the House and the Senate will vote to certify the election. This is just about watering the seeds of doubt that Trump has sewn and which are now growing to beanstalkian proportions. Ted Cruz has fallen so far that he would actually go down in history as having been Trump’s pathetic water boy in this endeavor.
Next, Cruz is touting that his Commission will have “full investigatory and fact finding authority” like the Hayes-Tilden commission did, but that’s false.
The Congress that created that commission was careful to avoid doing that, because it was hotly contested whether Congress itself had the constitutional power “to go behind the returns” of a state’s electoral college votes, and Congress did not want to give the commission any powers that Congress itself did not have. The commission itself resolved the dispute in favor of Hayes by scrupulously avoiding fact-finding.
Then there is the fact that the state courts are the appropriate venue to decide these electoral issues — and they have done that. We have seen sixty some rulings, all shooting down Trump and his Kraken team’s ridiculous allegations. So if Cruz wanted to really do this mad thing, and have Congress decide the election instead of the states, he would first need to repeal the 1887 statute and get the power away from the states and given to Congress. Only Congress could repeal and replace the statute and they won’t do it before Wednesday, on that you may depend. So this is wheel spinning, par excellence.
And finally
…Cruz’s idea that a state legislature could change its electoral votes based on a commission’s work is especially unconstitutional — and also ironic given his reliance on the Hayes-Tilden precedent. That commission ruled for Hayes in part because Article II of the Constitution requires electors in all states to vote on the same day, and thus a state cannot change the appointment of its electors after they have voted. The electors voted on Dec. 14, and it’s too late for a change according to Cruz’s own example.
There is no real world context in which the Cruz Commission is anything but a farce, not to mention an insult to the intelligence. That said, Cruz and Hawley have been fundraising off of the Georgia runoffs and the creation of controversy and chaos. To say that the GOP is factioned and fractured over this debacle is putting it mildly.
If you haven’t read Steve Schmidt’s analysis on how the GOP is set to destroy itself just as the Whigs fractured and destroyed themselves back in 1854, giving birth to the present day Republican party, do so. Cruz and Hawley are playing with dynamite. The fact that Mitch McConnell has explained the consequences to them and they are defying him tells you everything you need to know about the state of today’s GOP.
I hope it (or anything) tanks the GOP.
The GOP has been a complete mess in the era of Trump. Whatever form they remain in, it will be different from now. I feel certain in that prediction. Exactly what the difference will be remains to be seen.
They’ve been headed for this since they turned Ronny into a deity.
For the delusional who believe we can govern ourselves with a cult formerly known as the republicam party…forgeddaboutit.
It’s evident that Hawley and Cruz are banking on the Cult of Trump. Hawley intends to be Trump’s successor.
What’s worse is that there’s been a story on AOL (it probably originated somewhere else but I don’t recall the whole source) about “young” Republicans/conservatives talking about how they want to “rebrand” the Party by expanding support for LGBTQ rights etc while maintaining their “conservative traditions.” A couple of the COLLEGE-AGE kids interviewed even suggested they wanted to keep Trump’s ideas but have someone “younger” to push them.
The article was INCREDIBLY depressing. The old adage is that you’re supposed to be liberal in your 20s and conservative in your 60s. If these kids are Trump supporters in their 20s, then, by the time they’re in their 60s, they’re going to be voting for the candidates promising to rule as dictators.
Man plans, God laughs. The younger you are, the harder the laughter. All I hear when you tell me this is a bunch of delusional white kids without a clue on how to survive the 21st Century. The racism will finish off their dreams.
I am in my early 60’s and I have been a liberal all my life. 🙂
One of my mother’s aunts got more liberal as she aged.
And my father’s older sister was liberal all her (very long) life.
My whole family have been liberal all my life as well and I’m in my late 60’s , my father always said… The Dem’s take care of the poor & the Republicans take care of the rich ! I have found that to be true.
Ahhh, aren’t they doing that right now, already?
A finale of Must-Flee TV before Trump goes away. Yeah, I’m skipping this one.
You’re going to miss all the fun.
You and I have very different definitions of “fun”, Ursula. Like Andrew Vachss, some movies, you don’t need to stick around for to know the ending is. It’ll be enough that they fall apart for me.
As a young man for some years before at age 26 I headed off for the Marines I saw too much of the ghastly, tragic results of car accidents and unlike so many others have no desire to “gawk” at one as I drive by. As long as there are responders there tending to things I see no reason to look at any of it. However, this is one major pileup I intend to spend some serious time staring at. I want to see for myself how badly some of these seditious bastards will debase themselves, and gain some firsthand knowledge of events that will surely do additional damage to our standing in the world. It will be ugly to be sure. But for me that’s all the more reason to tune in if only for a while, just as was the case when I was a kid and mom made sure we watched the footage on the nightly news of events down south in the early and mid sixties. I will forever carry those images in my head, and all Americans should bear witness to this vile assault on our country. If for no other reason than to be able to look someone straight in the eye, someone who denies what will take place or that “it was THAT bad” and tell them you saw it with your own eyes and heard it with your own ears and it WAS that bad.
I agree, I want to tell my grandson what really happened.
She said as she set her empty pint on the bar and strode out to the meadow, where the huge armed blacksmith was ready to flatten the smart ass Englishman who dished the Irish flag … they didn’t call him Iron Fist for nothing …. 🙂
I was thinking a bit more on this matter since I commented about McConnell’s options in the “11 GOP Senators” story and it struck me that McConnell could almost redeem himself over his absolutely atrocious and hypocritical SCOTUS decisions (the first being the 2016 refusal to let Obama name a replacement for Scalia since McConnell believed the “people” should have some say by voting for the new president to make that decision; the second, of course, being his 180 when he decided that Justice Ginsburg’s replacement should’ve been named and voted on almost before the Notorious RBG even died) and his behavior at Trump’s impeachment trial.
Just let Mitch do what Mitch does best: Screw “tradition” and make up his own rules. Let him announce, on January 6th, that he simply will NOT allow any kind of “debate” regarding the certification of the election. He’s shown he ignores Senate rules and traditions when it suits him so why should he suddenly decide to let Cruz and the rest of the Senate’s “Kook Caucus” raise any objections?
He won’t, Joseph. The fact that he had negotiate against his own caucus on just about everything in 2020 says how little juice he actually has.
The rot within is destroying the GOP, and has been since at least Reagan. What we are witnessing now is the culmination of that decay. What comes out after January 6 may be a fascist party drawing its support from the extreme right and religious zealots, and a progressive right that eventually merges with the Democratic party. Trump is finished and his potential successors know it. They are now jostling for the spotlight on the stage of the theater of the absurd he created. That act runs on the 6th, but the really important one that will shape the destiny of the country comes the day before. I hope the good people of Georgia make the right decision.
Ted Crud will be shown to be the liar and stooge that he really is. I hope he goes down hard!
cruz was already shown to be the liar & stooge in 2016, he’s now kissing up to trump after trump said his wife was so ugly she looked like a dog ! What kind of man is that ? He’s pathetic ..
Like Schmidt and Grant said, the choice is clear. Patriots or traitors.
Wait for it…Trump will aim his wrath not at the opponents of this scheme, but at the “Dirty Dozen” who will fail miserably in their effort to overturn the election.
Of course…betrayal is an ingrained part of his MO.
ALSO KEEP remembering or learn if you haven’t yet .. all who are predicting and working toward the new #GOP as #FascistTRUMPcoattail party… TRUMP is dying of his father’s hereditary #PicksDisease..read on WIKI … and it won’t be pretty.
There’s some serious weaseldom pictured at the top there.
Take names, people!
Take names!
Cruz cannot get around the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
Give up already.
he’s shooting for 1877.
If ever there was a clear indication that we need to abolish the Electoral College, I can’t think of one.
A simple, clean, uncomplicated, popular vote, run just like we count all the votes per each state’s counties, no funny business, won by more votes total by everyone has a vote in each State regardless of populations, so there is no loading or removing votes by districts or areas, no pre-assigned electoral votes …
I’ve been saying this for years, there is no use for Electoral votes anymore. Popular vote wins !
There are ways it can be improved without going through an amendment. Look at Maine and Nebraska, and how they handle their EC votes.
Mitch has lost control of the GOP and it’s well past time for him to go. The Cruz’s and Rubio’s will find people won’t forget in 22-24 elections. I’m so angry that Trump is holding americans hostage. They sure as hell don’t represent “We the people” anymore