Do the right thing, Ky delegation. Don’t play politics with presidential election.
The first week of 2020 isn’t starting out that well, what with 350,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, a botched vaccine rollout ignored by a manic president who cares nothing for this nation, and a handful of radical right-wing politicians trying to overturn a fair and free election for their own political gains.
Therefore, there was some scant comfort to see that Kentucky’s Congressional delegation was so far ignoring the Hawley-Cruz cabal that has declared it will try to hold up Congressional certification of the election on Wednesday to demand an “audit” of results from battleground states that Trump lost.
We say so far because on Monday, U.S. Rep Jamie Comer of Western Kentucky went on Fox News to spout gibberish about his suspicions of expanded use of absentee ballots during a pandemic. Absentee ballots helped send him back to Congress, but those cast for Joe Biden are somehow suspicious.
“Americans deserve a full debate,” he wrote on Twitter to highlight his Trumpian brown-nosing.
Except that Americans have had a full debate and much, much more. Roughly 60 lawsuits filed by Trump’s lawyers have been dismissed, some by judges appointed by Trump. No less than Attorney General Bill Barr, who has used the Department of Justice to do much of Trump’s bidding, said there was no fraud. Numerous Secretaries of State, Republicans and Democrats have declared the election to be valid, with Joe Biden winning by 7 million votes. Trump’s narcissistic delusions may tell him and his equally deluded supporters that his big rallies equate to certain victory, but it’s time for everyone to accept that he lost.
We would urge Comer and any other Kentucky politicians tempted to go down this road to stop now. Whatever your future political ambitions, and Comer’s are well-known, it is morally wrong to speciously question an election’s outcome, not because you actually believe it, but because you want to curry favor with the loser. If you believe in the Constitution, which puts the power of elections in the hands of states, then here is your chance to uphold it. It is also wrong to encourage machinations that cast needless doubt on our election system and the peaceful transfer of power, two hallmarks of our democracy.
It’s politically wrong, too. If you are the party of limited government, which believes in giving more power to the states, then why would you try to overturn that power, somehow giving the federal government final oversight over elections? We would not have expected to turn to Kentucky’s maverick Rep. Thomas Massie in this matter, but he is correct when he and six other Congressmen said: “The text of the Constitution is clear. States select electors. Congress does not. Accordingly, our path forward is also clear. We must respect the states’ authority here. Though doing so may frustrate or immediate political objectives, we have sworn an oath to promote the Constitution above our policy goals.”
The Republican party no longer has a moral or governing center; it’s a maelstrom of fear whirling around Trump. Republicans of old would have been appalled by Trump’s threats to the Georgia Secretary of State, but in these times it merits only a blip and a yawn and some “chiding.”
The most cynical outlook is that none of this really matters because despite Trump’s shallow knowledge of the Constitution, the election can’t be overturned by Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley or Mike Pence. Unlike Trump, they all know this but will keep the nation tied up in a knots for a little longer in service to their own naked presidential ambitions.
Despite his serial enabling of Trump during the past four years, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that he opposes the efforts to put election results up to debate. Let’s hope the rest of the delegation will follow McConnell and Massie’s lead for for the good of a nation that is battered and bruised enough.