The Thin Red Line
A Tiny Platoon of Republicans Thwarted An American Coup By Their Own Party!
American democracy survived by the skin of its teeth in 2020. Having lost the election by over seven million votes and 74 electoral votes, with the most votes ever cast for the winning (Democratic) candidate and an Electoral College margin which Donald Trump described as a “landslide” in 2016, the Republican Party mounted a full-on assault upon the most sacred traditions of the United States of America: the democratic vote and the peaceful transfer of power. The president, the vice-president, the attorney general, the Senate majority leader, the House minority leader, the Republican National Committee, and an overwhelming number of Republican members of Congress either actively promoted or tacitly accepted (and therefore endorsed) the fraudulent basis of this brazen attempt to annul tens of millions of votes. It was nothing less than a coup attempt. This traitorous scheme was defeated not by Democrats but by a handful of relatively unknown local and state Republican election officials, and by a series of state and federal judges, many of them appointed by Republicans.
The basis of the most craven election fraud ever attempted in American history was “fraud” itself. The treasonous scheme began with Donald Trump’s proclamation in 2016 that any election that he did not win would automatically be illegal, fraudulent, stolen. Think about such a statement for a minute. It’s a man falsely claiming “fraud” to commit a fraud. A man who had never run for elective office previously, a rank beginner in the political realm, a man who invites ridicule and repulsion, a congenital liar, a clear charlatan, an obvious narcissist, states that his audacious reach for the presidency of the United States of America, extending across a vast nation, is assured of success unless thwarted by foul play. How could anyone with a semblance of rationality take such a statement as anything but absurd? He said this first during the 2016 campaign, claiming he would only accept the outcome if he won. Expecting to lose, he insisted throughout the summer and fall, right up to election day, that that election was “rigged.” But lo and behold — shocking even to him — Trump won that election! Still, he lost the popular vote by some three million votes. According to Trump, he would have won the popular vote if not for all the “illegal” votes.
Of course, Donald Trump would do all of these things. In his mind he is the greatest human to ever live, bar none. How could he ever lose, at anything, unless cheated? And if he ever were to lose, at anything, how could he go forth without claiming to have never lost without being cheated? The alternative is to accept “loser” status, which does not exist in Trump’s brain as relating to him, just everyone else. This mind-game tactic is central to his psychology.
Ever addicted to big numbers and regal status, as well as convinced of his own lies, President Trump did not let the matter fade away. One of the first things Trump did was set up a special “commission” to ferret out all the “fraud” that he continued to insist had occurred in the 2016 election, including those illegal three million votes that denied him winning the popular vote… and thus a true mandate (rather than an electoral college victory based on a mere 45,000 votes across three states). He hired Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach, perhaps the nation’s leading proponent of the myth of rampant voter fraud, to head up this commission. Vice-president Mike Pence also served on the commission. With a true zealot in charge, the official air of Pence, and a big budget, one would think Kobach would have dug up something. Nope. A year later the commission quietly disbanded, having found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. In a sane world, that would have put this perennial Republican screed of rampant election fraud out of its misery. It was hypothesized, it was investigated by true believers, corroborating evidence was non-existent, the theory failed, it was declared dead. But Trump World is anything but scientific or sane.
In the run-up to the 2020 election, Trump trotted out the same old meme— now officially discredited. There would be only one way he could lose the election: if the Democrats cheated. Certainly, this time around, he had far more reason to be so confident. He was president; incumbent presidents usually don’t lose. Presidents also have vast money, media, policy and strategic advantages over any challenger. Trump threw out courtesy, protocol, tradition and any sense of fair-play by using the White House and his office as campaign tools. He shrugged off even attempting to manage the pandemic (aside from insisting on personally signing relief checks sent to every household) and doted on the stock market as the true symbol of his “greatest ever” presidency and economy, believing a sense of “normalcy,” even if totally false, would carry him to victory in November.
Yet Trump’s victory, quite obviously now, was never anything close to a sure thing. For starters, he is deeply despised by a startling number of Americans. For the breadth of his term, Trump’s approval ratings consistently slumped in the lower 40 percentile, a flashing red warning sign for a presidential re-election bid. There may have never been another president in American history so beloved by such a sizable core base but loathed by everyone else. Despite polling being (again) ridiculously inaccurate in some ways, the overall numbers were not in his favor.
And this time he was running against a much tougher opponent. Joe Biden is no Mr. Excitement, but neither did he carry the loads of negative baggage of Hillary Clinton in 2016. The lucky, basically party-anointed, survivor of a rather weak slate of Democratic candidates, Biden turned out to be virtually tone-perfect for America’s long, frustrating and fatiguing slog with Covid-19, seasoned with dollops of social unrest. The Trump team banked on the economy trumping the pandemic, thus his obsession with getting everything opened back up… and football being played. And the Republicans were counting on strength trumping compassion and empathy with voters. Trump would continue to play the tough guy, the “law and order” president, standing against the “extreme left.” Indeed, that very formula played very well with his base, which, true to form, preferred myth over reality, their own selfishness over the general welfare. Trump would go on to expand his turnout by 11 million votes over 2016. But Biden did much better, besting Hillary’s (larger) total by 15 million, taking over 51 percent of the popular vote to Trump’s 47 percent. If few Americans were elated with Biden as a candidate, at least he seemed likable, while a lot more Americans were sick of Trump than loved him.
So there was absolutely zero actual basis for Trump to proclaim that only an election which rewarded him could be considered legitimate. Trump lost because a majority of Americans found him reprehensible… which he, objectively, is. Those supporters who swallowed down his victory-is-assured-unless-stolen boast took a hook without a worm. Like their Dear Leader, they have not a shred of factual evidence to support such a wild and outlandish claim. Yet they whine like it is a true as tempered steel.
Trump and his team made one other crucial mistake. Or was it a mistake? Perhaps, contrary to Trump’s pronouncements of certain victory, and facing annihilation according to polls, they knew it was the only strategy that could possibly win for him. They disparaged mail-in votes, and encouraged their voters to vote in person. Why would anyone be so stupid as to suggest this? Voting by mail is so much easier and more opportune… weeks of voting instead of standing in lines for hours on one day in November weather. Why not attempt to maximize your turnout by urging mailed-in votes… like the Democrats were doing?
Well, there could be two reasons. First, and here is where the treason actually begins in earnest, it would be quite advantageous to suggest that your base not vote by mail if your concurrent plan is to cripple the Post Office. This the Trump administration tried hard to do… but got caught at it and stymied; the anticipated damage never completed.
Second, if you are pretty sure you are going to lose the election outright, an excellent plan to scream that something is very fishy afterward would be to be well ahead in the vote count, especially in those all-important battleground states, as election day turns into election night, and then be in position to continue to cast aspersion upon all those “illegal” mail-in votes. Subsequently, you would be in position to petition election officials and/or judges to annul all mail-in votes (the majority of which would have come from supporters of your opponent). If this proposed explanation seems overly cynical, it is useful to note that in the Georgia senate run-off campaign to come this January, which the Republicans fully expect to win, they are urging their voters to vote by mail, not in-person, the precise opposite of Trump’s exhortations for the general election.
Cynical or not, this situation is exactly what happened. Trump’s horde of in-person voters swelled his early lead, as those votes are generally counted first. By nightfall on November 3, Trump was well ahead in most of the battleground states, having already won big prizes Florida and Texas, which polls had suggested might be in play. They weren’t; Trump won them easily. Republicans were giddy, believing that this was exactly what was supposed to happen, Democrats deflated and flabbergasted, certain that this was precisely what was not supposed to happen. Perhaps only political wonks had been listening as analysts for months had predicted that this could very well happen… a big Trump lead followed by a slow but steady winnowing away of his margins as the overwhelmingly Democratic mail-in tide swept forth.
Yet, that very night, right on cue for this pre-scripted scenario, Trump declared victory…. with millions upon millions of mail-in votes yet to be counted. This would be equivalent to a football coach proclaiming his team the game’s winner at halftime.
The next day, with the writing on the wall, the Trump legal team jumped into action, first attempting to stop the counting in states and counties where Trump still held a lead. That effort failed entirely. No state or county stopped counting legal votes that would continue to come in for several days but postmarked by election day. Then, as Biden took the lead in various locales and states, the Trump legal team exhorted recounts and demanded that mail-in ballots were rife with fraud and should be excluded from counts. They opened a web of lawsuits in all six major battleground states. They claimed that their representatives were not allowed to monitor the counting, which was false. They claimed that they had “hundreds” of signed affidavits witnessing illegalities and “irregularities;” not a single one of these was recognized by a court as credible. They claimed that dead people voted, which was false. They claimed that people were voting in the wrong state, which was false. They claimed that illegal aliens were voting, which was false. They again and again sought to have mail-in ballots disqualified; every court laughed at them.
By Saturday after election day, a high percentage of the votes had been counted and the television networks (including Fox News) proclaimed Biden president-elect. The Trump legal team doubled down on disinformation, and encouraged a “Million MAGA March” (for which some 50,000, at most, showed up) in Washington D.C. of Trump supporters protesting the “stolen election.” Pundits in the conservative media railed against this “Democratic treachery.” The Fox News news anchors were blasted for telling the truth, while channels such as One America and NewsMax rose in prominence by delivering the fake news conservatives so love to swallow down.
For his part, Trump hid from public view (though golfing each day, continuing his record-setting number of golf outings, this after promising, as president, he would be working too hard to ever have time for golf like Obama, whom he criticized for golfing too much… Trump has now golfed more in four years than Obama did in eight). He did continue his drone about the election being stolen, millions of illegal votes, completely rigged by the Democrats. The biggest heist in American history, this, mind you, from the Democrats, that “unorganized” political party as described by Will Rogers, and right under the noses of Republicans who held power in the White House, the Justice Department, the Senate, the Supreme Court, even in Republican states, no less! Quite an achievement! If only Democrats were a zillionth as capable as Republicans blame them.
Terrified of Trump’s rabid base, which had just come forth in the second-largest wave in American history, Republican senator, Republican congressperson, conservative talking-head, basically all Republicans, rallied around Trump’s conspiracy theories. Most of them half-or-less-heartedly, true, but not noticeably absent from the partisan fray. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell provided cover by insisting that Trump had “every right” to pursue all legal angles to contest the election results. But does he really? With no actual evidence of fraud provided, a candidate has the legal right to finagle — one way or another — the repudiation of an election? That’s not in the Constitution. If it’s legal, it shouldn’t be. Why is it always conservatives who so often push and probe right up against the margins of legality and sometimes well into never-been-done-before-who-knows-if-it’s-legal territory? As with so many things conservatives do, if the very same thing were done against them they would howl bloody murder! When William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, ordered the FBI to investigate these allegations of fraud, a dangerous corner was turned. Like any law enforcement agency, the FBI can, if it wants, invent “evidence” with impunity. Thankfully, the actual FBI agents sent to investigate were not of the nefarious ilk; they came back with no evidence. Which — who would have ever expected? — was exactly the amount of evidence Trump’s 2017 election fraud commission discovered. Remember that?
Meanwhile, incredible pressure was building upon Republican election officials to “do something” (as Trump fumed) to reverse the vote totals in their counties and states. No less than Lindsey Graham, high ranking Republican senator and chair of the judiciary committee, tried hard to wrench Republican officials in Georgia to flip the count. Trump meddled with Georgia, as well, lambasting the Republican governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state. He put in calls to multiple county officials trying to probe what they might be willing to do to help him win where he had lost, and brought two Michigan state lawmakers to the White House to try to tempt them into refusing to certify Biden’s win there. Concurrently, he apparently got to two Wayne County, Michigan (home of Detroit, with a large African American vote) canvassers, who after speaking to Trump wanted to rescind their votes to certify the county’s vote (but, too late). As the legal fight continued, the Trump base showed, again, its ugly side: many local officials received death threats if they did not find a way to throw the election for Trump.
There was a trickle of Republican push-back from on high. Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski publicly stated, “President Trump has had the opportunity to litigate his claims, and the courts have thus far found them without merit. A pressure campaign on state legislators to influence the electoral outcome is not only unprecedented but inconsistent with our democratic process.” Pennsylvania Republican senator Pat Toomey called Trump’s legal assault, “completely unacceptable.” Perhaps the strongest was from Utah senator, Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, who blasted Trump. “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President. Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election.”
Romney’s is a rather concise summary.
These few powerful Republican figures showed some courage in debunking the president and bulk of his party. But there was greater heroism on the Republican side. A “thin red line” of Republican officials, and Republican-appointed judges, stood up for democracy in the face of an ominous threat from within their own ideology. Despite the withering “friendly fire” coming from Republican ranks, these officials kept counting, kept re-counting, and accepted the results… as democracy demands. When the Trump legal challenges went to court, judges, including conservative judges, demanded proof. When wild claims but no proof were offered, they threw out the cases… as justice demands. Bravo to these true defenders of America!
Without them, we could be embroiled in Civil War right about… now! Liberals and moderates are nice people… unlike conservatives, we believe in peace and love, but we aren’t going to stand for an outright coup. The military, too, like these principled Republican officials, would stand for the Constitution, for American ideals… and the conservative treason would be crushed in short order, but not, perhaps, without many lives lost.
This is the outcome that Donald Trump risked, and that the bulk of the Republican Party seemed either eager for, or terrified to speak against. That’s the very definition of a hostile hijacking of government by a totalitarian force. What is not clearly evident to everyone is how close they came. The coup might have succeeded, if only temporarily. If there had been fewer battleground states involved, if Trump had bribed a few more corrupt officials or “imperial presidency” judges, if the thin red line had been less stalwart, and an American election — in which 80 million citizens voted to fire the president — might have been overthrown.
As of this writing, December 5, 2020, Trump is still pursuing his “legal options” to overthrow an American election. And it would be un-Trumpian of him to do anything else. After all, he has millions more donations to pry from his supporters as he coasts toward cheated exile, through which he can continue to bait (and cash in on) his base and plot his come-back in 2024. Just today he showed up in Georgia for a rally to support the two Georgia Republican senators who each face Democrats in a January 5 runoff election. The stakes are high; if the two Democrats win, they will control the Senate. While in Georgia, Trump mostly railed about his election grievances and, again, berated the governor for not finding a way to roll back Biden’s surprise victory in the Peach State, now demanding that the governor convene the Georgia legislature and award the formerly safely red state’s electoral votes to him. The governor has fired back that Trump’s claims of fraud are a “myth,” and that his demands are “outlandish.”
Trump doesn’t give a damn what civil war he starts; he would actually like that because it’s always just all about him. Others share his rage and disregard for democracy. Disgraced (but recently pardoned) general Michael Flynn is among a coterie of notables (including Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Mark Levin, Dan Bongino, Jim Caviezel, Sidney Powell and others of such conspiracy theory ilk) urging an immediate “We the People Convention,” which will invoke martial law and demand a new election! There you have a glimpse of the fascist tendencies of conservatism in full authoritative displeasure that its “natural” advantage, privilege and power is not being served and obeyed.
This has been an egregious, indeed treasonous, stunt by a third-rate, out-of-control dictator wannabe and the mob of cult-like followers to whom he represents a staunch defender of their advantage, privilege and power. It should remain — forever — a cautionary tale that such banana republic hijinks can and will occur in America, too, so long as this toxic mode of conservatism prospers. Our country currently remains in peril. Despite Trump’s imminent removal from our White House, Trumpist selfishness still boils across America. Another Trump is rising in some American state right now. The next may be far worse than this one, more tasteful, smarter, more dangerous. One thing for sure, he or she will be conservative. The Republican Party may be irredeemable. The momentum in that woebegone party is of the malicious mind; the thin red line most likely an anachronism soon to be expunged by Gingrich-Tea Party-McConnell-Trumpist zealots just as were the now extinct “liberal” and the highly endangered “moderate” Republican. History would do well to remember that thin red line, for in this great trial these patriots rose to do something conservatives hardly ever do: conserve what really should be conserved. In this case, American democracy.
Copyright 2020 Rusty Reid
POSTSCRIPT: May, 2021
That “thin red line” of conscientious, law-abiding Republican state election officials who actually believe (at least partially) in American democracy, is being intentionally sabotaged and severed. As of this writing 47 states have laws being introduced to their legislatures which will make it harder for likely Democrats to vote, while also empowering state representatives and senators, governors, attorneys general and other officials, including election “poll watchers,” to harass, block and even override voting tallies in their states. In other words, if these shocking measures pass, what Republicans tried, and failed, to do in 2020 because, well, it was illegal and undemocratic, will remain undemocratic, but now will be legal: overturning election results they don’t like.
Their rationale for voter suppression is deceitful. It is to prevent “voter fraud.” There is no systemic “voter fraud” in American elections. Republicans have desperately been trying to find it for decades. They have utterly failed. They have produced no proof whatsoever of systemic voter fraud. In 2020 judges — even some appointed by Trump — threw out their flimsy cases due to absolutely zero evidence.
But the effort to thwart votes, once cast is far worse, lacking even the pretense of a rationale. It is turning American justice on its head. Cancelling the votes of thousands, or tens of thousands, is the Devil’s plan. It is evil, plain and simple. By wild gerrymandering, voter suppression and now this blatant effort to make it legal to overturn an election they don’t like, the only party trying to “steal” elections is Republicans, themselves.
Not all 47 of these states are likely to enact these laws, but enough red states could, which would render future elections threatened by deeply troubling betrayal of American values, indeed, treason. If this happens, anywhere, Republicans will have declared war on American democracy. Civil war. Blood will flow. Perhaps rivers of blood. Just like in that other Civil War, which conservatives brazenly, stupidly, selfishly, brought upon themselves.
Beware conservatives. You are treading across the starkest of lines. You are courting catastrophe. You are contemplating the suicide of your party, and perhaps the United States of America. Does your selfishness and malevolence really have no bottom? Are you even capable of shame? Is there no truth you will not murder? Or does your obsession with “conserving” your own advantage, privilege and power override all that is noble in this world?
Despite what you think, you have a pretty cushy place in this LIBERAL democracy. Poison it at your own peril. The culture you actually destroy will be your own! You will be held accountable… as an American traitor.
