Republicans "have resorted to offering one shabby excuse after another for the president's conduct." [View all]

[kpete]

Disgrace after Defeat
By RICH LOWRY
& RAMESH PONNURU

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His post-election argument this time has been a magnified version of past practice. He has shown even more of the indifference to the Constitution, the rule of law, and simple logical consistency that has marked his political career. He claims to be defending the integrity of U.S. elections, even as he demands that state legislatures ignore the laws they have passed and judges ignore federal statutory deadlines concerning the appointment of electors. His lawyers, meanwhile, advance half-baked theories that would enable state governments to use federal courts to interfere with one another’s election procedures: something that has never before been done, or really even contemplated.

The failure of this post-election campaign has not made it costless. Trump has encouraged millions of voters to believe that their votes do not count toward election results. He has sent them on a hunt for participants in a nonexistent conspiracy against the public. He has directed scorn and rage at state officials, including Republi­cans who backed him loyally, whose sin has been to follow the law instead of indulging him. And he has set a terrible precedent for future elections, especially ones that turn out closer than this one did.

Republicans who have not been willing to parrot his claim of a landslide victory have generally not contradicted it, either. Instead they have resorted to offering one shabby excuse after another for the president’s conduct. They say, for example, that he has every right to make his case in court, a claim that runs against decades of more sensible statements from Republicans about the evils of frivolous litigation. A president ought to have less leeway to abuse the courts than a fast-food patron scalded by hot coffee.

Or they say that Trump and his supporters have raised important questions. In many cases that is an ex­tremely charitable assessment: There is no important or even interesting question about Hugo Chávez’s ability to manipulate vote totals from the grave, for example. In other cases, the questioners refuse to listen to the answers. Take the widely broadcast claim that turnout in Milwaukee jumped suspiciously from 71 percent in 2012, when Obama was on the ticket, to 85 percent with Biden this year. The Republican National Committee spread that one — and didn’t correct the record when it was shown that turnout in 2012 was actually 87 percent, and therefore hadn’t risen at all. The lawsuits don’t merely ask questions, anyway: They request action, typically in the form of throwing out the ballots of thousands of law-abiding voters.
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