As the World Moves On, Republicans Continue to Prostitute Themselves to Trump

A majority of Americans and much of the free world gave a huge cry of relief - or in some cases openly celebrated in the streets as church bells rang out across western Europe - as Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020  presidential elections. Many had the feeling that America is back from the brink and the last four years of nightmare and the endless normalization of the immoral and unacceptable is thankfully drawing to a close.  The world is poised to move on.  Sadly, the vast majority of Republicans are not.  Worse yet, most continue to prostitute themselves and engage in the equivalent of political fellatio to Trump.  Seemingly, they have more fear of Trump and his base of deplorables than the reality that each election cycle will become more challenging for them, particularly if they remain tied to Trump and his open racism.   Few have had the courage to call out Trump's lies and disgusting figurse like Lindsey Graham, a/k/a Lady G and/or the Palmetto Queen, have pledge money to Trump's baseless lawsuits challenging the election results.  One can only hope these spineless and amoral individuals - who underscore the moral bankruptcy of today's GOP - pay a high price down the road. A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the world's reaction in contrast to the political whores in the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Leaders from around the world offered statements congratulating President-elect Joe Biden over the weekend, messages acknowledging the results of the election that President Donald Trump refuses to concede. Many foreign officials embraced the outcome as a return to cooperation and stability with the United States—relations that Trump has spent much of his presidency dismantling.

Many leaders embraced Biden’s election as a symbolic end to Trump’s “America First” mentality, a go-it-alone strategy that has been a particular source of concern during the pandemic. Amid calls for urgent global cooperation, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus congratulated Biden, who has promised to rejoin the organization, in a Sunday tweet. As the Post notes, leaders of other international institutions against which Trump has leveled attacks, such as NATO and the European Union, also cited the need for enhanced cooperation in their congratulatory messages.

Despite the swaths of foreign officials accepting Biden’s triumph over Trump, many Republicans have not. Most senior Republican lawmakers have abstained from issuing statements congratulating Biden, as is customary among leaders on both sides of the aisle after a presidential election is called. The silence follows Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s lead. As the New York Times reported, the top Senate Republican was unwilling to even acknowledge Biden’s triumph on Saturday, instead directing reporters, via an aide, to a broad statement he made on Friday calling for “every legal vote” to count. The assertion was posted on Twitter in the midst of Trump’s dangerous lies about election fraud, baseless allegations that McConnell did not directly address. 

In addition to those who have gone silent since Biden hit 270, a number of senior Republicans have publicly cast doubt on the results and suggested that legal action, which the Trump campaign is pursuing to contest votes in several battleground states, could shift the outcome.

Representative Steve Scalise tweeted, adding that the “American people deserve a fair and transparent process.” Florida Senator Marco Rubio said the media “don’t get to decide if claims of broken election laws & irregularities are true” and suggested Trump’s post-election litigation blitz has merit, despite there being no evidence of the president’s voter fraud claims.

Senator Josh Hawley, too, attacked the media and amplified Trump’s refusal to accept defeat on Saturday. “The media do not get to determine who the president is. The people do.

The few Republicans who have congratulated Biden include those who were previously willing to contradict [Trump] the president or, as the Times notes, who are not running for reelection, such as Representative Will Hurd, a Texas Republican who is retiring. Senator Mitt Romney, the party’s most vocal Trump critic, extended his congratulations in a tweet that embraced Biden by his new title, as did Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Romney appeared on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, where he called for the nation to “get behind the new president” and warned against Trump’s attempt to undermine the integrity of the election results. “It's destructive to the cause of democracy to suggest widespread fraud or corruption. There's just no evidence of that at this stage,” Romney told host Jake Tapper. “And I think it's important for us to recognize that the world is watching.”

For a party that once bloviated constantly the "character counts," most Republicans now make clear that they have no character - at least not of the positive sort - and are really just as immoral as Trump himself.  One cannot support someone immoral and then try to feign morality.  You simply cannot have it both ways.