Trump's Would Be VP's Do Not Stand for Democracy

As Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York City moves along, voters should have two takeaways: (i)  Donald Trump is the embodiment of sleaze and moral bankruptcy, and (ii) everything Trump does involves endless lies and untruths.  These takeaways ought to particularly hard hitting for evangelicals, but alas those who screeched about "character matter" in the context of Bill Clinton have embraced Trump as their golden calf to worship.  Clearly, to MAGA cultists and Republicans prostituting themselves to Trump, character indeed no longer matters, nor do the truth and decency.  All that matters is believing/supporting Trump's "big lie" and  every instance of hate speech Trump endlessly utters.  The current parade of would be candidates for a second Trump term Vice President underscores the need to embrace lies and moral bankruptcy to remain in Trump's narcissistic good graces. The days when the Republican Party had members of Congress who put their nation first are dead and gone with no sign of returning anytime soon, especially as long as Trump draws breath. Sadly, the damage Trump and his accomplices have wrought will haunt the country for many years.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the parade of craven political prostitutes: 

Don’t say they didn’t warn us. If Donald Trump loses again to Joe Biden in November, the attempt by MAGA Republicans to overturn the result — in essence, to negate the will of the voters — could be even worse than last time.

Trump’s denial of his 2020 defeat has had a deeply corrosive effect on our democracy, with a majority of Republicans still deluded into believing the election was stolen. The damage might be ameliorated if prominent GOP officials, who do know better, at least expressed confidence in the democratic process and pledged to accept the outcome of this year’s vote, no matter who wins.

Surely, that’s not too much to ask of men and women who owe their jobs to the same electoral system that Trump claims is hopelessly corrupt. Right?

Wrong. Witness the pathetic performance by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Host Kristen Welker tried six times to get Scott to say, yes or no, whether he would accept the result of the November election. Scott refused to give an answer.

Scott’s evasiveness is understandable because he is auditioning to be Trump’s running mate, but it is not excusable. He knows that cases of proven voter fraud — or even formally alleged voter fraud — are vanishingly rare. He knows that recounts and audits consistently show that votes are tallied accurately. He knows that all the conspiracy theories about the 2020 election spun by MAGA fabulists such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell have been proved utterly false and, in some cases, expensively defamatory. Still, with his nonanswers, the senator undermines the legitimacy of U.S. democracy.

Other Republicans hoping to be Trump’s vice-presidential choice have been equally shameless.

All of this could be written off as nothing more than politicians being craven — hardly a new phenomenon — if not for the damage it does. A sobering study released last month by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University found that 62 percent of Republicans and 22 percent of independents believe Trump was the “legitimate” winner in 2020. Hardly any Democrats share that view.

Those “deniers” add up to about one-third of voters overall. If that much of the electorate believes a presidential election was stolen — despite multiple recounts and dozens of court cases proving it was not — we have a serious problem.

The strong viewpoints that deniers hold, and the distinctive identity that they have formed, demonstrate that reviving our democracy will require more than any given result at the ballot box, or providing accurate information to voters on how the election process works. It will require a functioning, responsible conservative party that still believes in democracy.”

No such party now exists in U.S. politics. And for that failing, Trump is only partly responsible.

No one is forcing Republicans such as Scott, Burgum, Stefanik and Donalds to pretend to believe Trump’s lies. No one is forcing them to weaken faith in our elections. Whatever happens in the days and weeks after Election Day, many leading Republicans deserve to share the blame.