Republicans Don’t Care About American Democracy

Republicans had little success in teaching their voters to despise and fear Joe Biden like they despised and feared Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Trump’s election fraud lies are doing that work for them now, whipping the base into a frenzy of anger and priming them to regard Biden as the beneficiary of a stolen election.

This is not a plot to steal the 2020 election. [Oh, really?] It is a decades-long campaign to undermine American democracy, which treats Democratic governance as inherently illegitimate.

Republicans played Russian roulette with American democracy by supporting the presidency of an aspirational authoritarian. They’ll continue doing so by supporting his paranoid attacks on the electoral process. The reason they’re willing to weaken American democracy is very simple: They don’t care about democracy.

– Jonathan Chait
Excerpted from “Why Trump and Republicans
Are Plotting to Undermine Democracy”
New York Magazine
November 10, 2020

NEXT: Trump’s Legacy

Related Off-site Links:
Republican-led States Back Trump’s Legal Drive to Challenge Election – Zach Montellaro and Josh Gerstein (Politico, November 9, 2020).
The Next 2020 Election Fight? Convincing Trump’s Supporters That He Lost – Miles Park (NPR News, November 8, 2020).
Trump Is Fundraising for Legal Help Fighting a “Stolen” Election. Nearly All The Money Is Actually Going Elsewhere – Kate Riga (Talking Points Memo, November 10, 2020).
Trump’s Voter Fraud Claims Are a Scam to Pay Off Campaign Debt – Jason Easley (PoliticusUSA, November 8, 2020).
Fox News Cuts White House Press Briefing Repeating Trump’s Baseless U.S. Election Voter Fraud Claims – ABC News (November 9, 2020).
Team of International Observers Says It Saw No Evidence of Systematic Fraud in U.S. Elections – Maria Arias (Axios News, November 10, 2020).
Mary Trump Labels President’s Election Challenges “Attempted Coup” After Biden Win – James Walker (Newsweek, November 10, 2020).
Trump Is Making a Serious Attempt to Hold Onto Power – Fred Kaplan (Slate, November 10, 2020).
Trump Administration Removes Senior Defense Officials and Installs Loyalists, Triggering Alarm at Pentagon – Barbara Starr, Zachary Cohen and Ryan Browne (CNN News, November 10, 2020).
Trump’s Coup Attempt Is Very Real – But There Are Several Gaping Holes in the Plan – Cody Fenwick (AlterNet, November 10, 2020).
Trump Attempting a Coup With Republican Support Doesn’t Have to Work to Be Dangerous – Lucy Diavolo (Teen Vogue, November 10, 2020).
Trump Is Trying to Overturn the Election, But I’m Not Panicking – Yet – Elie Mystal (The Nation, November 10, 2020).
The Republican Party Needs to Be Razed and the Earth Salted Behind It – Kevin Drum (Mother Jones, November 10, 2020).

UPDATES: Not a Coup But a Cover-Up and a Con Game – Jeet Heer (The Nation, November 11, 2020).
Donald Trump's Refusal to Concede Is No Joke – It’s a Dangerous Precedent – Nesrine Malik (The Guardian, November 16, 2020).
Republicans Prove Either Too Deranged or Too Spineless to Take a Stand for Our Democracy – Kerry Eleveld (Daily Kos, November 18, 2020).
GOP Increasingly Accepts Trump’s Defeat – But Not in Public – Jonathan Lemire and Lisa Mascaro (Associated Press News, November 18, 2020).
Trump’s Election Power Play: Persuade Republican Legislators to Do What U.S. Voters Did Not – Michael Martina, Karen Freifeld, and Jarrett Renshaw (Rueters, November 19, 2020).
Could Trump Defy Popular Vote By Halting Voter Certification? – Jessica Lee (Snopes, November 19, 2020).
The Long Odds Facing Trump’s Attempts to Get State Legislatures to Override Election Results – Ian MacDougall (ProPublica, November 20, 2020).
The Coup Stage of Donald Trump’s Presidency – Masha Gessen (The New Yorker, November 20, 2020).
Trump’s Attempt to Steal This Election Is a Fundamental Attack on Our Democracy – Heather Cox Richardson (BillMoyers.com, November 20, 2020).
It’s Time For Everyone to Pick a Side: America or President Trump – Paul Waldman (The New York Times, November 20, 2020).
Here’s the Real Reason Republicans Are All In on Trump’s Attempted Coup – Amanda Marcotte (Salon via AlterNet, November 20, 2020).
When Coups Come Home – Ted Snider (Common Dreams, November 21, 2020).
Tuesday’s Safe Harbor Deadline Is Boost for Biden – Mark Sherman (Associated Press News, December 8, 2020).
In Another Universe, Trump Beat Biden. Millions of Americans Live There – David Knowles (Yahoo! News, December 9, 2020).
As Trump Rails Against Loss, His Supporters Become More Threatening – Nick Corasaniti, Jim Rutenberg and Kathleen Gray (The New York Times via Yahoo! News, December 9, 2020).
The Republican Party Is Now a Seditious Organization – Charles P. Pierce (Salon, December 9, 2020).
More Than Half of House Republicans Sign On to Trump’s Election Coup – Matt Stieb (Intelligencer, December 11, 2020).
Here Are the Names of 126 Members of the House Who Refuse to Accept That Biden Won – Stephanie K. Baer (BuzzFeed, December 11, 2020).
Supreme Court Denies Effort to Block Election Results in Four Key States That Sealed Trump’s Fate – Richard Wolf (USA Today, December 11, 2020).
– Richard Wolf (USA Today, December 11, 2020).
Supreme Court Rejects Texas Suit Seeking to Subvert Election – Nina Totenberg and Barbara Sprunt (NPR News, December 11, 2020).
Relax, A Trump Comeback in 2024 Is Not Going to Happen – John F. Harris (Politico, December 11, 2020).
A Political Obituary for Donald Trump – George Packer (The Atlantic, January/February 2021).
Biden Officially Reaches 270 Electoral College Votes, Further Affirming Election Win – Ursula Perano (Axios News, December 14, 2020).
Judge Rejects Last-Minute Claim That Pence Can Ignore States’ Presidential Electors – Matthew S. Schwartz and Barbara Campbell (NPR News, January 1, 2021).
“It Is Un-American”: Extraordinary Trump Plot Expands as Showdown Looms – Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick (AP News, January 3, 2021).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Trump’s Playbook
• Fascism Is Upon Us
• “We Have an Emergency On Our Hands”: Marianne Williamson On the “Freefall” of American Democracy
• “The Republican Party Has Now Made It Official: They Are a Cult”
• Election Eve Thoughts
• Election Day USA, 2020
• Who Half of Us Are
• Bye Bye

Image: “Trump’s Voter Fraud Machine” by Kevin Siers (The Charlotte Observer).