State Republicans continue to break with Trump, while those in Congress remain silent
It was a tale of two realities in Georgia this weekend.
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a young, ambitious Republican, told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday that “mountains of misinformation” from allies of President Donald Trump alleging large-scale voter fraud in the presidential election were hurting GOP efforts in the runoff elections for US Senate. Hours later one of those Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler, continued to offer lip service to Trump’s baseless claims.
“It’s very clear that there were issues in this election,” Loeffler said during a debate Sunday night when pressed about the President’s continuing legal fights to overturn the results.
The contrast illustrates a growing rift inside the Republican Party, between those who are willing to call out Trump on his baseless attempts to overturn the election results, and those who aren’t. It’s been state officials — governors, lieutenant governors, and secretaries of state — who have been the most outspoken, not only in acknowledging Biden’s victory, but also in pointing out the damage Trump’s false narrative is doing.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress, typically among the standard-bearers of the party, have largely been silent, save for a few exceptions. And it’s unclear whether those on Capitol Hill are going along with Trump for short-term political reasons or because they actually agree with him.
Regardless, Republicans in Congress have had the luxury of ignoring many of the facts on the ground, while their state-level party colleagues have had little choice but to accede to the rules and laws governing elections in their states.
“It’s different if you’re making calculations from the sidelines versus having actual power to determine or at least affirm the outcome,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist.
The rift provides a window into the cracks and discord that could play out inside the Republican Party post-Trump. State-level leaders have been increasingly vocal in defending the results — in part because the responsibility for conducting elections falls on them. For governors and their fellow state officers, reaffirming the integrity of the elections is a matter of preservation of law-and-order but also their own long-term political legitimacy.
But the political considerations for congressional Republicans cut differently, given the most immediate goal is the defense of the party’s majority in the Senate. Holding onto Georgia’s two Senate seats means maximizing Republican turnout on January 5, which requires keeping the party’s most reliable motivator, Trump, happy. And for the time being, there’s little members of Congress can actually do to affect the outcome of the race — barring a successful long-shot bid in the House of Representatives to overturn the presidential election — except to agitate.
“Count all legal votes”
The majority of Hill Republicans have maintained a vague openness to Trump’s legal strategy by adopting a message to “count all the legal votes.” The phrase is open to interpretation: unobjectionable to any citizen on its face but a signal of validation to Trump and his supporters.
Rick Scott, the Florida senator and new chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, gave voice to this in an interview with CNN last month.
“My goal is: count all the legal votes [and] get through the legal process as quickly as you can,” said Scott. “Let’s get a result. And then we’ve got to accept the results.”
Scott has been among those Republican senators who have suggested December 14 as an end-point for their tolerance for Trump’s shenanigans. In a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana refused to recognize Biden’s win but did indicate the end might be close.
“I think we’ve got a threshold coming on December 14th when the Electoral College meets,” Braun said while warning against dismissing allegations of fraud, although there is no evidence of widespread fraud in this election.
“So long as they’re bystanders, they just keep their heads down,” said Donovan. “Which is probably the best move, politically.”
But for the most extreme flank of the party, the fight doesn’t end on December 14. Asked if Trump should concede after the Electoral College vote, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said bluntly: “No. No way, no way, no way.”
“We should still try to figure out exactly what took place here. And as I said that includes I think debates on the House floor — potentially on January 6,” Jordan, a trusted Trump confidante, told CNN.
“That’s a ways away,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and another close Trump ally, said when asked if Trump should concede after next week. “There are members who believe there could be value in having substantive debate of what occurred in states with substantial irregularities. I don’t believe that 10 hours of debate on that subject would impair the union.”
Acknowledging reality
The tone in Republican-controlled state capitals has been markedly different. As the recounts and legal disputes have confirmed Biden’s victory in key swing states, governors and other state officials have ramped up the defense of the election. This, despite the fact that Trump has trained his rhetorical fire on them instead of Republicans in Washington
While some of these GOP politicians, like Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, were already vocally opposed to Trump, many of the other Republicans contradicting Trump are avowed supporters of the President.
Geoff Duncan, for instance, told Jake Tapper Sunday that he supported and campaigned for Trump. So did Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia who has faced the brunt of the President’s anger on Twitter. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal Monday that largely accused media outlets of encouraging distrust of close elections, Raffensperger reiterated his defense of the Georgia election as “the most secure” and with “no evidence of widespread voter fraud and no significant issues with absentee ballots.”
“Confidence has been undermined by politicians and pundits who tacitly or explicitly refuse to acknowledge their losses and receive a megaphone from sympathetic media outlets,” Raffensperger wrote.
Republican governors in Biden states have also stuck with the formalized results of their elections. Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona responded to attacks from Trump last week with a series of tweets of his own defending the state’s election certification process.
And Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who owes much of his political success to aligning with Trump, has resisted direct pressure from the President as recently as this weekend to revisit the results there.
Even GOP state legislators have stood up to pressure from the President’s allies to get involved. A group of Republican lawmakers from Michigan who were brought into the White House for a meeting with Trump last month amid calls that the state’s GOP-controlled legislature overturn the popular vote and instead submit a pro-Trump slate of electors. Those lawmakers expressed no interest in the harebrained scheme following their conversation with the President.
“We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election,” Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield said in a joint statement after their November 20 meeting with the President.
To be sure, some Republican officials in states he won have remained loyal to the President on the “election fraud” narrative. Politico reported that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has continued encouraging Trump to “fight” even as he concedes the campaign’s legal efforts are likely to be unsuccessful.
But on the other hand, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a state Trump won handily and where he remains a popular figure with Republicans there, insisted early on that the President needed to accept defeat.
“I think that we need to consider the former vice president as the President-elect. Joe Biden is the President-elect,” DeWine told CNN’s John Berman on November 12.
