Last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference revealed an obsession with conspiracy theories that undermine the public’s faith in our democratic process. Not only that, but the event highlighted and promoted those who supported former President Donald Trump’s false narrative that he won the 2020 election, which he again floated repeatedly in his speech on Sunday. Absent were those who drew a line in the sand and put the U.S. Constitution before partisan politics, such as Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Sen. Tim Scott, Gov. Doug Ducey, Gov. Brian Kemp, former Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Sen. Marco Rubio.
Over the course of the four-day event, CPAC held seven sessions on “election integrity.” Every one of these sessions existed to push the false and widely debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. This is dangerous.
If CPAC is a sign of things to come, it’s a perilous one — not only for the long-term political viability of the GOP but for the health of the nation.
For decades, the Republican Party has believed that the best government is that which is closest to the people. Often, state and local governments, which can pass laws tailored to the unique needs and wants of their constituents, govern more effectively than the federal government.
We undermine our identity as a party that protects state sovereignty when we argue that state-certified electoral results should be tossed out by a vote in Congress or, worse, by a wave of former Vice President Mike Pence’s hand.
Despite all that will be said in the coming days to fan the flames, the 2020 election was not rigged or stolen. Election returns were certified, independently, by representatives in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. State and federal courts have repeatedly reviewed charges of widespread electoral malfeasance, finding none. In more than 60 legal cases, courts across the country, including judges appointed by Trump, heard and roundly rejected challenges to the 2020 election.
No election is perfect, but Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, acknowledged, “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
And yet the charge, on the Right, is fast becoming an article of faith. Encouraged by the former president and his allies, millions of people still refuse to accept that the election was conducted fairly. According to a recent national poll by Quinnipiac University, three in four Republicans and one in three independents believed there was “widespread fraud” in November.
Those statistics should send a shiver down the spine of every person. By refusing to accept the results of the election, Trump supporters appear to be questioning the very foundation of our democratic republic.
As we saw with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, such thinking leads to violence. And if the disinformation campaign surrounding the 2020 election continues unchallenged, we could see more.
Republicans should stop their crusade against the 2020 election — not just because it’s wrong and dangerous, but also because it’s bad politics.
As we saw in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections, accusations of election fraud are kryptonite for turnout. At a rally in December for then-Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Trump made the self-defeating argument that the runoff would be rigged. If people don’t think their vote will count, they won’t vote. And they didn’t — at least, not in sufficient numbers. Across the state, Republican turnout sagged. According to an analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, most of the 752,000 general election voters who failed to turn out for the runoff were white, and many hailed from rural, Trump-friendly areas.
Perpetuating the myth of election fraud could drag the Republican Party into an electoral death spiral. If our voters distrust the system enough to sit out elections, we’ll continue to lose. Getting caught in such a cycle could trap the Republican Party, at least at the national level, in the minority for a generation.
That harm is not inevitable. Our party still has time to reject the myth of massive election fraud and chart a course toward political viability. You didn’t hear them on the CPAC stage this year, but principled Republican leaders will continue to speak the truth about the 2020 election.
For our party’s sake, for our country’s sake, we must listen.
Weston Wamp is the founder of the Millennial Debt Foundation and the host of Issue One’s Swamp Stories podcast.
