ORLANDO, Florida — The three-legged stool of Republican politics is getting a fourth leg as conservatives respond to former President Donald Trump’s November defeat with sharp demands for election reform legislation.
For a generation, Republican ideology has been defined by three legs that are generally sacrosanct in primaries: social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, and backing a strong national defense. In the wake of Trump’s ouster by President Biden, what Republicans describe as “election integrity” is emerging as a fourth leg of the stool. Most Republican voters are convinced that Biden’s victory was fraudulent; they are clamoring for the party to lead efforts to secure elections through the implementation of voting restrictions.
At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, the alarm about the electoral process on the Right is evident in the gathering’s agenda. More than a half-dozen speeches and panels that address election security are on the docket. Matt Schlapp, CPAC’s organizer, said a top priority of the four-day conference is mobilizing grassroots opposition to HR 1. The legislation, unveiled by House Democrats, would both add national election regulations and liberalize access to voting.
“HR 1 would basically take the worst things that happened in states during the election and turn them into national law,” said Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, the group that puts on CPAC every year.
In a new survey from Echelon Insights, a GOP polling firm, 64% of Republicans said they were “concerned” about election fraud, with 50% saying they were “extra concerned” and 18% saying they were “somewhat concerned.”
TRUMP SET TO DOMINATE CPAC, WHILE WOULD-BE 2024 RIVALS LABOR FOR ATTENTION
For the most part, the Constitution leaves the running of elections to the states. But under HR 1, dubbed the “For the People Act,” the federal government would impose a series of regulations, forcing states to abide by national rules related to voter registration, early in-person voting, and voting by mail. For instance, states would be compelled to offer Election Day voter registration for federal contests, hold 15 days of early voting, and reduce restrictions on mail-in voting.
Many states implemented similar changes to their electoral processes voluntarily in 2020 because of the coronavirus.
Republicans, claiming key states that decided the election did so contrary to state and constitutional law, say such measures led to massive fraud and delivered Biden an illegitimate victory. Their desire to clamp down on presumed malfeasance is so strong that even in Florida and Iowa, states Trump won that Republicans previously lauded for running honest elections, they are moving bills through the legislature that would create new hurdles to voting.
The Republican National Committee, under Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, recently formed an internal panel to address concerns about state election law and is working with Republicans in the states to push for changes.
In the weeks after the Nov. 3 presidential election, the Trump campaign argued in multiple states, in state and federal court, that there was fraud significant enough that the 45th president would have been reelected otherwise. In more than 60 cases, the courts ruled against Trump. This week, the Supreme Court declined to hear the remaining cases left over from before Biden was inaugurated.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Democrats say the Republicans’ subsequent push to overhaul election law in the states is an extension of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump received 74.2 million votes, more than any incumbent president in history. But Biden garnered 81.3 million, and Democrats say Republicans are moving to restrict access to voting out of fear that if more people vote, they will become less viable in national elections.
Since 1988, the Republican presidential nominee has won the national popular vote just once, in 2004, when George W. Bush was reelected.
