It should be fairly easy for Republicans to acknowledge that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t stolen. Apparently, it’s more difficult for some than others.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana is the most recent prominent Republican seemingly unable to state the obvious. When pressed by Fox News’s Chris Wallace, Scalise repeatedly pivoted to talking about states that did not follow their own election laws. This obviously was a problem, but it deliberately and dishonestly dodges the question “Was the 2020 election stolen?”
The answer to that is simple: “No.”
You can acknowledge that it was a very real problem that states, as Scalise puts it, “didn’t follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president.” But trying to address that while playing coy about the question of whether the election was “stolen” will only make the problem worse, not better. Former President Donald Trump poisoned any conversation about election laws. The more Republicans indulge Trump’s fantasy, the more they surrender credibility.
And this is going to be an ongoing problem. Trump is still pretending he didn’t lose in embarrassing fashion to the miserable candidate-turned horrendous president Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Democrats have made tying the GOP to Trump’s trutherism their main campaign strategy. They did it during the California recall, and they are doing it now in the race for governor of Virginia.
Even if Republicans don’t care for the morality of this question (they should), it is also counterproductive. Yes, Democrats have spent the last two decades delegitimizing elections they’ve lost. They also have all of the cultural influence to shrug it away — to the point that Georgia loser Stacey Abrams is considered a reliable voice on voting laws and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe can tie his GOP opponent to Trump even though McAuliffe himself still won’t say that the 2000 presidential election wasn’t stolen.
The more this mindset gains ground in the GOP, the more it helps Democrats. It will give Republicans who run mediocre campaigns, as Trump did, a pass because they can claim losing isn’t their fault. It will give Democrats power, as it did when Trump persuaded GOP voters in Georgia not to bother voting in the Senate runoffs. And it will make necessary election reforms more difficult to push forward, as Democrats point to Trump while shrugging off their own election conspiracy theories.
This is not a difficult question morally, strategically, or factually. The election was not stolen. Trump lost. And the GOP is only going to make things more difficult for itself if it refuses to stamp out this delusion.
