Anyone who has seen a dog chase a car can understand congressional Republican efforts to challenge Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.
I don’t mean only that if the dog catches the auto, things will go a lot worse for the canine attacker than for its prey, although that is the case. The car will continue on its course undisturbed — the dog, not so much. That’s why dogs shy away if they get close. The chase is for show.
Similarly, most Republicans on Capitol Hill objecting to Biden’s win would shy away if they believed they had a chance of succeeding. They don’t want to overturn the election. They just want to seem to want to. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the leading objector in the Senate, has notably refused to say he aims to keep President Trump in the White House. Why? Because that’s not what he is trying to do.
He may be miscalculating, but his intention and that of those with him is, surely, to get through this transition without smashing the Republican Party’s voter base. They don’t want to alienate the GOP’s Trumpiest supporters, so they’re not brushing aside the fantasy that Trump was cheated out of victory by election fraud.
Hawley also has presidential ambitions, and he’s staking a claim to be the heir apparent to Trumpy populism, albeit without its ugliest attributes. He wants to go to primary states in January 2023 wearing the mantle of the MAGA crowd’s defeated hero.
This undeniably contains a measure of cynical calculation, which has drawn sharp criticism not only from left-wing concern trolls advising their political enemy about the colossal strategic or tactical mistake he’s making. Hawley and his fellow objectors have also come in for excoriation from principled conservatives, such as my colleague Tim Carney, who made a well-argued case that they amounted to a “corrupt” and “pathetic loyalty ritual.”
This would be more easily agreed to if the ritual really did put a strain on our constitutional system. But even if conservatives should generally protect historical norms that liberals are constantly eroding, it can’t be an ironclad prohibition. GOP objections are not a real threat. Everyone knows we’re watching congressional Kabuki and that Biden will be inaugurated without a hitch on Jan. 20. No election will be overturned as one was by Democrats in 1985. The Constitution will have functioned smoothly. Hawley will have sent a signal, perhaps a dud, that he’s on the side of the Trumpy base. The country and its politics will move on.
Are such efforts wholly contemptible? Do they deserve the sort of condemnation they are receiving? Is it utterly wrong to use constitutionally prescribed procedures to shore up the Republican voter base while, in truth, not hoping or intending to overturn the democratic election result?
Arguably not. If you believe the United States is better off with Republican than with Democratic government, there is merit in trying to protect Republican chances of winning future elections. It’s easy for those on the Left to work themselves into a lather of principled indignation over this political maneuvering. But if you are a Republican or a conservative and ardently wish to prevent as much expansion of government as the Left threatens, it’s not disgraceful to try and preserve your party’s electoral chances even if the effort temporarily bespatters you with political ordure.
I’m reminded of a discussion years ago at university in which we debated capital punishment, working ourselves into an idealistic foam against judicial killing. Then, a more thoughtful debater said, “It’s easy to be against capital punishment on principle if you’re only a student. But what would you do in government if you actually had responsibility for law and order and the evidence was that capital punishment was an effective deterrent?”
If your choices make a real difference, when you are in a position of concrete responsibility, the proper path ahead is less obvious. The truth, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, is rarely pure and never simple. George Will, than whom few pundits are more respected and sagacious, opined that senators objecting to the election results earned a place at “the children’s table.”
That’s true of some. But waving through Biden’s win is the easier, the purer and simpler, more innocent, and perhaps more childish course of action. Trump has bamboozled millions of supporters into believing his narcissistic claims that he won and was defrauded. One could contemptuously brush aside the concerns of those who’ve been duped. It’s harder, but not meritless, to give a hearing to the concerns of those “deplorables,” then to move on, as we will, into the Biden presidency.
