Republicans avow the absurd

The party is treating Trump like an untouchable dictator

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

If you've been watching Donald Trump and his quislings pretend that they won the 2020 election and are wondering what exactly is going on, you're not alone. It's an unprecedented, if ham-fisted, siege of America's democratic institutions, one last way for this dreadful person to psychologically abuse a majority of the American people before he exits stage far-right. Over the course of the past week, I've cycled chaotically between thinking that the attempted putsch being staged in front of an exhausted world is a laughable farce and worrying that it might actually work if they can get the right people in positions of power to go along with it.

The guess here is still that Trump's Keystone Coup will fail. He trails Joe Biden by nearly 5.6 million votes and counting in the national popular vote, and has lost the Electoral College 306 to 232 — the precise inverse of Trump's 2016 victory. While his lawyers are keeping everyone super busy filing one piece of frivolous litigation after another, they are getting laughed out of courtrooms across the land by increasingly irritated judges. The sordid escapades of the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his friends will likely result in more disbarments than changed votes. It is only a matter of time before the results are certified in the pivotal states, leaving the Trump campaign just one last way to stay in power — a constitutionally preposterous scheme to have Republican state legislatures in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin set aside the clear results of the election and choose Trump's electors to be counted in the Senate on Jan. 6.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.