Can President Trump get enough support from within his own party to pull off a last-minute win?
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Sunday that he supports efforts by Republican lawmakers to challenge Electoral College results when they arrive to be certified by Congress on January 6.
“I think it’s right that we have the debate. I mean, you see now that senators are going to object, the House is going to object — how else do we have a way to change the election problems?” McCarthy told The Hill.
Representative Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) is leading the effort in the House; he announced his plans last month and sources say upwards of 140 Republicans in that chamber could potentially join the Alabaman.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced that he will join Brooks by objecting on the Senate side. So far, about a dozen GOP members of the upper chamber have said they are on board.
These lawmakers argued that Congress should exercise its constitutional authority to reject electoral votes from states in which there was evidence of voter fraud that changed the outcome of the election, as the courts and state legislatures have largely failed to act.
Although McCarthy supports his colleagues, other key Republican leaders oppose the measure.
House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wy.), the third-ranking GOP member of the House, sent a memo to her fellow lawmakers condemning the move as a dangerous precedent that would sow doubt in America’s election process.
“As you will see, there is substantial reason for concern about the precedent Congressional objections will set here. By objecting to electoral slates, members are unavoidably asserting that Congress has the authority to overturn elections and overrule state and federal courts,” Cheney, the daughter of former Bush Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote.
“Such objections set an exceptionally dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states’ explicit constitutional responsibility for choosing the President and bestowing it instead on Congress. This is directly at odds with the Constitution’s clear text and our core beliefs as Republicans,” she added. “Democrats have long attempted, unconstitutionally, to federalize every element of our nation — including elections. Republicans should not embrace Democrats’ unconstitutional position on these issues.”
And in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has made clear to Republicans that he does not want them joining the effort.
An independent move led by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is also underway. In that bid, the participating senators vow to block certification of the electoral results unless there is an emergency 10-day audit by an electoral commission.
On board with Cruz are Republican Senators Ron Johnson (Wis.), James Lankford (Okla.), Steve Daines (Mont.), John Kennedy (Okla.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), and Mike Braun (Ind.), along with Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis (Wy.), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), and Tommy Tuberville (Ala.).
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is seen as a 2024 hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination, has broken with his conservative colleagues, announcing he will not object to the counting of electoral votes.
Cotton claimed that he has concerns about how the election was carried out, including allowing mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day to be counted, but contended that the states and courts, not Congress, should deal with election law.
“The Founders entrusted our elections chiefly to the states — not Congress. They entrusted the election of our president to the people, acting through the Electoral College — not Congress. And they entrusted the adjudication of election disputes to the courts — not Congress,” Cotton said in a statement released Sunday evening.
“Under the Constitution and federal law, Congress’s power is limited to counting electoral votes submitted by the state,” he added, warning that if Congress threw out the electoral votes of states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where there is extensive proof of voter fraud, it would “take away the power to choose the president from the people.”
What lawmakers such as Cotton fail to realize (extending to them the benefit of the doubt that they are not complicit, but simply ill-informed) is that the Constitution wisely gives Congress authority in this situation to act as a check in the case of fraud.
Congress cannot abrogate its duty, especially when the courts and states that Cotton talks about have already abrogated theirs, simply because Democrats might try to misuse this procedure in the future.
The Left has already shown itself willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power; they don’t need a “precedent” by Republicans for that. Refusing to act in the face of such blatant fraud would simply be giving in to fear, something that would embolden, not discourage, their unethical power plays.
