Some sane House republicans have come up with a workaround=
A group of seven House Republicans — including Freedom Caucus members such as Ken Buck (Colo.) and Chip Roy (Texas) as well as Rep.-elect Nancy Mace (S.C.) and libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) — put out a rare and lengthy statement Sunday afternoon opposing the effort to challenge the election. The statement was also signed by Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Tom McClintock (R-Calif.).
They argue that the constitution makes clear that states — not Congress — are responsible for selecting electors, though they said they “are outraged at the significant abuses in our election system.”
“We must respect the states’ authority here,” the lawmakers wrote in their statement, obtained by POLITICO. “Though doing so may frustrate our immediate political objectives, we have sworn an oath to promote the Constitution above our policy goals. We must count the electoral votes submitted by the states.”
And Roy went further on Sunday evening, forcing a vote on whether to allow Speaker Nancy Pelosi to seat the House members in the states Trump is challenging. The move forced Republicans on the record validating the results of the House elections that occurred on the same ballots that resulted in Biden’s win in November. The result was a 371-2 vote in favor of seating all of the members.
In other words, 371 Reps just agreed that the elections were fair and no fraud. Now, if they try to contest the elections, they are lying.
I think I saw somewhere [good cite, eh?] that each pair of Representative and Senator who challenge a state’s votes can allege their own reasons for objecting, and therefore you can have more than one challenge to Pennsylvania, more than one to Georgia, etc. Apparently the Electoral Count Act is not a masterpiece of drafting.
They will have NO problem at all with the following logic:
“Elections for the house where Republicans won were conducted flawlessly, with no problems whatsoever. Elections where Democrats won were riddled with fraud and errors that we cannot clearly define, but we know are there.”
“When the cardinals failed to elect a pope for more than two years after the death of Clement IV (1265–68), the local magistrate locked the electors in the episcopal palace, removed the roof, and allowed the cardinals nothing but bread and water until they made their selection”
If the roof was tiled, or slates, and the workmen removing them had an unfortunate tendency to"accidentally" drop them on the conclave below, that could certainly help hasten the decision.
Interestingly, Chip Roy was Ted Cruz’ Chief of Staff when he was first elected to the Senate. Looks like he and his former boss are headed in opposite directions on this one.
I don’t think the American coup will succeed…this time.
But I worry a lot about what happens going forward. For the foreseeable future, every federal election will be a referendum on American democracy. Looking ahead to the mid-term elections in 2022, if Republicans establish firm control of the Senate and House, they may well obstruct Biden and force him to use executive orders to get anything done.
The immediate aim of the Republicans won’t be to call for a military coup; it will instead be to damage faith among the left wing that their vote means anything at all, and to damage trust between centrists and democrats. They will exploit fissures between the different democratic factions. The easy part for democrats was uniting against a common enemy; now they have to do the much harder part of agreeing on how to govern.
The opposition’s proposition is that democracy is overrated, and they will be doing everything in their power to make that prophesy come true. They’re also going to use power they have at the state level to make it harder for certain people to vote. If you read between the lines, this is where people like Raffensburger, McConnell, and other “decent” Republicans are in alignment with Trump: make sure that the liberals can’t vote – problem solved.
While not really on-topic for this thread, the news story that the 20th richest man in the world has been missing for two months after he criticized the Chinese government is quite on-topic for the above comment:
I would not bet against Trump having called Generals asking them for their support to keep him President. Remember that letter from the former Sec Defenses?
He didn’t merely criticize the Chinese government; he either wittingly or brain-fartedly exposed the meat of their financial scam – the US has its own scam of course, but the Chinese version of “capitalism” is more precariously balanced than ours.
But to your point, billionaires in China don’t get to be billionaires in China without getting deep within the circle of the CCP’s politics, and apparently, if exiles like Miles Kwok are to be believed, one cannot become the Bezos of China without first paying tributes to the higher echelons of the party.
I think our capitalist autocracy might be headed more in the direction of Russia than China, although there are some similarities. Russia at least pretends to have a democracy.
POPEDOME SMACKDOWN!!!