It’s not about cowardice
According to a new Washington Post report, just 26 Republicans in the House and Senate are willing to publicly admit that Biden won – out of nearly 250 total.
It’s easy to label the rest of these Republicans as cowards, but let’s not give them that much credit. Cowards may be well intentioned people who just don’t have the guts to do the right thing, out of fear. These Republicans are bad people who have each made the selfish calculation that their corrupt careers are better off if they keep quiet. That’s not cowardice, it’s villainy.
So it’s not about whether the rest of these Republicans are going to “find a conscience” or “grow a spine.” Those are imaginary concepts on the Republican side. These are selfish villains who only care about their own careers, and we know this is universally true because they’ve specifically made a point of driving every politician out of the Republican Party who didn’t feel that way.
These House and Senate Republicans make their decisions about when or if to admit Biden won, based on whatever they think is best for their own careers, and nothing more. Many will do so after the Electoral College votes. Some will wait until Biden is sworn in. A few never will admit it.
But I’m not sure any of this matters. After Trump criminally stole the 2016 election, a lot of Democrats didn’t acknowledge him as the legitimate winner – and that didn’t stop him from being able to do what he wanted to do. Accordingly, it won’t much matter what position House and Senate Republicans take on Biden’s legitimacy.
Instead, two things will define how much power and leverage President Biden has. The first is whether he’s seen as having a mandate. He won in a seven million vote blowout, so we should be constantly playing up this fact, and constantly pressuring the mainstream media to acknowledge it. The second is whether Biden has the Senate – and that’ll come down to the Georgia runoffs. You can donate to Warnock and Ossoff here.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report