What does MAGA have up its sleeve?
In Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, private groups challenged 350,000 votes. Their aim was to kick those voters, presumably a majority of Democrats, off the rolls. Election lawyer Marc Elias and his intrepid group took them to court and won. Subsequently the Republican legislature in Georgia passed laws to make it easier to challenge votes and harder to litigate those challenges, ending in an attempt to remove 100,000 votes in 2022. Elias and his group successfully took them to court and won again.
Now these mass challenges have spread to other states, especially Texas. “True the Vote” (TTV), a conservative group based in Houston, is challenging votes there and trying to bring voter challenges nationwide. Their stated aim is to “preserve democracy” by rooting out voter fraud. But they give the game away by focusing all of their voter roll challenge campaigns on battleground states. In other words, they worry about cheating in, say, Pennsylvania and Michigan, not so much in, say, California and Massachusetts. No need to wonder why.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, TTV repeatedly claimed that they possessed evidence of widespread voter fraud in the election, and they solicited millions of dollars in donations on that account. But like all conspiracy theorists from time immemorial, they are long on claims but short on anything remotely resembling actual evidence. For years they have promised to release “proof of fraud” in the 2020 election, but they have never released so much as a shred. In other words, like other groups with a secret agenda to restore Donald Trump to power, TTV is filled to the rafters with wackadoodles, fruitcakes and propeller-headed low-wattage ass clowns.
But the truth is these days voter fraud isn’t even a minor problem. On the extremely rare occasion when it actually happens it’s almost always exposed and prosecuted. Ninety nine percent of the time Republicans are behind it. So MAGA “concern” is really just projection. Or maybe they don’t like competition.
It’s pretty much too late anyway. MAGA is out of time to do anything about a Trump loss. The real question is, what are they going to do AFTER he loses? Replaying January 6 is out of the question. There isn’t going to be another attack on the Capitol. You can bet security there will be tighter than Rudy Giuliani on any given late morning.
They have no hope for a “Pence Card” either. This time the person ceremonially certifying the election in the Senate is going to be none other than the winner of that election herself. And any would-be fake electors had better be packed for jail if they try doing that again.
But it behoves us to wonder what MAGA Republicans are going to do when they lose. The 2024 election is their last shot. By 2028 Trump is either going to be in prison or dead from too many McDonald’s hamburgers. Maybe both. But even if he manages to survive another four years and stave off jail, he’s finished anyway. He’s barely coherent. When you think how much he’s deteriorated in the last four years, imagine how bad he’ll be in another four.
Right now MAGA doesn’t have anybody else. There are no prominent MAGA Republicans with the remote hope of uniting the country behind them. Think of their options yourself. JD Vance? Mike Johnson? Marjorie Taylor Greene? Jim Jordan? Ted Cruz? I had to repress a shudder just to write out that list. They can stump for Trump, but they will never BE Trump.
So MAGAs are desperate people in a desperate situation. Once Trump is gone in a little over three weeks there is literally no one to replace him. They will have lost their Hitler for all time.
So that presents us with a non-rhetorical question. What does MAGA have up its sleeve? Maybe nothing, maybe something. If something, what could it be? Short term I think the answer is nothing sane nor remotely effective. I don’t doubt that they would unhesitatingly overthrow the government in a coup if they could. They do not lack the will to do so, they simply lack the power.
Even so, the certain knowledge that they must have something is slightly concerning. Another Big Lie almost goes without saying. But beyond insisting that the election is rigged, I don’t know if they have any choices left. Galling though it almost certainly will be for them, their lot for the next four years is probably going to be nothing more than sour grapes and impotent rage. The odds against another Trump rising to power is very low. The American appetite reflects the Republican appetite. Nobody except the lunatic fringe wants another Trump again. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.