Infamy will stick to two Washington state representatives for backing Trump lawsuit
Democracy, to paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, may not be a fragile flower, but it still needs cultivating. It’s a message two U.S. House members from Washington, Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, need to hear in stereo.
Instead of cultivating democracy, McMorris Rodgers and Newhouse attempted to circumvent it by backing a lawsuit started by the state of Texas to overturn election results favoring President-elect Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia.
The two Eastern Washington Republicans — she from Spokane, he from the Yakima Valley — are among the 126 US House members who tried to assist President Trump with his Hail Mary to gain a second term.
McMorris Rodgers and Newhouse served as Washington co-chairs for Trump’s 2020 re-election bid; both come from solidly red districts and have nothing to lose by their lockstep allegiance to the president. But this latest hyper partisan power play has fanned the flames of dangerous rhetoric.
Over the weekend Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman was made aware of a website threatening state and local election officials. The site posted images of crosshairs over officials’ profiles and included personal information like home and email addresses.
On Monday, state Rep. Robert Sutherland, R-Granite Falls, told his Facebook followers to “Prepare for war,” no doubt prompted by the constant drumbeat coming from Trump’s bully pulpit. The president is choosing to spend his last days in office hammering a 24-hour a day “rigged election” narrative.
Three of the state’s most prominent and level-headed GOP leaders — Wyman, House Minority Leader JT Wilcox and Senate Minority Leader John Braun — have since issued statements denouncing these threats of violence, but their message needs to go further. They need to rebuke Trump directly for attempting a hostile takeover of our democratic system.
Any election irregularity depriving voters of equal treatment must be investigated, but the 2020 election was the most closely scrutinized in US history. In spite of millions spent by the GOP on investigations and lawyers, there is no evidence of widespread fraud, a conclusion confirmed by outgoing U.S. Attorney General William Barr and GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Still, for a win-at-all-cost victory, McMorris Rodgers and Newhouse were willing to erode public confidence in the election system, undermine a 230-year history of peaceful transfers of power, and send a message heard around the globe that our democracy is a sham.
It should be noted that our state’s other Republican Congress member, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Southwest Washington, did not sign the brief supporting the lawsuit, to her credit.
Fortunately, the evidence-free lawsuit went nowhere fast; it was soundly rejected by the US Supreme Court last Friday. But the infamy will stick to McMorris Rodgers, Newhouse and the other 124 Republican US lawmakers who were so quick to try to subvert states rights.
How would they like it if another state tried to dismiss ballots cast in good faith by Washington state voters? We hope they would be appalled.
Both McMorris Rodgers and Newhouse have since acknowledged Biden’s win, after this week’s Electoral College action. But it haunts the imagination to think what ghastly future our country faced had this lawsuit been taken seriously.
Over 20 million votes would have been thrown out, and with a Supreme Court precedent in place, states would have been free to sue one another over perceived slights in election procedures.
Reagan was right; US democracy is not a fragile flower, but in 2020, it was tested by two significant events: a once-in-a-century pandemic and a president who refused to concede after a free and fair election.
Worse than throwing red meat to conspiracy mongers, two Washington members of Congress attempted to debilitate our democracy, a fact that’s been signed and sealed for posterity.