They Legitimized the Myth of a Stolen Election — and Reaped the Rewards
Via The Hill
On the day the Capitol was attacked, 139 Republicans in the House voted to dispute the Electoral College count. This is how they got there.
by Steve Eder, David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire
Five days after the attack on the Capitol last year, the Republican members of the House of Representatives braced for a backlash.
Two-thirds of them — 139 in all — had been voting on Jan. 6, 2021, to dispute the Electoral College count that would seal Donald J. Trump’s defeat just as rioters determined to keep the president in power stormed the chamber. Now one lawmaker after another warned during a conference call that unless Republicans demanded accountability, voters would punish them for inflaming the mob.
“I want to know if we are going to look at how we got here, internally, within our own party and hold people responsible,” said Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.
When another member implored the party to unite behind a “clarifying message” that Mr. Trump had truly lost, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, emphatically agreed: “We have to.”
More than 20 months later, the opposite has happened. The votes to reject the election results have become a badge of honor within the party, in some cases even a requirement for advancement, as doubts about the election have come to define what it means to be a Trump Republican.
The most far-reaching of Mr. Trump’s ploys to overturn his defeat, the objections to the Electoral College results by so many House Republicans did more than any lawsuit, speech or rally to engrave in party orthodoxy the myth of a stolen election. Their actions that day legitimized Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede, gave new life to his claims of conspiracy and fraud and lent institutional weight to doubts about the central ritual of American democracy.
Yet the riot engulfing the Capitol so overshadowed the debate inside that the scrutiny of that day has overlooked how Congress reached that historic vote. A reconstruction by The Times revealed more than simple rubber-stamp loyalty to a larger-than-life leader. Instead, the orchestration of the House objections was a story of shrewd salesmanship and calculated double-talk, set against a backdrop of demographic change across the country that has widened the gulf between the parties.
While most House Republicans had amplified Mr. Trump’s claims about the election in the aftermath of his loss, only the right flank of the caucus continued to loudly echo Mr. Trump’s fraud allegations in the days before Jan. 6, The Times found. More Republican lawmakers appeared to seek a way to placate Mr. Trump and his supporters without formally endorsing his extraordinary allegations. In formal statements justifying their votes, about three-quarters relied on the arguments of a low-profile Louisiana congressman, Representative Mike Johnson, the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.
On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, he presented colleagues with what he called a “third option.” He faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional, without supporting the outlandish claims of Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters. His Republican critics called it a Trojan horse that allowed lawmakers to vote with the president while hiding behind a more defensible case.
Even lawmakers who had been among the noisiest “stop the steal” firebrands took refuge in Mr. Johnson’s narrow and lawyerly claims, though his nuanced argument was lost on the mob storming the Capitol, and over time it was the vision of the rioters — that a Democratic conspiracy had defrauded America — that prevailed in many Republican circles.
That has made objecting politically profitable. Republican partisans have rewarded objectors with grass-roots support, paths to higher office and campaign money. Corporate backers have reopened their coffers to lawmakers they once denounced as threats to democracy. And almost all the objectors seeking re-election are now poised to return to Congress next year, when Republicans are expected to hold a majority in the House.
Objectors are set to fill the Republican leadership posts and head a majority of the committees. All eight Republicans in the House seeking higher office voted against the Electoral College tally, while a dozen Republican lawmakers who broke with Mr. Trump have either lost primaries or chosen to retire.
Playing to Trump loyalists, many across the party have made a slogan of “election integrity” — a “dog whistle” perpetuating the erroneous belief that Mr. Trump’s victory was stolen, as one dissenting Republican put it in a party meeting. More than a third of the objectors joined a new Election Integrity Caucus, which advocates stricter voter requirements and has featured speakers who supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to fight his loss. (Click image below to see)
All the Republicans who objected say they were following an example set by Democrats who objected to Electoral College results in 1968, 2000, 2004 and 2016. In each case, Republicans accused Democrats of damaging democracy and “thwarting the will of the people,” though only small numbers of Democrats joined those objections, which all came after the losing Democratic presidential candidates had already conceded. (Mr. Trump only relinquished his claim to the White House the day after House Republicans — and rioters — failed to block the Electoral College count.)
But several Republican lawmakers argued that the scale of their vote to object would do more to encourage legislators of either party to mimic the tactic — potentially upending the peaceful transfer of executive power if an aggrieved party controls Congress.
“It is a horrible precedent,” said Representative Tom Rice, a five-term Republican representing conservative Myrtle Beach, S.C., who was the only objector to express any regrets and lost a primary this summer.
Some continue to recast their objections. Legislators in Democratic-leaning territory who once thundered about defending the republic now insist they meant only a legalistic protest against certain Covid-19 rule changes — like Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor in heavily Democratic New York, who railed in a Jan. 6 floor speech about his outrage over “confirmed, evidence-filled issues” in the 2020 vote.
But many have moved the other way, more fully embracing Mr. Trump’s claims than they did in the aftermath of the riot.
Representative Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a former mixed martial arts fighter, experienced the center of the maelstrom. He broke off the leg of a wooden stand as a weapon to help defend the floor of the House, then watched from a few feet away as a Capitol Police officer shot and killed one of the assailants.
Amid the wreckage of the violence, the congressman justified his objection by hewing closely to Mr. Johnson’s lawyerly nuance. But now, as the favored candidate for a Senate seat in Oklahoma, Mr. Mullin is more categorical.
Was Mr. Trump “cheated out of the election?” a moderator asked in a recent televised debate.
Mr. Mullin replied, “Absolutely.”
An aide inspected the official tally to certify the vote hours after rioters had stormed Congress to disrupt the transfer of power.Credit...Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
‘A Fig-Leaf Intellectual Argument’
The House vote to formalize presidential election results is customarily ceremonial. But in 2021 Mr. Trump changed that, demanding, like no president before, that House Republicans reject the results from several states.