Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took to the floor of the United States Senate last week to officially recognize Joe Biden as president-elect. McConnell was sending a message to his Republican colleagues: stand down, it is time to move on.
As I watched McConnell congratulate Biden on his supposed victory, I thought of the scene in “Star Wars” when Obi-Wan Kenobi says, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror . . . ” Having witnessed firsthand the passion on display at President Trump’s rallies and boat parades, I knew how McConnell’s concession would antagonize Trump supporters. My notion was confirmed the following day, when multiple strangers aired their grievances to me on the streets of the Sunshine State.
The first was a marble fabricator from Port St. Lucie, who told me he fled socialism abroad only to watch in horror as American Democrats embraced it. Next was a CVS cashier in Jupiter, followed by a fishmonger in North Palm Beach, a restaurant manager from Hobe Sound, a waitress in Ponte Vedra, and finally a gift shop owner and a hotel bellman in Jacksonville Beach.
I knew none of these people, nor did I solicit their opinions. They volunteered their frustrations to me only because I was wearing a cap from Trump National Golf Club. Their collective sentiments are best summarized in the words of two callers to Rush Limbaugh that same day.
“If we step past what has just happened in this presidential election as if nothing happened . . . what will be left other than one gigantic, pretend game of politics?” asked “Robbie” from Sacramento. “What is the point of discussing any future election if we don’t deal with what has just happened?
“If we don’t deal with what just happened,” Robbie went on, “we are just going to be playing one gigantic game of pretend. Pretending our votes mean something. Pretending that we can influence what’s going to happen in our elections . . . Mark Steyn [said] ‘This is the hill to die on,’ and I think we have to stand up against tyranny or we’re going to be living with it.”
Next came “Frank” from Los Garros. “I’m one of those 74 million-plus that is fit to be tied,” he told Limbaugh. “I am so tired of the GOP. They are the most worthless party probably in history . . . They don’t do anything! They sit on their hands and don’t do anything! It’s like they just watch . . . Why wouldn’t [the Democrats] try to steal the election?”
“Let me paint this picture about how I feel about the GOP,” Frank added. “You have a husband and wife and a daughter, the husband rapes the daughter every other night, and the wife knows and does nothing about it. The wife is the Republican Party.”
It is abundantly clear that Republican voters want their elected officials to stay in the fight and challenge the results of the presidential election; Republican officials don’t seem to be getting the message.
Days before Fox News coronated Biden as president-elect, I emailed my senator, John Cornyn (R-Texas), and pleaded with him to fight against the fraud unfolding before our eyes. Cornyn has an established history of ignoring his voters, but I hoped he would be receptive given that he likely owed his Election Day victory to President Trump’s name being atop the ballot. I received an email from Senator Cornyn the following week that read, in part:
I am working on a bipartisan basis with my colleagues to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 elections and ensure our government has appropriate tools and resources to eliminate future election interference. As such, I believe candidates running for an elected position should immediately contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) if a foreign government contacts them regarding an opponent’s campaign.
It was evident that Cornyn, having already secured his reelection, had no interest in helping President Trump—he would subsequently pooh-pooh a lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general that sought to overturn Biden’s victory.
With the Republican establishment eager to move on from the 2020 election, all eyes are now focused on Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia. Both need the support of Trump’s base if they are to win their Senate runoff elections on January 5.
Whether or not an angry Republican base will turn out for them has been the topic of much debate. Ben Windham, an Atlanta-based attorney and bundler for the Doug Collins senate campaign, says Georgia voters are “bewildered.”
“Right now, the people of Georgia feel abandoned by the Republican Party and the elites who run it,” Windham told me.
Georgians have good reason to be frustrated. According to a report by Trump advisor Peter Navarro, “While Democrat Party government officials cheated and gamed the electoral process . . . many Republican government officials . . . did little or nothing to stand in their way.” Navarro specifically called out Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for “effectively sitting on [his] hands while [Georgia has] wallowed in election irregularities.”
In a November 23 tweet, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) implored Kemp to take action: “Call a special session of the Georgia legislature to fix the loopholes before the Democrats try to steal the Senate seats.”
Attorney Lin Wood upped the ante at a raucous press conference a week later. Wood attempted to use what little leverage he felt he had by urging Georgians not to vote for Perdue and Loeffler unless they publicly demanded that Kemp call a special session of the Georgia legislature. “Why are the Republicans not fighting for Donald Trump?” Wood asked, adding, “If they don’t fight for Donald Trump . . . send them all home.”
Wood was immediately attacked for his comments. Breitbart published a hit piece attempting to discredit Wood later that same day (at a time when Republicans needed unity more than ever, another infight had just erupted). Over the following week, various hosts on Breitbart’s radio programs attacked Wood, calling him a “Democrat plant” who could “not be trusted.” Breitbart’s radio callers, however, seem to agree with Wood that the fate of Georgia’s runoffs would hinge upon whether the Republicans fight to stop Democrats from stealing the presidential election.
Callers “Kevin” and “Thomas” from Michigan and “Tom” from California scolded “Breitbart News Saturday” host Matthew Boyle for having a “Pollyannish perspective” and trying to invent a “silver lining” out of a stolen election. They accused the network of being too quick to move on from the presidential election, only to “cheerlead” for the Republicans in Georgia.
Breitbart’s callers saw what was apparent to Wood: by gaming the system in such a manner as to guarantee an electoral victory for Biden, the Democrats and their army of lawyers (including some of the same lawyers who promoted the phony Steele dossier) had just slain the proverbial giant.
If Democrats could collude with the media and Big Tech to take out President Trump—the man who had a 53 percent approval rating (46 percent among blacks and upwards of 90 percent among Republicans) compared to Barack Obama’s 49 percent, who garnered 11 million more votes in 2020 than he drew in 2016 (the most of any sitting president in U.S. history, with more minority votes than any Republican candidate had attracted in 60 years), who inspired massive boat parades and marches from Maine to California, who could draw tens of thousands of supporters to his rallies, with attendees so diverse it would not be unusual to see bikers standing next to nuns in his crowds—Republicans would likely never win another presidential election, as Democrats would simply institutionalize the fraud that worked so well for them in 2020.
While Wood’s attempt at leverage may have been risky and is not above criticism, it was equally naïve to ask voters to ignore the elephant in the room and show up to vote in another election, under the same rules, when they have no faith in the system because of what just took place on November 3.
The only winning strategy for Perdue and Loeffler is to fight like hell to stop Biden from being inaugurated. Georgia voters made this clear at a campaign rally in Valdosta, when they chanted, “Fight for Trump!” as the two senators appeared on stage.
In the minds of the shop owners and store clerks and food service workers and talk radio callers across the country, the time for Republicans to fight back is not in 2022 or 2024. The 2020 election is the hill to die on.
Growing up in Texas, I learned about fighting for what you believe in at an early age. I learned about the brave men at the Alamo who gave their lives fighting in the name of freedom. A plaque on the grounds of the famous mission-turned-fort reads:
Legend states that in 1836 Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis unsheathed his sword and drew a line on this ground before his battle-weary men stating: “Those prepared to give their lives in Freedom’s cause, come over to me!”
All but one of Travis’s men stepped over that line in the sand, thus sealing their fate at the hands of the Mexican army. They knew theirs was a suicide mission when they answered Santa Ana’s demand for their surrender with a cannon shot.
I spoke recently with a Trump Administration official, who told me, “We need to keep the irons hot. As Churchill once said, ‘never, never, never give in!’” Weak-kneed Republicans who choose to wave the white flag instead of fighting to the last man to challenge the fraud that occurred in the 2020 election are committing political suicide. But unlike those brave men at the Alamo, they won’t have died fighting.