My OpEd ran in Wednesday’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
I demonstrate that hypocrisy runs rampant in both the Republican and Democrat parties. But we’re seeing something completely different with the Democrats’ hypocrisy this year.
Partisan thinking leads one to ridicule the opposing party while dismissing the same faults within his own. Nowhere is this hypocrisy more evident than Democrats calling out for the blood of those who dare question certifying the 2021 electoral college votes.
I just finished reading the 2001, 2005, and 2017 Congressional Records proceedings certifying the electoral college votes, which I’ve outlined below. Democrats have contested electoral college certifications after every Republican win since President George W. Bush’s victory in 2000, similar to the Republicans contesting the 2020 election.
At the electoral college certification in January 2001, Alcee Hastings (D-FL) objected to counting Florida’s electoral votes because of “overwhelming evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud, and an attempt to suppress voter turnout.” Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) objected to the certification on the basis of “millions of Americans who have been disenfranchised by Florida’s inaccurate vote count.” After Maxine Waters (D-CA) objected to “the fraudulent 25 Florida electoral votes,” Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Waters moved that the House withdraw from the electoral college process.
After Pres. George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, all hell broke loose at the electoral college certification in January 2005. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and 31 House Democrats voted to reject Ohio’s electoral votes even though Bush beat Kerry in Ohio by 118,601 votes. Boxer and Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) lodged a formal objection to Ohio’s electoral votes alleging election irregularities and fraud. Barbara Lee (D-CA) claimed that “the Democratic process was thwarted.” Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said that the election was “stolen” because of voting machine technical problems. Republicans disagreed, denying any widespread voter fraud. Sound familiar?
After Pres. Trump’s presidential win in 2016, Democrats once again challenged the electoral votes. Twice during the electoral college certification in January 2017 protestors shut down the count. Jim McGovern (D-MA) posed “the confirmed and illegal activities engaged by the government of Russia that were designed to interfere with our election” as the reason not to certify Republican states.
Rep. Lee asked then-Vice President Joe Biden to throw out the electoral college votes for Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina because of the “illegal activities engaged in by individuals and entities allied with the Government of Russia that were undertaken for the purpose of benefitting the candidacy of Donald J. Trump.”
One House Republican summed up the 2004 election this way: “Those who believe this election was stolen will always believe it. No amount of evidence will convince them otherwise. The bottom line is those bringing this challenge today simply cannot accept the fact that George Bush has been elected President of the United States. It is too painful for them.” Fill in Bush with Trump in 2016, and Biden with Trump in 2020, and the partisanship on both sides is unmistakable.
Addressing claims that President Donald Trump should be impeached for inciting a violent insurrection by his speech at a D.C. rally, Louie Gohmert (R-TX) repeated Nancy Pelosi’s incendiary rhetoric in 2018: “I just don’t even know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. Maybe, there will be.” Critics immediately attacked Gohmert, condemning him for the words that originally came from Pelosi.
Yes, both the stupid party and the wicked party are guilty of extreme partisanship when it comes to responding to election results. There’s nothing new about that. What is different in 2021, however, is the outrageous response by progressive Democrats calling for blood for the same actions they were guilty of in 2001, 2005, and 2017.
The systems of checks and balances in our constitutional republic not only allow for the questioning of authority and processes, but encourage it. As an outsider looking in, the difference in the Republicans’ questioning the outcome of the election vs the Democrats’, is that progressive Democrats have adopted Antifa’s scorched-earth, “no-platforming” stratagem: destroy the lives and livelihood of all those who disagree with you.
The progressive wing insists on treating anyone who questions them with vitriol, division, and deplatforming. Instead of recognizing that pushback in politics is healthy, they will come after your job, your character, and your platforms — all for daring to speak up or question the powers-that-be in the exact same way that they themselves have done time after time.