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106 House Republicans back Texas’ likely fruitless effort to overthrow the election

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Will Texas’s lawsuit nicknamed the “big one” likely to move the Supreme Court to in effect “overthrow” (Donald Trump’s word) the 2020 election results now certified by all states that should make Joe Biden the next President of the United States? No.

Is the lawsuit a farce, even though 18 attorneys general from Republican states Trump won have signed on to it? As has Donald Trump? Yes.

Is it a joke? In one way yes since most legal observes will be shocked if the court even takes the case up.

But, no, because it now signals that the GOP as a party is prepared to try to use the courts and state legislatures to overturn elections and even boot out electors who voted for a winning Democratic Party.

If Republicans win, it’s a fair election; if Democrats win, it’s a fraud.

The latest twist in the Republican Party’s surrender of the last vestiges of its previous incarnation as the party the defended the constitution and was for states rights is now seen in 106 GOPers signing onto the lawsuit.

The Daily Beast:

A staggering 106 Republican members of Congress have filed a brief in support of Texas’ improbable Supreme Court lawsuit aiming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Given that every state has certified its electoral results, President-elect Joe Biden is expected to win the Electoral College once it officially votes on Monday. The suit alleges that states changed their voting systems in a way that facilitated fraud. As Texas has no authority over other states’ laws, experts predict the case is virtually assured to get dismissed.

George Conway, writing in the Washington Post:

“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!” tweeted the soon-to-be-ex-president of the United States. A filing at the Supreme Court soon followed.

President Trump needs an intervention these days all right — but not of the kind he was talking about. And it’s he who desperately needs a victory, not the country.

That’s because Trump and his allies have lost just about every lawsuit they’ve brought to try to keep him in office..

Their problem is they have nothing to sue about, and never did. The words of a Trump-appointed member of the federal appeals court in Philadelphia pretty much sum things up: “Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

And time’s up. All the contested states have certified their Biden-Harris slates of electors before the deadline set by federal law. That means the certifications “shall be conclusive, and shall govern in the counting of the electoral votes.” The electors will meet and vote in their respective states on Monday. The result will be Biden 306, Trump 232. A landslide, according to Trump.

Yet now we have what Trump calls the “big one,” the litigation Trump proclaims will turn it all around.

It’s the big one, all right, the biggest farce of all. It’s a case the state of Texas brought on Monday, directly in the Supreme Court, against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. In a move that says more about the legal judgment (poor) and the moral fiber (absent) of their attorneys general than it does about the merits of the case, 17 states have now filed a brief in support of Texas, along with Trump.

Brought by Texas’s ethically challenged attorney general, Ken Paxton, the case is legally preposterous. By Texas’s own admission, it’s “challenging” the other states’ “administration of the 2020 election.” No constitutional provision, no statute and no principle of law gives one state the standing to challenge another state’s handling of an election. In our system, Texas isn’t the boss of Pennsylvania. Allowing such suits would invite a multistate free-for-all every time a presidential election is held.

So it’s all a joke? Not quite: those who realize how fragile a democracy can be are not laughing because it isn’t as if these GOPers just decided to sign on to supporting the legal challenge. The Atlantic’s David Graham:

Instead of Republican officeholders waiting out Trump’s postelection tantrum, he is waiting them out, and slowly bringing the party around to his side. In this way, Trump is ending his presidency just the way he won it: by correctly recognizing what Republican voters want and giving it to them, and gradually forcing the party’s purported leaders to follow along.

This embrace of the president’s attempt to overturn the results of the election is both shocking and horrifying. As Trump’s fraud claims and legal cases have steadily failed, the arguments he has pursued have become more outlandish and absurd, and they have also become more disturbing. Many Republican voters agree, and in refusing to stand up to him and them, Republican officials have gone from coddling a sore loser to effectively abandoning democracy….

…Many of these people may be going along not in spite of the fact that the suit is preposterous, but because it is: The stakes appear lower if they don’t have to worry about the Court actually taking them seriously. That is a dangerous calculation. The case seems to face very, very long odds, though it takes only five members of the Court to turn the preposterous into precedent. Even if the case fails, though, these Republicans have set a course of being willing to oppose the results of elections simply because they don’t like them. That is by definition antidemocratic.

..The customary explanation for Republican timidity is that officeholders are afraid of Trump. Though sometimes intended as apology, this does not say much for GOP leaders. It may miss what is really happening, though. Trump shapes but also reflects the views of Republican voters. A new Quinnipiac poll finds that 70 percent of Republican voters believe Biden’s win was illegitimate.

Indeed: supporting this lawsuit has now become a litmus test for Republicans. What does it say about the party and it’s future? Ronald Brownstein:

Republicans’ tolerance, if not active support, for President Donald Trump’s ongoing bid to overturn the 2020 election has crystallized a stark question: Does the GOP still qualify as a small-d democratic party—or is it morphing into something very different?

Even with the Supreme Court still deciding whether to consider a last-ditch legal effort to invalidate the results from the key swing states, there appears little chance that Trump will succeed in subverting Joe Biden’s victory. But Trump’s failure on that front has obscured his success at enlisting a growing swath of his party to join his cause—a dynamic that is already prompting new Republican efforts to make it more difficult to vote and raising concerns about the party’s commitment to the basic tenets of Western democratic rules and conventions, including the peaceful transfer of power.

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