MADISON, Wis. — First, Wisconsin Republicans ordered an audit of the 2020 election. Then they passed a raft of new restrictions on voting. And in June, they authorized the nation’s only special counsel investigation into 2020.
Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald J. Trump lost the state by 20,682 votes, an increasingly vocal segment of the Republican Party is getting behind a new scheme: decertifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in hopes of reinstalling Mr. Trump in the White House.
Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than the last, but the Republican effort to overturn the election results here is picking up steam rather than fading away — and spiraling further from reality as it goes. The latest turn, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new candidate for governor, is creating chaos in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its push to win the contests this year for governor and the Senate.
The situation in Wisconsin may be the most striking example of the struggle by Republican leaders to hold together their party when many of its most animated voters simply will not accept the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss.
“This is a real issue,” said Timothy Ramthun, the Republican state representative who has turned his push to decertify the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun has asserted that if the Wisconsin Legislature decertifies the results and rescinds the state’s 10 electoral votes — an action with no basis in state or federal law — it could set off a movement that would oust President Biden from office.
“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We’re not fringe.”
Wisconsin has the nation’s most active decertification effort. In Arizona, a Republican state legislator running for secretary of state, along with candidates for Congress, has called for recalling the state’s electoral votes. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia officials asking them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory there, but no organized effort materialized.
State Representative Timothy Ramthun of Wisconsin, is running for
governor on a platform of decertifying the 2020 election and
reinstalling Donald J. Trump as president
Things are shockingly bad when tinfoil hat wearing, reality-detached, freak politicians claim they are not fringe. That is arguably true for most of the Wisconsin Republican Party. It depends on how one defines fringe.
The NYT reported that Wisconsin’s Democratic incumbent governor, Tony Evers, commented recently, “Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not.” Evers correctly states the situation with the GOP there.
Republican politicians who understand that efforts at decertification are tinfoil hat drivel are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. They know their base is enraged, or as one enraged politician correctly put it, “foaming at the mouth” about the solen election. But those GOP politicians who know the election was not stolen nonetheless do not say that in public. This is evidence that for most Republican politicians nationwide, re-election is more important than defending democracy or truth.
The Republican election fraud lie with its intentionally fomented anti-election rage and hate is not going to go away. That is the case for most Republican states and for most rank and file Republicans in all states. This is rock solid evidence of the anti-democratic, autocratic-theocratic mindset that now dominates the morally rotted GOP.[1]
Footnote:
1. Opinions will differ, but my definition of political moral rot includes denying inconvenient facts and reality and rejecting sound but inconvenient reasoning. Deceit, lies and crackpot reasoning are immoral, or if malice is in it, evil.
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