My Late Republican Mother Would Weep at Today’s Trump Republicans

Dear Mom: It has been almost three years since you departed this world, and I think of you so often. But especially now, I think of you daily.

Why especially now? Because we just had a presidential election and the loser, the Republican incumbent, refuses to concede to the Democratic winner. Moreover, this sore loser is, as I write, going full-bore taking all sorts of undemocratic actions, mainly legalistic, to invalidate the election result as fraudulent. And get this, Mom: He even invited the top two Republican state legislators from Michigan, a swing state, to the White House — and no way was this visit about tea and scones. Clearly he wanted them to defy their state’s popular vote and switch to him. Reportedly this visit went pro-forma, but: This loser’s intent is all.

I can hear you now, Mom, I can. You would say: “WHAT? That is so wrong!”

I can also hear you say: “That’s not democracy! That’s what they do in dictatorships!”

Right: That’s what they do in dictatorships — hold elections, to make things seem right and proper, then fiddle with the ballots, so that the “dictator” can claim he was elected by The People, even if more of The People voted for his opponent. Yes, I knew you’d be “aghast,” one of your favorite words, to hear about this post-election fiddling.

But, Mom, you’ll be equally aghast when I tell you this: Your beloved Republican party — you were a “rock-ribbed” Republican almost your entire life, you were county chair of Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign — your party is not doing much to block this sore loser from making his anti-democratic moves. It’s eerily quiet right now: Usually politicians love hearing the sound of their own voices, but not many Republican voices are heard calling out this sore loser and telling him to “do the right thing” — to concede. A few Senators have — Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska — but other than that, it’s the Parade of the Invertebrates (if invertebrates could stand up and parade).

What I am describing is a dark situation, a heartbreaking falling-off, since you departed. This man is dismantling American democracy, norm by norm, institution by institution. Which a true conservative would grieve as much as us liberals…