US Elections

Republican candidates across the country are refusing to recognize Biden’s rightful victory

By Ngan R. Huffman


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Her answers, which ranged from explicit inaccuracies to weak tricks, made national Messages. But they weren’t unusual. The Minnesota candidates sounded like Republican candidates in general on the subject of the 2020 election.
The refusal to confirm the legitimacy of Biden’s victory has become a major requirement in Republican primaries across the country. from conservative Alabama to the Midwestern swing states, numerous Republicans trying to get party nominations in 2022, along with former President Donald Trump, have refused to publicly admit that Trump simply lost.
Some candidates are aggressivewho made the lie that Trump was the rightful winner a central part of their campaign presentations. Other candidates are evasive, tried to avoid a direct answer to the question of Biden’s legitimacy.

Both approaches are dishonest. And both are evidence of a disturbing fact about the state of the Republican Party: you will find it very difficult to win a 2022 primary if you choose to openly recognize the truth of Biden’s fair victory.

“You can do that, but understand the consequences. The consequences are likely that you will lose. ” Steve Mitchell, a Republican pollster in Michigan, said in an interview. “So if you are ready to lose, if you do, move on.”

Even the candidates who know the truth can read the polls. Polls have consistently shown that a large majority of Republicans will not admit that American voters actually voted Biden over Trump.

At a Monmouth University opinion poll Conducted in early November, 73% of Republican respondents said Biden won because of election fraud. Only 22% said Biden won fairly and fairly.

“Republicans deeply value this. And if you’re a candidate you almost have to say that you don’t believe he was legally elected,” said Mitchell. Speaking to Republican voters, “Logic just doesn’t work,” he said: “They’re still so angry that reason doesn’t prevail. You can’t convince them.”

Little room for disagreement

Trump continues to be the dominant actor in Republican politics: its approval was usually a critical factor who wins party primaries. And the candidates Trump endorses in primaries tend to be the ones who either rejected the 2020 outcome, or at least aggressively questioned it.

So Trump’s ongoing obsession with the 2020 election gives ambitious candidates less leeway to tell the truth about the election itself.

In the running for the Ohio Senate, in the Trump not yet confirmed Republican candidates ran as candidates to portray Biden’s victory as illegitimate. Former Treasurer Josh Mandel and businessman Bernie Moreno mistakenly labeled the election “stolen”; Author and venture capitalist JD Vance has used the baseless word “manipulated” and spoken by “large-scale” illegal votes that did not take place; Former state party leader Jane Timken was wrong asserts the choice included “widespread fraud”; and candidate spokesman Mike Gibbons told CNN in an email last week that Gibbons “has consistently stated from day one that we still do not know the true outcome of the 2020 election”.
Morenos current attitude is particularly revealing. As Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel noted on Twitter Last week in November 2020, Moreno tweeted that there was nowhere near enough fraud to change the outcome and that Conservatives should accept Biden’s victory – then deleted those tweets to start his campaign. (Moreno, whose campaign didn’t respond to a CNN request for comment, said Spectrum News that he doesn’t remember all of his tweets and that more “evidence” came out of the election.)
In Nevada, a leading Republican candidate for governor, former Senator Dean Heller, launched his campaign from refuse again and again Recognize Biden’s legitimacy and describe the 2020 elections as “a mess”.“Heller isn’t known for particularly inflammatory rhetoric, and had a strained relationship with Trump, but he has a right flank to worry about. One of his rivals is the red-hot Las Vegas councilor Michele Fiore, who began her campaign by proposing what is known as a 2020 election review, and combative lawyer and former boxer Joey Gilbert, who falsely claimed Trump was the real 2020 winner and who was it? seen on the steps of the US Capitol when it was stormed on Jan. 6 (Gilbert, whose campaign didn’t respond to a CNN request for comment, has said he did not go into the building.)
Alabama Congressman and Senate candidate Mo Brooks was a prominent proponent of election lies, even at the January 6 rally that preceded the Capitol attack. But when Brooks said at a Trump rally in August that supporters should leave 2020 behind and focus on winning future elections, he was booed – ask him to do so quickly post a tweet falsely claiming Trump won 2020 if only “legal votes” were counted and claims he supports “reviews” of state results in 2020. Leading Brooks rival Katie Boyd Britt, former chief executive of the Alabama Chamber of Commerce and former chief of staff bis Retired Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, has called for a “forensic review” of 2020 results; the term “audit” was used many times this year by Republicans to describe a partisan review. (Britt’s campaign didn’t respond to a CNN query about accepting the legitimacy of Biden’s victory.)
This is just a selection. republican Congress- and Governorship Candidates numerous other states also refuse to say whether they believe Biden to be the legitimate winner or state outright that the election was stolen.
There are exceptions in various federal states. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is running for re-election, congratulated Biden to his victory on the day the race was announced by the media in November 2020 and later said There is no reason to tilt the result.
Murkowski opponent Kelly Tshibaka, who has doubted Biden legitimately won, has backed both Trump and the state’s Republican Party. But Murkowski could benefit from Alaska Open primary, in which the top four voters from each party qualify for the general election, and the ranked voting system for general elections.

The ‘Finesse’ route

Mitchell, the Michigan Republican pollster, said Republican primary candidates could try “refining” the 2020 election theme to be close to the center for a general election – avoiding lies but still speaking the party’s language base.

He said Republican candidates could say there were “irregularities” in the vote in 2020 – fact check note: There is no evidence of irregularities substantial enough to affect the outcome in any state – and can pan into the future by addressing the importance of “electoral integrity” measures.

Even some of the 2022 candidates who were relatively honest about the 2020 election have still felt the need to try that tightrope strategy of “electoral integrity” that worked for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin in his disgruntled November victory.
In Ohio Senate candidate Matt Dolan was much more honest on the 2020 election as rivals Mandel, Vance, Moreno, Timken and Gibbons. Dolan, a state senator, said in an email to CNN that Biden legitimately won in 2020 despite a failure in office. Dolan beat up other Ohio candidates for adopting “marginal conspiracy theories and lies” that harmed both the country’s and Republicans’ chances for the Senate seat.
Still, Dolan’s own campaign website contains an “Electoral Integrity Protection” section, which contains language that suggests that electoral fraud is not uncommon in states other than Ohio. Indeed, election fraud is seldom in any state.
A Republican candidate for Michigan governor, businessman Kevin Rinke, has flatly declined the presumption that the election was rigged. That makes him more honest than that several candidates from Michigan who falsely claimed that fraud reversed the outcome. But Rinke also started his campaign with one in November display citing “voter fraud” as a problem facing Michigan under the leadership of the Democrats, although voter fraud is extremely rare, and a website that says “Kevin knows the 2020 election was fraught with administrative troubles that resulted in a tainted election in the eyes of millions.”

CNN conducted an informal poll for this article, interviewing an unscientific sample of 34 Republican congressional and gubernatorial campaigns across the country – in Ohio, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia – to ask them if they were the Opinions are Biden was the legitimate winner. Only seven replied that none of them were among the front runners in their respective races. Of those seven, only two said Biden was the legitimate winner.

Aside from Dolan, the only respondent who recognized Biden’s legitimate victory was Everett star, a Pennsylvania businessman and longtime Senate candidate, who said Biden “100%” legitimately won.
Stern, who told CNN he knew he wasn’t going to win the nomination, blamed Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn for running a “disinformation campaign” which has seriously misled the party’s voters.

“These people are masterminds, and they deceived, sunk and killed the American Republican Party,” he said.


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Ngan R. Huffman
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