In a letter today, Emily Murphy informed Joe Biden that the General Services Administration would permit the formal transition process to begin. After experiencing widespread criticism for the unprecedented delay, as Donald Trump has refused against all evidence to admit that he lost the election and has raged that he was cheated, Ms. Murphy insisted that no one had pressured her to slow walk the approval; rather, she had difficulty determining what to do because the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended, “provides no procedures or standards for this process.”

Her missive resembled a defensive and obstinate, ‘Excuse me.’

There have been no reasonable doubts raised about the election’s outcome, notwithstanding Trump’s hurt feelings, his campaign’s frenzied maelstrom of litigation, or conservative media’s carnival of disinformation.

Joe Biden beat Donald Trump handily. By roughly six million votes. And, though some states were relatively close, by convincing margins that delivered a 306 to 232 Electoral College victory.

It is safe to say that few United States senators harbor any doubts about this — even Republican senators. Yet with Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s statement on Saturday, he became only the fifth Republican in the upper chamber (if we allow Marsha Blackburn a do-over) to acknowledge Biden’s victory. Ohio’s Rob Portman followed today, getting us up to six (out of fifty).

Why the playacting or silence by GOP leaders? They were mollifying an angry Donald Trump. And why not? As one Republican official explained:

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change.”

The downsides are to the institutions that sustain democratic government, to respect for the people’s vote and the outcome of the election, to the sanctity of a peaceful transfer of power.

And — of course — to the winning candidate. Of the opposing party. That is to say: there is a downside to President-elect Joe Biden.

Let’s acknowledge: that’s an advantage to Republicans. Crippling the Biden presidency is a goal of Donald Trump, of Mitch McConnell, and of every Republican partisan who views Democrats as an enemy tribe.

Judging by his actions, Trump appears to have a motive other than overturning the election. He is determined to cripple Biden’s presidency even before it becomes official. No defeated president has ever undertaken such an audacious and anti-democratic act. There are short-term and longer-term consequences that could deeply affect Biden’s ability to govern.

. . .

This assault on the system, the government, the integrity of elections, the institutions of democracy, and on the truth, means Biden will take the oath of office with perhaps a third or more of the electorate viewing him as illegitimate. No amount of wooing will bring them around, however genuine Biden is in his outreach. — Dan Balz, “A vindictive Trump seeks to undermine Biden’s presidency”

Republican senators, who know full well who won the election, also know full well what Trump is up to. They understand that when playing along with Trump, they are also crippling the president-elect. 

They have made a deliberate choice. It may be possible to look past (if not excuse) the blunt, clumsy shenanigans of a GSA administrator trying to please her superiors.  She can’t do much more damage than she’s already done.

It is tougher to stomach the undemocratic stratagems of U.S. senators — leaders of the Republican Party — who lack the courage of their convictions, or simply the convictions, to uphold democratic values.

Richard Hasen observes (“Trump’s Legal Farce Is Having Tragic Results”):

By the time President-elect Biden takes the oath of office, millions of people will wrongly believe he stole the election. At least 300 times since Election Day, Mr. Trump has gone straight to his followers on social media to declare the election rigged or stolen and to claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, himself as the real victor. Mr. Trump’s false claims will delegitimize a Biden presidency among his supporters. It should go without saying that a democracy requires the losers of an election to accept the results as legitimate and agree to fight another day; Republican leaders echoing Mr. Trump’s failure to support a peaceful transition of power undermine the foundation of our democracy. It’s not only the fact that we have had to say this, but that we keep having to repeat it, that shows the depths that we have reached.

E.J. Dionne notes that “Joe Biden’s victory offered the cheerful prospect that we might begin to detoxify our politics.” Biden pledged “to be the president of all Americans and honored the dignity of voters who had supported Trump in the past by expressing an understanding of their discontents.”

And the GOP’s response to the outreach? With just a handful of exceptions, abject refusal to stand up against the anti-democratic lunacy of Trump’s efforts to nullify the results of a fair election.

Dionne suggests that we are confronted with “a form of conservatism that openly disdains democracy.” I am on board with Dionne regarding the antipathy of the Republican Party for the democratic tradition:

Those who lack the conviction to sustain that tradition by defending rationality and the democratic rules of engagement forfeit their standing to ask the rest of us to believe that they are operating in good faith.

(Image: Thomas Paine via Wikimedia Commons.)