GOP leaders pinched by pro-Trump bid to reverse election outcome

Source: The Hill | December 15, 2020 | Mike Lillis and Scott Wong

A Hail Mary bid by House Republicans to flip the election results in favor of President Trump is sowing deep divisions in the GOP ranks.

The fight is pitting conservatives against fellow conservatives while creating an enormous headache for party leaders, who are pinched between an adherence to the electoral verdict and their loyalty to a president who has refused to accept defeat.

Those forces may be set to collide on Jan. 6, when Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a five-term Freedom Caucus firebrand, is vowing to launch an improbable effort to force votes in both chambers designed to block President-elect Joe Biden from assuming the White House. Electors from all 50 states cast their ballots on Monday, formally granting Biden the more than the 270 Electoral College votes he needs to become the 46th president.

Thus far, Brooks’s gambit has received no backing from senior GOP leaders. And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) seemed to tip his hand in opposition to Brooks’s tactics on Monday, telling Fox Business Network that taking election challenges to Congress is “the wrong method.”

“The president is right to go to the courts, have his legal challenges heard,” McCarthy said. “And he said he still has more opportunity to do that, so we’ll wade through and see what happens.”

Still, the top House Republicans — McCarthy and Steve Scalise (La.) — are facing increasing pressure from the right to get on board, even as doing so would highlight internal discord in the earliest days of the next Congress, just as Republicans are hoping to unite in opposition to Biden’s zealous legislative plans.

Both McCarthy and Scalise, key Trump allies, joined more than 120 House Republicans in backing the Texas lawsuit last week seeking to overturn the election results in several battleground states — a suit the Supreme Court rejected on Friday. But so far, the two ambitious GOP leaders — both of whom would need Freedom Caucus support in any future bid to become Speaker — have largely steered clear of the prickly issue.

Spokespeople for both McCarthy and Scalise did not respond to questions about whether the leaders support conservatives’ effort to contest the election results in Congress. 

The No. 3 Republican in leadership, Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), has been much more skeptical of Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud. If Trump’s challenges are unsuccessful in the court system, Cheney has said, the president “should fulfill his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by respecting the sanctity of our electoral process.”

Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.), a conservative who is retiring at the end of this term, took those criticisms a long step further on Monday, announcing that he is leaving the Republican Party to protest what he characterized as the GOP’s blanket decision “to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation.”

“If Republican leaders collectively sit back and tolerate unfounded conspiracy theories and ‘stop the steal’ rallies without speaking out for our electoral process … our nation will be damaged,” Mitchell wrote in a letter to McCarthy and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel.

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