If the primary elections that the Republican party has been carrying out for the legislative elections next November have made anything clear, it is that Former President Donald Trump remains lord and master of this community.
To such an extent that his support has become almost a necessary precondition to survive the primaries and the denial of the results of the last elections, in which he lost to Joe Biden, the number one requirement to pass the loyalty test.
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A parallel universe that contrasts with the reality that has been exposed during the public hearings held by Congress on the seizure of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and in which former officials of his own administration, such as Prosecutor Bob Barr, al Like advisers and members of the campaign, they have testified under oath that the alleged fraud never existed but was used by Trump and his team to justify all the maneuvers that were attempted to keep him in power.
In those elections, Trump lost by more than eight million votes and 74 seats in the Electoral College, which is the one that elects the President. Despite this, he never conceded defeat and denounced a massive fraud to deny him victory despite the fact that several of the states where he was defeated, controlled by Republican authorities, carried out multiple recounts that confirmed Biden’s victory.
Likewise, he filed more than 50 lawsuits in the courts of the country, the vast majority before conservative judges that he himself appointed, and all were rejected due to the absolute absence of evidence. Including one that reached the Supreme Court of Justice.
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Still, Trump persisted in using the power of the White House to try to block the certification of Biden’s victory at various points. The last of them was on January 6, when a mob of his supporters took over Congress to try to prevent legislators from officially reading the results and confirming Biden’s victory.
In congressional hearings, those efforts have been described as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president himself. A conclusion that has been supported by dozens of testimonies and documents from former officials, advisers and their own lawyers.
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The myth of the election theft, however, never died. Largely because the former president kept repeating it and a large part of the party’s base has bought the lie. In fact, according to recent polls by the PEW Center and others, nearly half of Republicans blindly believe the election was rigged.
Something that has resulted in the election of candidates both for the national Congress, as well as in the state legislatures and other public offices, who have campaigned denying Biden’s victory and/or promising to change the electoral laws to prevent something from happening again that never happened.
It is a party that continues to live under the shadow of the former president
Moreover, the recognition of Biden’s victory has become a kind of “kiss of death” for the few candidates who have admitted it and who are being defeated by rivals backed by the former president.
Recently the newspaper Washington Post published an evaluation of the results of the first rounds of primary elections and where the phenomenon is very evident.
Among the more than 170 electoral races that have been held within the Republican party so far on the calendar, 149 candidates have emerged victorious who have either repeated Trump’s lies or have promised to tighten electoral rules to prevent fraud. That is, more than 80 percent.
That includes secretaries of state and governors, who have the function of certifying the electoral results and transmitting them to Congress. As it is recalled, Trump pressured these types of officials to deny the results and send Congress a list of voters to the Electoral College different from the legitimate one and that was favorable to him.
If only those who have denied Biden’s victory and defend the myth of fraud are included in the list, the number reaches 108 candidates, or 65 percent of the total.
(Read more: US primaries: Trump candidates garner mixed results)
Not yet included in this list are this week’s results in Nevada, South Carolina and other states where many “deniers” also prevailed.
In South Carolina, for example, Russell Fry and Tom Rice met. Fry’s campaign was focused on the fact that the protesters who took over the Capitol were simply citizens expressing their right to free expression, which is why he received the endorsement of the former president.
Rice, on the other hand, was one of the few House legislators who voted in favor of an impeachment trial against her, something that ended up costing her her seat.
(You can read: Donald Trump attacks the committee investigating the assault on the Capitol)
Trump, in fact, has launched a grand campaign to defeat the 10 Republican lawmakers who joined with Democrats to raise impeachment charges.
Others, despite them, have survived the attack of the former president. The most notable case is that of Brian Kemp, the current governor of Georgia who will seek re-election in November.
After his state carried out two vote recounts and an audit that confirmed Biden’s legitimate victory by about 10,000 votes, Kemp stood firm despite pressure from Trump, who insisted that the results not be certified and before “they found him the votes he needed” to win, according to an audio that was released after a conversation between the former president and the authorities in Georgia.
But for now, cases like Kemp’s are the exception, not the rule, in a party that continues to live under the shadow of the former president.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERI
Correspondent of THE TIME
Washington
@Sergom68
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