They have been hailed as the conscience of the Republican Party, heroes of the resistance to the hostile takeover of former US President Donald Trump.
But Sen. Mitt Romney, Rep. Liz Cheney and others this month helped kill a voting rights bill that Democrats say is essential to protecting democracy from a Trump-led onslaught.
The blanket opposition from these Republicans is drawing criticism that their professed rejection of the former president rings hollow and, despite their lofty words, are ultimately helping to push their authoritarian agenda.
“They may not like Trump, but they have Trump’s character,” he said. La Tosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “The reason Trump was able to lead his party is because he is good representation. He is a liar; they lie. They have decided to use any means necessary to maintain power. If that means political corruption, they decide they are going to go down that road.”
Black Voters Matter and other groups warn that Republican-led states across the country are pass laws making it harder for African Americans and others to vote by consolidating polling places, requiring certain types of ID, and mandating other changes.
In response, House Democrats last week passed the John R Lewis Freedom to Vote Act, which would make Election Day a national holiday, guarantee access to early voting and mail-in ballots, and it would allow the justice department to intervene in states with a history of election interference.
The legislation was also supported by all 50 Democrats in the Senate, but collapsed this week when Republicans used a procedural rule known as filibuster to block him in the evenly divided chamber. Chuck Schumer, the Majority Leader, then called for a vote to change the Senate rules to allow the House to pass the bill by a simple majority. Once again, all Republicans opposed, and now they were joined by Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginian and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, securing a 52-48 loss.
It was a bitter defeat for Joe Biden just hours after he held a marathon news conference on Wednesday that marked the end of his first year in office. “I am deeply disappointed,” the president said in a statement.
Much of the Liberal fury was focused on the reluctant Democrats Manchin and Sinema. But his intransigence only mattered because all Republicans, including so-called moderates, stood firm against legislation aimed at combating voter suppression, which largely affects communities of color. Even those who claim to be fiercely anti-Trump.
Romney, a former presidential candidate, is a good example. He was the only senator to break with his party by voting to convict Trump of abuse of power in his first impeachment trial in 2020. He was then one of seven Republicans to find Trump guilty of inciting insurrection in his second impeachment trial on last year.
“Well, I like Mitt,” Biden told reporters. at the press conference lasting almost two hours. “Look, Mitt Romney is a straight guy.”
By then, however, Romney, a senator from Utah, had already voiced his opposition to the voting rights legislation, dismissing it as a partisan takeover of federal elections and even comparing it to Trump’s bogus claim of voter fraud in 2020.
Romney was not alone. Sen. Ben Sasse of Utah, who also voted to convict Trump in last year’s impeachment trial, described the push to defend voting rights. as a “farce” to satisfy a minority “addicted to anger on Twitter”, adding: “It’s bad for America. It’s just as undermining public confidence in the election as what Donald Trump did last year.”
Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman and Tim Scott, who have spoken out against Trump on several occasions, opposed the bill. In the previous House vote, NeverTrumpers Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger also toed the party line.
Cheney, vice chairman of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, has earned bipartisan admiration from some unlikely quarters. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman even raised the idea to become Biden’s running mate in the 2024 election.
But the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear last year that she saw no connection between Trump’s “big lie” about 2020 and the barrage of election restrictions imposed by Republican state legislatures. “I will never understand the resistance, for example, to the voter card”, Cheney told Axios on HBO.
Some commentators agree that there is nothing inconsistent about denouncing Trump’s assault on democracy and rejecting the Democrats’ radical proposals.
Michael Steele, the first African-American to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “You can be against Donald Trump and have a political opinion on voting rights (personally, I might not agree with that) that you don’t would lead them to support proposed legislation in the House or Senate.”
But some conservative critics of Trump admit that the reforms, which they see as an example of government overreach at the expense of state autonomy (despite Article I of the constitution explicitly authorizes Congress to set the rules for federal elections), put them in a dilemma.
JoeWalsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: “I am vehemently against Trump, but against what the Democrats are trying to do at the federal level, so I would be in the same group. The Republicans are doing a lot of shit, but the answer to that in my mind is not bad, unconstitutional federal legislation.”
But Walsh objects to Romney’s attempt to equate Trump’s lies with Biden’s politics. “I disagree with Mitt and any other Republican who is making some kind of comparison between what Trump did in our election and what the Democrats are doing.”
This week’s vote was also the latest marker of the transformation of the Republican Party in the Trump era. Sixteen of its current senators he voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 2006, but opposed the latest bill, which would update the most powerful part of the law. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and George W Bush supported his renewal.
Antjohn Seawright, A senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took issue with Romney and his colleagues’ assertion that Republicans aren’t making it harder for minorities to vote.
“It is intellectually dishonest for anyone to say that there is not an effort to repress, stifle and silence Black votes in particular in this country. All you have to do is look at the invoices that have been submitted and where they have been submitted,” he said.
With voting rights measures meant to safeguard democracy now seemingly dead in the water, it may be harder for independents, liberals and others to praise anti-Trump Republicans in the same way as before.
Kurt Bardela, adviser to the Democratic National Committee, argues that doing the right thing once doesn’t make them heroes. “Just because you’re anti-Trump doesn’t mean you’re still not part of the anti-democratic effort that’s spearheaded by the Republican party in the United States.”
Bardella, a former senior adviser to Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “For Republicans like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, it says everything that they are still willing to be called Republican, and the position of the GOP is to do so. harder for minorities in America to vote. Look at the closure of polling places in states like Georgia, where places that have the highest density of minority voters now have fewer options to vote.
“That is quite simple. That’s pretty racist. It shows white privilege at stake so people like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney don’t see that. The reality is that if they are not willing to step up and help the effort to enact voter protection in America, then they are Donald Trump’s greatest ally.”
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism