GOP strategies that make America look stupid

(Alaska Division of Elections photo)

By Rich Moniak

The U.S. Department of Justice has been unusually busy the past few months. But it has nothing to do with its mission to “uphold the rule of law, keep our country safe, and protect civil rights.” Rather, the lawsuits they filed against 21 states and Fulton County, Georgia, are part of the Trump administration’s attempt to erect a façade of credibility for the president’s never-ending lies about the 2020 election.

To avoid making Alaska a defendant in a similar lawsuit, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who as a candidate for governor wants Trump’s endorsement, complied with DOJ’s demands to send his administration the private data of every registered voter in Alaska. 

On a somewhat parallel track, former state lawmakers John Coghill, Mike Chenault and Josh Revak launched Alaskans For Citizens, a ballot initiative aimed at amending the state statute that defines voter eligibility. They think the word “Only” needs to be added at the beginning of the section that clearly states all voters must be U.S. citizens.  

The idea that illegal immigrants are voting by the millions and tipping election results to favor Democrats didn’t begin in 2020. It was a baseless allegation Trump made after losing the popular vote in 2016.

A few months later, he established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Almost immediately, it requested all states submit voter data to help it identify “vulnerabilities in voting systems and practices used for Federal elections that could lead to improper voter registrations and improper voting, including fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting.” Almost every state, including Alaska, refused to provide them with any information defined by law as confidential.  

It was no surprise that the Commission never uncovered any evidence of widespread voter fraud before being disbanded in early 2018. 

This time around, Trump is motivated by his juvenile need to prove he won the 2020 election despite the absolute lack of credible evidence supporting that claim. 

Until recently, soon-to-be former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) had been one of his most vocal defenders in Congress. But when she persisted in fighting for the release of the Epstein files in November, he called her “whacky,” labeled her a “traitor,” and withdrew his endorsement of her bid for reelection. After being subjected to threats from his supporters, she announced her resignation from Congress. 

But Greene hasn’t been afraid of speaking out.

“Our side has been trained by Donald Trump to never apologize and to never admit when you’re wrong,” she told a NY Times reporter last month. “You just keep pummeling your enemies, no matter what. And as a Christian, I don’t believe in doing that.”

Christians aren’t supposed to condone lying either. Greene didn’t disavow the Big Lie, though, because she actually seems to believe that the 2020 election was stolen.

However, most Republican officials don’t. But because they know Trump will never admit he lost and challenging him on that is almost a sure ticket to excommunication from the party, they’ve honed their skills to evade answering all questions about it. 

The rare exception is Republicans in Georgia, where accusations of fraud in Fulton County were central to Trump’s false claim he won the state. If he had evidence to support that, DOJ wouldn’t have sued the county to get access to “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election.”

DOJ’s demands for confidential voter data from Alaska and other states is nothing more than a ruse to create the impression the whole election system is corrupt. And Dahlstrom’s acquiescence provides legal cover for that scam. 

Coghill, Chenault and Revak are doing the same thing with their voter initiative.

They’re all latecomers to the GOP’s apparatus that’s passively endorsing Trump’s attempt to rewrite the history of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection he instigated.

But Sen. Dan Sullivan has been shamelessly doing it for so long that to acknowledge it now would be an admission that he willingly violated his oath to defend the Constitution. 

A party that allows the Department of Justice to pursue frivolous lawsuits to pacify the ego of a pathological lying narcissist can’t claim to stand for personal accountability, respect for the rule or be interested in making the government more efficient. Instead, they’re helping Trump make America look stupid. 

• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.