Republicans can’t handle the shame of our present moment
- Rich Moniak
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Rich Moniak
In an uncharacteristic break from his party, Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, voted for an election reform bill he believes “improves the system, strengthens transparency and puts Alaska in a better position for the fights ahead.” Now he’s concerned Gov. Mike Dunleavy will listen to the bill’s “loudest” critics and veto it.
It's encouraging that McCabe has taken such a stand. But if he’s really interested in election transparency, he should admit he was wrong to support President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
SB 64 includes eight provisions of a bill Dunleavy introduced in 2022. That alone should be enough for him to sign it into law.
Suzanne Downing is one prominent Alaskan trying to convince him otherwise. A few years ago, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said she possessed an “unwavering commitment to holding the mainstream media accountable.” But he has no interest in pointing out the problem of her own partisan bias.
To illustrate, consider this article Downing wrote about the 2021 Anchorage mayoral runoff. She complained that a Washington Post reporter didn’t verify the accuracy of allegations that conservative commentators spread a false narrative about boxes of blank ballots being “smuggled” into the municipal election center. The truth, she said, was election observers became concerned after witnessing a procedure “never seen before by the public.”
Later in the article, she defended the request by one of those observers to inspect “thermal totes filled with pizza boxes” to make sure there weren’t ballots in them. “Call it outrageous, but after the 2020 General Election, volunteers can’t take anything at face value.”
The real outrage is how statements like that lend credibility to Trump’s Big Lie.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump cried out three days before the election was even called for Joe Biden. He’s been saying it for more than five years, but still hasn’t produced a shred of evidence to back it up.
Last week, FBI Director Kash Patel said that’s about to change. Violating the longstanding Department of Justice policy of not commenting about ongoing investigations, he announced “we've got all the information we need” to start “making arrests” soon.
Needless to say, election conspiracists were excited by that news. Just like many of them were last summer when Patel gave the Senate Judiciary Committee a report suggesting the FBI had covered up a plot by the Chinese government to manufacture and ship “fake driver's licenses” to the U.S. “for the purpose of facilitating fraudulent mail-in ballots” for the 2020 election.
Fox News wasn’t convinced. They recognized the allegations came from a source who obtained it “from an identified sub-source, who claimed they obtained the information from unidentified” Chinese government officials.
Fox News was so unimpressed by documentary film "2000 Mules" that the network earned Trump’s wrath. He called the film “the greatest and most impactful documentary of our time.” Based on geofencing technology and cell phone tracking data gathered by True the Vote, it supposedly exposed a scheme to stuff drop boxes with millions of illegal ballots. But after being compelled by a court order to turn over their evidence, True the Vote confessed none of it was credible.
I don’t know if McCabe bought into either conspiracy before they were debunked. But in 2020, he definitely believed the election was rigged. He and seven other state legislators signed onto to an amicus brief supporting the Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn it. They argued certifying Biden as the winner would taint the election and cast “into doubt the assurance of free elections in this country.”
Fortunately, the Supreme Court rejected the case.
Unfortunately, too many Republican officials continued helping Trump promote the lie. It led a violent insurrection which many in the party are now calling a peaceful demonstration.
The Atlantic’s David Graham described that as “a New Lost Cause.” Like the South’s attempt to rewrite the history of the Civil War, it’s an attempt “to convert a shameful catastrophe into a celebration of the valor and honor of the culprits” who attacked the Capitol.
The Republican Party’s anti-woke platform rejects the idea that Americans should feel a sense of shame about any episode in the nation’s history. Voters who agree with that likely lack the capacity to acknowledge the insurrection Trump instigated was one of the darkest days ever.
And that places the heavy burden of defending the truth about our present era on the rest of us.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
