A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

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22 November 2020 — 1625 mst

Corey Stapleton told Trump to concede and congratulate Biden — when will Daines, Gianforte, and Rosendale do the same?

Four days after the election, when it was obvious that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, Montana’s Secretary of State, Corey Stapleton, told President Trump to accept reality and concede:

Thanks to Trump’s attack on their integrity, and his efforts to punish them for telling the truth, elections officials across the nation, and their families, their children, are receiving death threats. Therefore, Stapleton’s Tweet took no small amount of courage.

But it’s the kind of courage I’ve always believed Stapleton, a graduate of the naval academy, and a former naval surface warfare officer, had in him. Most graduates of our military academies are extraordinary men and women (two, Eisenhower and Carter, were elected president), principled, courageous, and guided by a profound sense of honor perhaps described best by General Douglas MacArthur in his 1962 speech at West Point accepting the Sylvanus Thayer Award:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do: They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for actions, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never to take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

That sense of honor and duty stayed alive in Stapleton through his turbulent tenure as MT SecST, which began on a low note when he launched a jihad against voter fraud, which he mistakenly believed was a major problem in Montana, included decisions of dubious wisdom, and now is ending on a high note by, as Montana’s chief elections officer, presiding over a free, fair, and close to errorless, election that made all Montanans proud.

The most telling response to Stapleton’s Tweet may have come from Tammi Fisher, former mayor of Kalispell and a Republican who believes government can and should help people:

When in hell will other MT GOP leaders do as Corey did?

That brings us to this question: when will Steve Daines, Greg Gianforte, Matt Rosendale, and other Republican leaders acknowledge Biden’s win, congratulate Biden, and call on Trump to concede, to concede now, to concede graciously, to ensure there is a smooth transition of power? When will they muster the courage and wisdom to remind Trump that he lost a free and fair election? When will they remind him that submitting himself to the judgment of the voters is an implicit agreement to accept their judgment? That’s how democracy functions, and must function, and not just in the United States but all over the world.

The refusal of most Republican officeholders to publicly assert that Biden won a free and fair election, to declare as false Trump’s claim his victory is being stolen through widespread fraud, incompetence, and chicanery, is hurting our democracy. According to recent polls by Monmouth, Morning Consult, and YouGov/Economist, approximately three of every four Republicans believe the election was neither free nor fair despite the absence of evidence supporting that conclusion. That so many Republicans are so misinformed is the direct result of Trump’s lies not being countered by Republican leaders who know Trump’s lies are lies but are too lily livered to deliver that truth to the supporters of Trump who need to hear it.

Joe Biden’s victory is not in doubt. Yes, not all the votes have been counted — but enough have been counted to know he has won. Yes, Trump has options to challenge the election — and because he has, Republican leaders from McConnell to assistant deputy dogcatchers are humoring him while he exhausts them. Instead, they should be reminding him that exercising one’s rights to their fullest is not always wise:

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tells me I ought to do. Edmund Burke, On Conciliation with America (1775).

When senators and representatives are sworn in, they take this oath of office (history):

“I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Sen. Daines, et al, your highest loyalty is to the nation, not to the man who occupies the presidency until noon on 20 January 2021. You must summon the courage to tell President Trump that his goose is cooked, that his time is up, and that his patriotic duty is conceding the election, congratulating Biden, and not sabotaging the transition. If Corey Stapleton can do that, so can you — You must do your patriotic duty. You must do it now.