A senator acknowledging the election result normally wouldn’t be news. But we are in unusual times.
“We looked — as a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states.
“While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.
“The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And moving forward — and that’s the way we want to look at this — moving forward, we have to refocus once again on what it’s going to take to win the presidency.
“And if we simply look back and tell our people don’t vote because there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage. So, moving forward, let’s focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that. But we have to let people know that they can — they can believe and they can have confidence that those elections are fair.”
Given all of that, it should not be terribly newsworthy when a Republican elected official acknowledges that Biden won fair and square. “Dog bites man” isn’t usually a story.
But, we are in very unusual times. And, for Republicans, Trump has made believing in the Big Lie that the election was stolen a loyalty litmus test. Despite all of the objective facts pointing to a fair election, the former President remains utterly obsessed with relitigating 2020.
“‘Senator’ Mike Rounds of the Great State of South Dakota just went woke on the Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020. He made a statement this weekend on ABC Fake News, that despite massive evidence to the contrary, including much of it pouring in from Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states, he found the election to be ok — just fine. Is he crazy or just stupid?” Trump said in a statement Monday morning.
Unfortunately for the health and future of the GOP, many of its elected leaders — and rank in file — are falling in line with Trump’s falsehood.
All of which makes what Rounds said — aka the objective truth — a bit of an outlier within his party. Which, well, stop and think about that for a minute. Acknowledging a fact that has been proven time and time and time again in swing states across the country makes you an exception within one of the country’s two main political parties.
That’s what Republicans — like Rounds — who are trying to steer their party back toward a more fact-based reality are up against.
