Thread by @jbendery

Good day! ☕ Not sure if you have noticed, but what's happening right in front of our faces is nearly the entire Republican Party trying to delegitimize this election and the democratic process itself. huffpost.com/entry/trump-fr…

There is no evidence of any kind of widespread corruption or fraud.

Republicans know this.

They simply care more about not upsetting Trump’s base of supporters for their own political purposes. huffpost.com/entry/trump-fr…

Trump will go down in the history books for lying, cheating and otherwise doing anything he can to delegitimize the 2020 election and the democratic process itself as he headed for defeat.

Don't let Republican leaders off the hook. They are right there with him.

This stuff is egregious.

Lindsey Graham has left the door open to the PA legislature ignoring its election results and appointing pro-Trump electors based on false conspiracy theories about fraud.

Kevin McCarthy straight up lied and said Trump won.

Even after Biden was declared the winner on Saturday, Republican leaders were *still* alleging fraud with no evidence.

Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz urged Trump not to concede.

Kevin McCarthy called for every “legal” vote to be counted, which is already happening.

Put another way: Only 2 Republican senators, Romney and Murkowski, have congratulated Biden and said it's time to move on. Sen. Toomey said there is “no evidence” of fraud.

All remaining GOP senators have been silent or continued casting doubts on the democratic process.

It's the same deal in the House.

Reps. Don Young (Alaska) and Fred Upton (Mich.) are among just a handful of GOP lawmakers who have conceded that Biden has won.

There are ~200 Republicans in the House.

I talked to experts in authoritarianism and U.S. democracy to see how alarmed they are by what's happening.

This pattern of GOP leaders supporting Trump above all else "is both predictable and yet alarming," one told me.

“Trump is ‘different,’ not dangerous, they rationalize. They conveniently assume that the risks involved in supporting him are lower than the risks involved in opposing him. Of course, they are dead wrong." huffpost.com/entry/trump-fr…

Dr. Valerie Bunce, an expert on this stuff at Cornell University:

Republicans see themselves as facing an existential struggle b/c their constituencies shrink every year, so anything goes, including support of “an unstable, corrupt, racist, misogynistic authoritarian president.”

Experts I talked to didn't provide much relief on how damaging the GOP’s behavior is for dem institutions + people’s faith in em.

“As GOPers embrace moral bankruptcy, "they become less able to exit, more comfortable with arguments that rationalize what they have been doing."

Steven Levitsky, the author of “How Democracies Die,” a modern history of healthy democracies that slid into autocracy, told me he worried for months about thsi scenario unfolding: Republicans supporting Trump’s claims of fraud in a close election.

But! He's not worried now...

... because the fact that even *some* GOPers are rebuffing Trump (including Fox News) is a sign that he won't prevail, he said.

“I don’t think Trump has the capacity to pull it off. So far, his efforts have been pathetic.” huffpost.com/entry/trump-fr…