Sidney Powell's nutty narrative was too much even for the Trumpers

It was clear that conservative lawyer Sidney Powell, whose bizarre (and obviously false) claims about a national network of voting machines using software developed by dead Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez switching millions of votes from President Trump to Joe Biden enchanted that gullible class of citizens called Republicans, was in trouble when even Tucker Carlson expressed skepticism about her claims in the absence of at least a shred of evidence.  But her lurid claims apparently have been embarrassing enough that the Trump campaign has dropped her from its team. Presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani- who has lost all but two of the lawsuits he's brought to overturn the election, failing to throw the results in even one state into question and even having one of his two victories reversed on appeal- has made it clear that she doesn't work for Mr. Trump personally, either.

This is a remarkable thing. It takes a lot to embarrass the Trump Administration or the contemporary Republican Party, and it's even more impressive to make Rudy Giuliani blush. Yet Ms. Powell has pulled it off. 

President Trump's attempt to steal an election he lost decisively and honestly is transparently bogus. Yet, at least one poll indicates that 77% of Republicans believe the President's whine that the election was somehow stolen from him. Another poll puts the figure at 52%. As judge after judge has pointed out, lurid claims do not constitute legal arguments. Despite elaborate efforts to use the courts to stage what amounts to America's first coup and disenfranchise the majority of Americans, the Trump folk have yet to come up with any plausible reason other than Mr. Trump's own personal immaturity and inability to accept defeat why the idea of Joe Biden's victory should even be questioned.

We pride ourselves in this country on our smooth and peaceful transitions. Once the election is over, we put it behind us. We may not like the outcome, but we accept it. Our Child President's behavior not only marks an end to that tradition, just as he broke with the tradition of the gracious concession once the outcome has become clear, but has led his sheeplike followers to do the same. Worse, he is trying to win an election in the courts that he lost, fair and square, at the polls. And that's a direct attack on the democratic process.

This is an attempted coup. That it's a kind of comic opera coup, as inept as incompetent as the Trump Administration usually is, and that it has no chance of success in no way lessen its ominous character. An American President who was resoundingly defeated at the polls is trying to undermine the election. However, little chance he has succeeded. I would be tempted to say that this has never happened before, but to say that would be to overlook the presidency's theft from Samuel Tilden by supporters of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Supposedly a deal was struck whereby influential southern Democrats threw Tilden, the winner of the popular vote, under the bus as part of a bargain whereby Federal troops would be withdrawn from the states that had comprised the Confederacy. This time, of course, the motivating factor is nothing other than Donald Trump's fragile ego and the historically unprecedented gutlessness of Republican officeholders, doubtless in terror of a party rank-and-file seduced by a demagogue who knows how to push their buttons.

I would never have dreamt before Donald Trump came along that the rank-and-file of the Republican Party would prove to be so easily seduced or to so radically break faith with our noblest traditions. Or, for that matter, that it could be convinced to do so based on a bizarre claim that has literally no rational basis whatsoever.

But then, I never dreamed that they would accept the corruption of the Trump presidency, or the outward contempt for the Constitution they claim to adore, or the rule of law they supposedly hold so dear, or the free-market economics that has been left in the dust in the wake of Trumpist protectionism. I never dreamed that they would tolerate a president capable of openly advocating violence against demonstrators- and even order it for no reason but to enable a photo op in front of a nearby church.  I couldn't have imagined the same party that was dismayed by Barack Obama's "apology tour" and prided itself on its realism in the face of Democratic dovishness so completely knuckling under to isolationism which some might have thought defensible even as late as the era of Robert Taft, but which the modern, interconnected world and military technology which puts every American city within striking distance of hostile missiles have rendered utterly and obviously obsolete. Republicans, I would have said, don't side with Nazis terrorize American cities like Charlottesville for entire weekends and are the clear aggressors even in conflicts with radical leftists.

The Republican Party used to be easily distinguishable from the Know-Nothings of yore. But not under Donald Trump. The Party of Lincoln didn't use to make its main political strategy dividing an already polarized nation further. It didn't use to believe that presidents were above the law. And never, in a million years, could I have foreseen a day when the entire Republican platform would consist, in essence, of "Whatever the President is for, we're for, and whatever the President is against, we're against.

That's just not the way political parties do things in America. Or it didn't use to be, anyway.

The damage that's been done by an authoritarian president who holds the Constitution and our most basic values in contempt and cares not a whit for America or its people, and whose only objective is self-glorification, is catastrophic. The Republican Party will never recover its credibility in the eyes of sane, rational Americans. We will only hope that someday America will recover.

Donald Trump will lose his remaining baseless lawsuits, ridiculed by even more judges from both parties for failing to provide any evidence and demanding the disenfranchisement of huge numbers of Americans. He will continue to whine and sulk. Decisively defeated in what the evidence suggests was the most honest and secure election in modern times. He and his supporters will sulk and insist in the face of all the evidence that he actually won. Republicans, as a class, didn't use to be that gullible, that dishonest, or that lacking in principle. Americans, in general, didn't use to be.

The damage Donald Trump has done to America and its institutions is incalculable. His childish petulance is unbecoming and eliminates any possibility that he might go down in history as anything other than a laughingstock.  His baseless, petulant lawsuits- based on the absurd premise that somehow elections which make widespread use of mailed-in ballots are inherently corrupt, so this one must be, even if there's no evidence of it- will continue to fail.

At least the culprit that's blamed won't be Sidney Powell's magic Venezualan voting machines. That one was too absurd even for Donald Trump.

Joe Biden will take office on January 20 and hopefully lead us more wisely. But instead of offering his help to the new president, the old one will doubtless do everything he can to undermine him. He will do that in the pursuit of no good other than his own self-glorification and the gratification of his own ego, heedless of the damage he will be doing to the country. And the bulk of the Republican Party will support him every step of the way.

I can remember when American presidents were patriots.

I can remember when Republicans were patriots.

Alas, that time has passed.