Soon-to-be Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall still doesn’t know who the next president will be
Poor Roger Marshall claims still not to know the identity of our next president; should we tell him and ruin the surprise? And have we perhaps been premature in referring to the congressman as Senator-elect Marshall, just because the Kansas Republican got many more votes than his opponent, and will soon be sworn into office?
Acknowledging reality is widely considered optional now, which is how Marshall can claim without bursting into either laughter or flames that “we’re in the middle of a process” that will result in the inauguration of somebody or other on Jan. 20.
The votes have been counted and recounted. Trump-appointed judges across the land have rejected the president’s fraud claims as insubstantial, and the Electoral College, too, has done its job. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his victory, and even Russian President Vladimir Putin has given up on his preferred candidate.
But not so fast, says Marshall. “I feel like we’re in the middle of a process that’s going to take us to Inauguration Day on January 20 and whoever is sworn in on January 20 I’m going to call Mr. President with great respect,” Marshall told The Star on Tuesday.
Whether this pandering is serious or as cynical as it sounds, we can’t know.
But either way, remarks like this are far from harmless because day after day and week after week, they’re undermining both our democracy and the physical safety of election officials who are still getting death threats instead of the kudos they deserve.
Marshall was one of the 126 Republican House members to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas’ lawsuit seeking to overturn the election in four swing states. The Supreme Court refused to take the case.
When Congress meets on Jan. 6 to formally accept the results of the election, Marshall says he may try to block Biden’s electoral votes from being accepted, though McConnell has counseled Republicans not to object.
“January 6 is the next big step of this process,” Marshall told The Star. “I’m going to keep weighing the evidence between now and then and make a decision on January 5.”
We can’t pretend to be as surprised by any of this as Marshall will apparently be by his own actions on that day.
But we are genuinely saddened that retiring Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, whose seat Marshall will fill as of Jan. 3, has also failed to stand up for the facts in his final weeks in office.
As Roberts’ former chief of staff Leroy Towns said, his old boss refused for weeks to utter a peep against “Trump’s lies and his intentional and cynical effort to undermine support for our democracy.”
Roberts, who did finally accept Biden as president-elect after the Electoral College vote, said last week that he hadn’t spoken out because “I’ve got still three things I want to get done and all three (are) going to have to have presidential approval. Why should I go out of my way — either way — to say anything about this?”
Why? Commitment to our democracy would require it. Respect enough for constituents to tell them the truth would, too. As would care enough for election officials to try to avoid putting them in any further danger.
“Why should I go out of my way?” is a question that perfectly sums up how lost we are. Roberts has forgotten the answer, and Marshall never knew it.