Opinion: Ted Cruz’s humiliation made headlines. But his colleagues’ cowardice is more worrying.
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It’s no surprise that Ted Cruz’s humiliation on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program last week received so much attention, especially among those who are not fond of the Texas senator (i.e., most people who know him). Cruz’s pleas for absolution from a high priest of the Trump cult were not only humorous, but also a chilling reminder of how the right is mythologizing the Jan. 6 insurrection, as my colleague Greg Sargent noted.
If only other Republicans received the same attention. They might not all be as ludicrous as Cruz, but they deserve the same amount of outrage.
Take Sen. Mike Rounds’s (R-S.D.) interview on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday. The segment started off downright encouraging. “The election was fair, as fair as we have seen,” he told host George Stephanopoulos. “We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency.” He even stood up for the integrity of the electoral system: “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. ... [We] have to let people know that they can — they can believe and they can have confidence that those elections are fair.” Rounds deserves plaudits for these words, just as he did for voting to certify the election results last year.
But then Stephanopoulos asked whether Rounds would support Donald Trump if the latter runs for president again. “I will take a hard look at it,” he replied. “Personally, what I have told people is, is I’m going to support the Republican nominee to be president. I’m not sure that the eventual nominee has even shown up yet. There’s still — we’re two years to go, where we’re going to focus on the next election cycle.”
Cut out the excuses, and you’re left with just six words: “I’m going to support the Republican.”
In the remembrances of the insurrection, much attention has been paid to how many Republicans take a different view of Jan. 6 and the “big lie” than most Americans. In the recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll, for example, 60 percent of all respondents said Trump bears a “great deal/good amount” of responsibility for the attempted insurrection, compared to just 27 percent of Republicans. A similar gap exists on whether President Biden’s election was legitimate (69 percent overall vs. 39 percent of Republicans) and whether there was evidence of fraud in the 2020 election (30 percent vs. 62 percent). Other polls have found similar numbers.
But the flip side of these polls is that at least one-quarter of the party agrees with Rounds that Biden’s election was legitimate and encouragement of the “big lie” is wrong. Basic math dictates that if this portion of the party were to stand up and say “no more” — whether by walking out entirely or, more likely, refusing to support the biggest “big liars” and those who valorize insurrections — the rest of the GOP would not be able to ignore them. As we’ve seen with Democratic “moderates” in Congress this past year, our closely divided political system is full of factions that exert outsize influence because the party needs their votes.
That sea change would have to start with lawmakers such as Rounds. While his forthrightness about the 2020 election is welcome, it’s next to useless so long as Trump controls the GOP. The Jan. 6 insurrectionists were ready to threaten, intimidate and do worse long before last year began, but it took Trump saying “stop the steal” — and most other Republican lawmakers echoing or remaining quiet — for that day to play out as it did.
By contrast, more than two-thirds of Democrats still doubted the Trump’s legitimacy a year after he won in 2016. Yet angry Democrats didn’t invade the Capitol or harass election workers because Democratic lawmakers showed leadership.
Cruz’s humiliation may get the headlines, but it’s not news that he would let this country burn to the ground to be king of the ashes. Equally bad — if not worse — are Republicans like Rounds, who rebut the “big lie” yet will not lift a finger to stop its chief author from becoming president once again. With their silence, they beg to bear witness to disaster for the rest of us.
