By all accounts, what little chance Donald Trump had of winning the White House went up in smoke at the tail end of Wednesday night’s debate, when the Donald refused to accept the outcome of the election–even if he loses to Hillary Clinton. Trump doubled down on this on Wednesday, when he promised that he would accept the results–but only if he won. As incredible as this was, Trump’s announcement came 12 hours after the Republican National Committee scrambled to assure the American people that Trump would indeed accept a defeat by Hillary.
After the debate, RNC communications chief Sean Spicer told ABC News that he believed Trump was concerned about “the bias that exists in the media,” and wanted to focus on the final push for the White House. If push came to shove, though, Spicer said, Trump would “one hundred percent” accept a Hillary win–“no question about it.” RNC chairman Reince Priebus tried to have it both ways. He told NBC News that unless there was a “massive fraud situation” on Election Day, “he is going to accept the results of the election.”
Um, Reince and Sean? You might want to have a talk with your candidate. After all, it’s awfully hard to parse something like this.
Not only that, but Trump spent Thursday saying that the only result he would accept would be on in which he wins the White House.
You might also want to have a chat with your two main point men on Capitol Hill. As I write this on Thursday night, neither House Speaker Paul Ryan nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have said a word. To their credit, individual lawmakers have knocked down Trump’s blathering about a rigged election. But it speaks volumes that the nation’s two highest-ranking elected Republicans haven’t said anything.
James Downie of The Washington Post thinks–rightly, in my mind–that Priebus, Ryan, and McConnell “must speak up for democracy” and unequivocally condemn this latest Trump nonsense. Most of the Republican members of The Politico Caucus–a bipartisan panel of insiders from battleground states–agree. A Virginia Republican said it best–“there are some basic things you should defend and stand up for,” and accepting that you’ve lost the White House is one of them.
Things like this are why I believed we shouldn’t have popped corks at the prospect of Trump winning the Republican nomination. Thanks to this and his other shenanigans, it’s going to take much longer than it should for the nation to heal after this election. If there’s a bright side to this, it’s very likely that a President Hillary won’t be caught unawares by the extent to which a significant element of the GOP simply will not accept a Democrat in the White House. After all, that element’s spokesman has already given her a very loud warning.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
