It turns out that elected officials don’t have to follow their constituents into error. In fact, they can even use their positions to try and lead the people out of error.
Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington has shown that in her response to President Trump’s dangerous demagoguery, and other Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz ought to take note.
Herrera Beutler voted to impeach Trump earlier this week. She represents a district Trump won twice (according to preliminary results), and she’s received plenty of blowback from her constituents. If the impeachment question were put up for a vote in her district, a vast majority of those who voted for Herrera would have voted “No.”
That is, Herrera Beutler cast an unpopular vote on impeachment.
So, what does she do now?
She explains her vote in a way that tries to educate her constituents. That is, it’s her job to follow and examine the president’s actions closely, and so, she’s presenting her findings to a public that maybe hasn’t followed things so closely.
Here’s her Twitter thread:
In conversations w/residents about this week’s impeachment vote, some are unclear on what transpired before & during that involved President Trump.
Here are the indisputable and publicly available facts ⬇️
— Jaime Herrera Beutler (@HerreraBeutler) January 15, 2021
I don’t think she makes an irrefutable case here that Trump is guilty of incitement, but after reading the thread, it’s really hard to hold him blameless. And although I have followed the story closely, I still found her thread informative.
I hope it’s also an educational moment for Republican lawmakers who have decided that if their constituents believe something, the elected official has no choice to play along.
That’s the central premise in Cruz’s argument against accepting the 2020 results: no matter that the vote count, the canvass, and in some cases, the recount showed definitive Biden wins in every disputed state. No matter that Republican officials certified these Biden wins in Georgia and Arizona. No matter that the lawsuits trying to overturn these Biden wins all flopped miserably and proved to be based on factual errors and absurd legal arguments.
None of those things matter to Cruz and many other Republican lawmakers — because millions of people believe Trump really won.
Here’s a Jan. 2 joint statement from Sens. Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, and Tommy Tuberville: “Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).
“Some Members of Congress disagree with that assessment, as do many members of the media.
“But, whether or not our elected officials or journalists believe it, that deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear. It should concern us all.”
Cruz and his crew are correct that this distrust should concern us. That’s why Cruz and friends should have tried to dispel the distrust by calmly and clearly explaining what they knew: that Biden won and that Trump’s cries of fraud were either fantasy or lies.
Cruz, Johnson, Blackburn, and Kennedy have run in and worked on enough campaigns that they know elections better than 99% of the public. They know that large-scale fraud is basically nonexistent in this country, and they know that if it had happened in 2020, there would be real signs of it. They know that the popular “proofs” of fraud are fallacious and that they rely on ignorance of how elections actually go.
Were they leaders, these senators could lead some sizable portion of their voters out of error. Instead, they indulged this error that they found so “tragic.” That’s the opposite of leading. Herrera Beutler showed us another route.
