In a lawsuit filed last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed that last month s elections in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia “suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities.” The suit asked the Supreme Court to allow the Republican-controlled legislatures in those states to appoint delegates of their own choosing to the Electoral College. As those legislatures would almost certainly appoint pro-Trump electors, a win for Paxton would’ve effectively flipped four states won by President-elect Joe Biden to President Donald Trump, invalidating Biden’s win and handing the president a second term.
Legal experts eviscerated the suit, calling it “frivolous,” “anti-American,” and “procedurally defective.” But other Republicans couldn’t resist joining. In total, 126 Republican members of Congress, along with 18 Republican state attorneys general signed on in support of Paxton’s attempt to steal the election for Trump.
Part of the difficulty is Biden himself. Terms such as the âfree worldâ, recalling his formative years during the cold war, sound outdated. His blithe assertion of American moral superiority jars with recent experience. âWe have to prove ⦠that the US is prepared to lead again, not just with the example of our power but also with the power of our example,â he says. Itâs an old refrain. Yet the songsheet has changed, and so have the singers.
China does not threaten global security in the existential way the Soviet Union once did. The fundamental challenge it poses is subtler, amoral and multi-dimensional â technological, ideological, commercial, anti-democratic. The idea that a cowed world is counting on the US to ride to the rescue is old-think. The age of solo superpower is over; the unipolar moment was squandered. Power balances were already shifting before Trump destroyed trust.