Republicans need to face facts: The Earth is round, the sun is hot, and Biden won | Opinion

Fact: Joe Biden had 81 million votes in last year’s election; Trump had 74 million.

Fact: Joe Biden won 306 Electoral College Votes; Trump won 232.

Fact: These numbers have been certified by all 50 states and upheld by court decisions throughout the country.

To this day, however, the Republican Party is twisted into knots as it tries to appease its voters who have been told, falsely, that the election was stolen.

Here is a healthy dose of reality from the third ranking Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Liz Cheney: “The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”

But reality will get you ostracized. Cheney is about to be punished by her own caucus and, in fact, the “Big Lie” is becoming a litmus test of party loyalty. You must align yourself with the sour grapes’ utterances of a despondent loser or you can’t expect party support.

Remember that 147 Republican Members of Congress voted in January to overturn the election results. Since then, the GOP has thrown gasoline on that fire by concocting new ways to combat wide-spread election “fraud” that was non-existent. State legislatures are drafting bills that are voter suppression in the guise of “election reform.”

Local officials are now facing threats if they have the temerity to accept the election results.

In Iowa, Mr. Dave Millage was drummed out as Chair of the Scott County Republican Party because he spoke out against the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. In Missouri and in Michigan, the executive directors of the states’ Republican Party have been shown the door because they have taken the outrageous position that the 2020 election is over and it is time to move on.

U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney returned to a chorus of “boos” from his own Utah Republicans for acknowledging that Joe Biden, in fact, won.

This kind of deliberate rejection of facts is reminiscent of the medieval Church elders who stubbornly refused to accept that the earth revolved around the sun. People who should know better are saying the earth is flat. Worse, they are browbeating their colleagues into becoming flatlanders along with them.

Democracy operates on the “informed consent” of the governed. It is impossible to informed about anything if truth is twisted by biases based in political expediency or propelled by one individual’s ego.

Sometimes it falls to the media to call out this assault on the truth. CNN host Pamela Brown referred to the Jan. 6 attacks and recently called out Republicans in general. She said on the air: “I challenge every single Republican I have on the show. . . they don’t get to sing kumbaya until they stop repeating the same baseless claim that caused this.”

Closer to home, WITF, a public media station, has been reminding their audience that many of the Pennsylvania legislators signed that letter urging Congress to vote against certifying the Pennsylvania election results, and that some of their Congressmen voted to overturn the state’s election results – despite no evidence to suggest wide-spread election fraud in Pennsylvania or any state for that matter.

There is a solution for media outlets who are still committed to truth. Don’t book the flatlanders on your shows. Unless they are willing to refute the big lie, they are not entitled to push their own agenda.

There are also groups like Operation 147 and the Lincoln Project who are holding elected officials’ feet to the fire. Those who violated their oath of office by seeking to overturn the constitutional norms of the last Presidential election have some explaining to do.

Likewise, it is time for Republican leaders and organizations all over the country to stand up against the irrationality of propaganda over facts. If they do not want to see our democratic systems unravel; if they do not want demagogues pushing thoughtful moderates over ideological cliffs, then it’s time to get real.

Here’s a start.

Let’s all ask our elected officials one basic question: “Who won?”

Any answer that begins with, “Well, there were irregularities” or “we just want to assure fair elections” is a rationalization for loyalty to one man. A man that put himself above his own country and let us all down.

There is work to be done. There are bipartisan deals to be had at all levels. It is important that the blinders are removed and that leaders return to good faith negotiations on the challenges ahead of us.

The sun has its rightful place in the universe. The earth is not flat. Elections matter. Our Democracy depends on trusting election results and believing in the facts.

Mark S. Singel is a former Democratic Lieutenant Governor and Acting Governor of Pennsylvania.