The American people have spoken: They voted for democracy, diversity and the Constitution, including religious freedom for all of us and not just some of us. But now that the will of the voters is clear and President Donald Trump knows he has lost his shot at re-election, he and his allies want to interfere with the vote counting.
Those allies include Christian nationalist groups that aren’t very happy that Joe Biden has been elected president. Their coping strategy leaves something to be desired: They’re pretending that it didn’t really happen, and that Trump will convince courts to throw out people’s ballots and award him a second term any day now.
I spent some time yesterday visiting Religious Right sites. Here’s what they’re saying:
Family Research Council: Tony Perkins, president of this rabidly homophobic group, has assured us that we just need to count all the votes. (Um, we are.) Perkins alluded to “radical forces out there who will do whatever it takes to stop Donald Trump”– and he’s got his eye on the culprit: “[B]illionaire George Soros started plotting a sophisticated campaign to subvert the election process,” a breathless Perkins writes. Perkins is like any number of conspiracy theorists who insist that they are just asking questions. He lacks just one thing: even a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing.
Faith & Freedom Coalition: It’s always sunny with Ralph Reed’s group. The homepage plugs a copy of Reed’s latest book, which makes the “Christian” case for Trump. There is a column noting that it looks like Trump lost, but boy, oh, boy – look at all those voter guides Reed’s organization distributed. Plenty of blue skies ahead!
American Family Association: Down in Tupelo, Miss., they’re hot on the heels of a big story. The AFA links to a piece from something called The American Thinker, which is not really accurately named because the people who run it don’t seem to do a lot of that. Anyway, it looks like the fix was in because the voting machines were all built overseas! Is George Soros involved? You bet!
WallBuilders: David Barton, a peddler of “Christian nation” mythology posing as history, assures us that “The presidential election is far from over. …. Pray for truth to prevail!” I won’t bother to ask for proof because Barton is allergic to things like facts and data. This is the guy, after all, who wrote a book about Thomas Jefferson that was so riddled with errors that the publisher had to withdraw it.
Residents of the reality-based community might want to read this column by a woman in Michigan who did something the bloviators of the Religious Right did not do: sat down and officially counted votes.
Evelyn Smith makes note of the assertions of widespread voter fraud and writes, “Those claims are totally detached from reality – from the painstaking, tedious process of accounting for and tabulating every ballot. The count involves so many steps, so many layers of double-checking and supervision, that it would be virtually impossible to fake even a single ballot. It’s dangerous to suggest that anyone could fake enough ballots to change the result. From my experience, it’s also totally absurd.”
Totally absurd? Yes, that sounds like it’s just up the Religious Right’s alley. That’s why we must continue the work to ensure the will of the people prevails.
