If the Republican Party fails to use every possible stratagem to retain the presidency in 2020, it will have signed its death certificate.  The majority of the 73 million people whose votes for Trump were properly counted may well turn away from the Republican Party in disgust.  Why bother to vote if the Republican Party is too feckless and incompetent to mount a successful challenge to a stolen election?

When they're accused of fecklessness, establishment Republicans, in their defense, will point to gains in the House and, if we're lucky, to their holding the Senate gain.  However, much of this gain isn't due to the Republican brand but, instead, to Trump's coattails.

At the "Republican brand" level, we have the self-styled "Lincoln Project" Republicans who aggressively tried to intimidate Trump's lawyers before they got shamed and deleted their tweet:

This is the kind of thing that gets people banned from Twitter.

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) November 10, 2020

Twitter concluded that this @ProjectLincoln tweet violated their terms of service & it has been deleted. There is still another similar Lincoln Project tweet that remains up. pic.twitter.com/OKehu52qiu

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) November 10, 2020

If the Republican Party wants to survive, it must impose discipline by pushing these aggressive NeverTrumps out of the party.  Instead, the Republican Party lets it slide.

Republicans should not only back Trump fully, but be at his side demanding that the Department of Justice's elections unit become an independent, continuous-audit body like the IRS.  Instead, the opposite has happened.  A few days ago, the head of the unit resigned when it became clear that his unit was next to useless — and when it turned out that he'd written the rules so that he got to make all the calls about investigating claimed fraud.  (Funnily enough, his answer was always no.)  And again, the Republican Party was silent.

The quisling Republican Party is also reluctant even to discuss the "nuclear option" in the Constitution.  This option would see state legislatures have the final word about appointing electors provided that the legislators believe that the election in their state was hopelessly corrupt.

But that's not what happens.  Instead, the Democrats unhesitatingly lie, cheat, and steal; falsify national elections; falsify impeachment; and succeed in advancing their one-party-standing tactics (open borders, no elections security, no audits, etc.) with only token Republican resistance.

Again, why do the Republicans even refuse to discuss the constitutional "nuclear option" in the face of Democratic illegality in service of reaching a one-party country (as has long been the case in California)?

In addition to the nuclear option, national and state Republicans have other courses of action.  They could easily identify their party as the one committed to "saving democracy" by pushing to:

• disallow unaudited mail-in ballots, or
• disallow mail-in ballots received after polls close, or
• disallow all mail-in ballots because most other democracies ban mail-in ballots, or
• assert that an accurate tally shows that Trump won, allowing the Legislature to mandate Trump electors directly.

Further, a Republican Senate could refuse to accept certification.

Finally, if swing-state Republican legislatures simply declare their elections unreliable and, therefore, null, the final say in the election would come from the new representatives in the House.  They would choose Trump.

Too many Republicans are part of the Deep State's monoparty.  They make conservative noises when they talk, but, just like Chief Justice John Roberts, when anything comes along that challenges the Deep State, they are entirely progressive in their actions.

As much as Trump-supporters would like to say "good riddance" to the Republican Party, doing so comes at a cost.  After all, the Republican Party has a robust and deep infrastructure that cannot easily be replicated.  The same is true for the Democrat Party.  That's why Bernie and his socialists have worked on eating away at the old-fashioned party from within.

If the Republican Party doesn't want to void itself, it will do well to embrace the positions advanced by those 73 million known Trump voters (and there are almost certainly millions more).  Otherwise, why should Republican voters bother even to leave their homes to vote the next time around?

Henry Edwards is a pseudonym for an engineer with a background in international technical management.

Image: Republican suicide by Andrea Widburg using public domain clipart.