Pence supports the Hawley Neoconfederate 12

Trump’s poodle does him one more authoritarianism on the way out:

Vice President Mike Pence signaled support on Saturday for a futile Republican bid to overturn the election in Congress next week, after 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory when the House and Senate meet to formally certify it.

The announcement by the senators — and Mr. Pence’s move to endorse it — reflected a groundswell among Republicans to defy the unambiguous results of the election and indulge President Trump’s attempts to remain in power with false claims of voting fraud.

Every state in the country has certified the election results after verifying their accuracy, many following postelection audits or hand counts. Judges across the country, and a Supreme Court with a conservative majority, have rejected nearly 60 attempts by Mr. Trump and his allies to challenge the results.

And neither Mr. Pence nor any of the senators who said they would vote to invalidate the election has made a specific allegation of fraud, instead offering vague suggestions that some wrongdoing might have occurred and asserting that many of their supporters believe that it has.

There’s another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

This diagram form of the new RepUBLiCAn pOpulIsM is useful:

How to populism pic.twitter.com/PtatQi9xvr— Matthew Yglesias 🍦 (@mattyglesias) January 2, 2021