Opinion

While 2021 is not 2009, it’s easy to see how some Americans—and, in fact, many farmers and ranchers—might get confused.

Whatever grudging respect I had for U.S. Senator Steve Daines has been obliterated by his stunt of joining 11 other Republican Senators to question the validity of the 2020 Presidential election. His motives mystify me, but his action chills me. Trump, I at least understand. He wants to be President no matter what reality has dictated. Many Americans believe that the election was rigged against Trump. Not surprisingly, they are all Trump voters. And why do they believe the election was rigged? Because people with loud voices and no facts, like Rudy Guiliani, have told them it was rigged.

From the cluttered old attic that is my memory I remember that “Stability is possible without freedom, but freedom is not possible without stability.” It is a truism, I think, and I was reminded of it in a recent discussion with a group of Chinese graduate students studying to become officials in China’s government.

Mitch McConnel’s rationale on appointing Supreme Court Justices in the last year of a President’s term just isn’t rational. In 2016 he refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland claiming that the nomination should be made by the winner of the coming Presidential election, which certainly wasn’t going to be Obama. In 2020 he pushed for the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice a month before the election. He didn’t make the argument he made in 2016 because the next President might not be Trump. He went to some lengths to justify his reversal of rationale but did it even matter? In 2016 he denied Obama’s appointee because he could. In 2020 he pushed Trump’s nominee because he could. But politicians don’t say, “I did it because I could,” they offer a reason—any reason—and it serves to make it justifiable to much of the public.