Analysis: Something very important happened in the House Sunday night

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But the retiring Texas Republican House member did something very worth noting on Sunday night: He objected to the seating of 67 House members — Democrats and Republicans — from six states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) where President Donald Trump and other Republicans have alleged, without proof, that there was widespread voter fraud.

“I do not make this objection lightly and take no pleasure in it, but believe that I am compelled to do so because a number of my colleagues — whom I hold in high regard — have publicly stated that they plan to object to the acceptance of electors from those particular six states due to their deeply held belief that those states conducted elections plagued by statewide, systemic fraud and abuse that leaves them absolutely no way for this chamber or our constituents to trust the validity of their elections.

“Such allegations — if true — raise significant doubts about the elections of at least some of the members of the United States House of Representatives that, if not formally addressed, could cast a dark cloud of suspicion over the validity of this body for the duration of the 117th Congress. After all, those representatives were elected through the very same systems — with the same ballot procedures, with the same signature validations, with the same broadly applied decisions of executive and judicial branch officials — as were the electors chosen for the President of the United States under the laws of those states, which have become the subject of national controversy.

The shorter version of Roy’s statement goes like this: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

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What Roy slyly did with his objection to seating the delegations from six states is shine a bright light on the incredible hypocrisy being exhibited by his Republican colleagues. What he is arguing for is consistency. If these members of Congress truly believe, contra evidence, that there was some sort of massive voter fraud that kept Trump from beating President-elect Joe Biden, then they have to also believe that their own reelections were also compromised by this fraud.

Right? Right!

Except that, well, consistency and logic aren’t big sellers in the current iteration of the Republican Party.

Witness Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs. In early December, he told CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb that while he didn’t dispute that he won his own race in the state’s 4th district, he did “dispute the presidential election results,” adding that it’s “almost inexplainable” that Trump lost, since Republicans did so well in other races in the state.

To believe that — as Biggs appears to — you have to think that the vote in Biggs’ 4th district, where Trump won with 60%, was above board, and it was the other eight House districts in the state where the election chicanery occurred! Man, what a complex plot! (Important note: There is zero evidence that there was any widespread election fraud in Arizona — or anywhere else.)

What Biggs — and the rest of the 140-plus House Republicans who plan to object to the Electoral College results on Wednesday — are saying is that somehow the vote was only problematic and fraudulent at the presidential level. They won fair and square. It’s Trump who lost because of Democratic cheating.

This is, of course, totally ridiculous. The vote isn’t fair when the result is what you want and rigged when the result doesn’t go your way. Either the vote in these six states was hopelessly corrupted — up and down the ballot — or it wasn’t.

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That Roy was the only Republican willing to stand up and force his colleagues to look at their hypocrisy in the face is a telling indicator of just how low the GOP has sunk in an attempt to appease Trump.

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