One of the side-effects of our political culture’s descent into tribalism is that we increasingly respond not to what someone else has said but to what we think people like them say — even if our understanding of “people like them” is fuzzy. That’s the nicest explanation I can find for why Robert Alexander, following the path of Philip Bump, is falsely claiming for RealClearPolitics that I “recently argued that concerns about Trump’s post-election efforts to stay in power are overblown, pointing out that no states changed their electoral results and that Pence ultimately did not intervene on his ticket’s behalf.” He then proceeds to rebut this argument that I never made, and have explicitly (and more than once) contradicted.
The view I expressed is pretty much the same one that Teri Kanefield did in the Washington Post a few weeks ago: The Trump/Eastman plan was a “harebrained scheme” that could never have worked. Obviously — obviously — to say a scheme would never have worked is not to excuse the attempt to execute it.
If Alexander, Bump, or someone else wants to argue that it was actually a plan that had a very good chance of keeping Trump in power, then by all means let’s hear that counterintuitive case. Instead they keep offering a characterization of my views that they can’t substantiate with a single direct quote.
