The fact that Fox News has settled Dominion Voting Machines’ lawsuit doesn’t necessarily mean
that election denial will stop. And that’s bad news for the Republican Party. It must combat election
denial if it wants electoral success in 2024.
Last week I discussed several threats to the success of the Republican Party’s efforts to win the
presidency in 2024, including the likelihood that former President Trump might win renomination, and
the inability, to date of the GOP to fashion a humane and rational approach to reducing abortion.
Added to the GOP’s problems should be the ongoing prevalence of election-denying Republicans who
are liable to help nominate weak candidates in the primaries, who will then be defeated by Democrats
in the general election.
The settlement of the lawsuit against Fox News, wherein Fox has agreed to pay Dominion
almost $800 million in damages for falsely claiming Dominion helped steal the presidential election from
Trump, should put an end to election denial. After all, in the pre-trial phase of the case, Dominion’s
attorneys showed how Fox News’s management and on-air primetime hosts—Tucker Carlson, Sean
Hannity, and Laura Ingraham—privately believed there was no significant cheating which would have
otherwise changed the outcome of the election and that Trump’s chief spokespeople on the
issue—Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell—were flat-out wrong to claim election fraud in the absence of
any evidence to support their claims.
But will revelations that Fox News personnel never believed the 2020 presidential election was
“stolen” change the minds of the GOP’s election deniers? Or will they stick to their beliefs anyway?
Public opinion polls and other evidence frequently show how millions of voters will double down
on their beliefs rather than change their minds when confronted with evidence that they’re wrong. For
example, no matter how poorly a presidential candidate does in a televised debate, voters in his party
will almost invariably say he won.
This may well hurt the Republican Party as it fields candidates for governor, senator, and other
positions next year. It’s likely that millions of Republicans will remain convinced the 2020 election was
stolen, and in next year’s primaries, they’ll vote to nominate candidates who share, or at least claim to
share, their views.
But the most noteworthy pattern to be discerned in 2022’s election results was the widespread
failure of election-denying Republicans to win their general election contests while reality-based
Republicans frequently sailed to easy re-election victories. For example, in New Hampshire, the GOP’s
election-denying senate candidate was trounced while its candidate for governor, incumbent Chris
Sununu, easily won another term. Even where an election denier such as Republican Senate candidate J.
D. Vance in Ohio scored a rare victory, a reality-based Republican such as incumbent governor Mike
DeWine could run dozens of points ahead of him. And Sununu, DeWine, Ron DeSantis, and Greg Abbot
were able to win by impressive margins despite taking unpopular hard-core stands in opposition to
abortion.
It’s, therefore, necessary for reality-based Republicans to convince election deniers that their
views cannot be supported by the evidence and that, moreover, those who express those views are
more likely to lose their election bids to whatever offices they may be seeking. And if election-deniers
cannot be convinced their views will lead to electoral defeat and therefore change their minds and
voting patterns, then the reality-based Republicans must redouble their own efforts to get like-minded
voters to the polls and vote, especially in the primaries.
When general election votes go to the polls they’ll normally vote for the honest over the
dishonest, the competent over the incompetent, and those who believe in reality over fantasy. The GOP
must accept the fact that it lost the 2020 presidential election, that there’s no evidence of enough
cheating which could have changed the election outcome, and that the path to victory in 2024 will
require the acceptance of reality over fantasy.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville and taught politics and government at Tarleton since 1987. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990 to the present). He was Mayor Pro Tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He is a member of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and the Stephenville Rotary Club and does volunteer work for the Boy Scouts of America. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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