Profiles in Cowardice

 Ben Franklin famously told a citizen in 1787 that the Constitutional Convention had fashioned “a Republic, if you can keep it.”

Nearly nine years ago, Republican politicians, having just lost to Obama/Biden in the Electoral College, floated the idea of, in the future, choosing electors by Congressional District. If that had been done in 2012, Romney/Ryan would have won the Electoral College, even though they lost the popular vote by 3.5 million votes. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/retaining-popular-legitimacy/2013/01/28/eaf15e24-673c-11e2-889b-f23c246aa446_story.html

This idea quickly faded, presumably because Republican politicians were capable of shame and had some respect for majority rule. They chose to keep our democratic republic. 

Four years later, in 2016, Republican nominee Donald Trump won the Electoral College, even though he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election  (This was the third consecutive presidential election in which the popular vote was won by the Democratic candidate.)  

Having tasted the blood of minority victory, Republicans the got upset in 2020, when they lost the popular vote by 7 million and lost the Electoral College. So now they want to subvert the possibility of majority rule by voter suppression activities and allowing gerrymandered Republican state legislatures to overturn the popular will. 

In other words, they no longer care about keeping a democratic republic. 

And now two nominally Democratic Senators stand in the way of enacting federal legislation which could protect majority rule.  Senators Manchin and Sinema need to look into their consciences and their souls and decide whether they want to go down in history as the two Democratic Senators who were, in effect, collaborators with an opposition party gone mad.  

Similarly, the handful of Republican Senators who were once considered principled states-persons who, when necessary, would put principle above party, must decide whether they wish to go down in history as characters in a sequel to Senator John F. Kennedy's book, this one to be entitled Profiles in Cowardice.