Opinion | Take on election deniers by calling them liars - US News Today

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A fleet of Republican candidates are running on a fundamental lie that strikes at the heart of our democracy — and on an implicit promise of future insurrection. The common term is “election deniers,” but that underplays the menace they pose.

For starters, we should keep in mind that they are not only lying about the 2020 election, repeating the thoroughly debunked falsehood that President Biden was not legitimately elected. In no other era would a national party have nominated such crackpots to any office, let alone governor or U.S. Senate.

But the worrisome trends don’t stop there. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, has been linked to a rabidly antisemitic social media site known to have provided an “online home for the man charged with killing 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.” (While condemning antisemitism, he has refused to disavow the site, to which his campaign paid $5,000 for “consulting services.”) In April, he spoke at a conference organized by Alan and Francine Fosdick, who have promoted QAnon conspiracy theorists, that “included the screening of a video claiming that the country is experiencing a ‘great awakening’ that will expose ‘ritual child sacrifice’ and a ‘global satanic blood cult.’ ”

Kari Lake, Republican nominee for governor in Arizona, has endorsed a candidate for Oklahoma state Senate who “produced such a stream of internet bile he can only be seen as a committed anti-Semite, homophobe and racist — one of the most vile people in political life, unfit for government and unwelcome in polite society,” as one Arizona Republic column put it.

Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has called the GOP nominee to succeed him, Dan Cox, a “QAnon whack job,” “a nut” and “not, in my opinion, mentally stable.”

Republicans’ reprehensible and radical views (including climate denial, xenophobia and advocacy for forced birth, with no exceptions from abortion bans, even for a 14-year-old rape victim) should be enough to disqualify them from office. But beyond all that, these and other GOP Senate, House, gubernatorial, secretary of state and attorney general candidates are running on the lie that set off the violent insurrection at the Capitol.

The GOP nominee for secretary of state in Arizona, state Rep. Mark Finchem, for example, “introduced a resolution to decertify 2020 election results in the state,” NPR reported. “Finchem — a longtime member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group — was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and in an interview with NPR earlier this year he declined to call what happened there a riot or an insurrection.” Several members of the Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty and/or been convicted of crimes for their Jan. 6 actions.

Incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is running against election liar Republican Blake Masters. Kelly had this exchange Sunday with CNN’s Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: I want to ask you about your Republican opponent in the upcoming Arizona Senate election.

He says Democrats want to — quote — “change the demographics of the country.” He has openly embraced Donald Trump’s election lies. He has the support of a lot of openly racist notorious individuals.

Your — the Arizona Republican nominee for governor says that President Biden isn’t a legitimate president. He — she says she wants her Democratic opponent in jail. The Republican nominee for secretary of state in Arizona, he’s a self-proclaimed member of the Oath Keepers. . . . What’s happened to the Arizona Republican Party?

KELLY: Well, unfortunately, I think right now that the folks you mentioned have some really dangerous ideas, and they’re not consistent with most — most Arizonans, even most Republicans in Arizona.

So I’m hoping we can move away from that. My Republican colleagues that I talk to in the United…