Congressman’s oath pledges support for Constitution, not to any leader
When given the stage and an audience of patriotic Americans, Congressman Jeff Van Drew hauls out a well-worn speech about American exceptionalism, the belief that the United States of America is unique among nations around the world and, in fact, superior.
Factors that contribute to the philosophy of American exceptionalism include equality before the law, representative democracy and individual responsibility.
Van Drew repeated versions of his speech multiple times this past year as he ran for re-election to Congress after switching parties midway through his first term, becoming a Republican and, in a nationally televised meeting in the Oval Office, pledging his undying loyalty to President Donald Trump.
Van Drew’s speeches and Trump’s coattails worked. He defeated an extremely well-funded Democratic challenger, Amy Kennedy, in a New Jersey election run solely on mailed ballots in a pandemic year in which there was no in-person voting.
Van Drew has repeatedly made clear his love for the foundational aspects of his country and his fealty to one leader in particular.
But in his oath of office, Van Drew pledged to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
Last week, Van Drew made a choice.
It wasn’t for his faith in America, American exceptionalism, its representative democracy or his pledge of loyalty to the Constitution.
He chose fealty to Trump.
Van Drew chose to join with 124 other Republican House members and sign onto a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the presidential election by invalidating the voting in four of key states that Trump lost.
The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit out of hand, just as courts have continuously and repeatedly thrown out scores of lawsuits, most of them ridiculous, that have tried to overturn a national election that Trump decisively lost in electoral votes and by more than a 7 million margin in popular votes without evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome.
There were many Republicans who stood for integrity in the American election system, the foundational belief that voters decide elections. They include Republican governors, Republican election officials, state and federal courts with Republican judges, and a U.S. Supreme Court packed by Republican presidents, including three justices personally appointed by Trump. The integrity of our election process mattered more to these Republicans than the political future of one man, no matter how much he lied and railed about the unfairness of Americans deciding a change in leadership was in order.
President Trump received more votes than any other sitting president in history, attesting to his popularity and support among a vast swath of voters.
But Joseph Biden received more – more than any other presidential candidate in history – because far more Americans wanted to deny Trump a second term in office.
That is how elections go. That is why Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.
The pandemic played a role in this election, not just its impact on the nation’s economy and as a referendum on the administration’s response to the coronavirus.
Because of COVID-19 restrictions, many states, including this one, went to mail-in ballots to limit or avoid in-person voting. In turn, that limited the ability to suppress votes, a tactic Republican officials have used for decades to deny Black Americans the right to vote. The Texas lawsuit and others were nothing more than ex post facto attempts at suppressing that vote because of the major cities in key states that went for Biden.
The reality is that the mail-in change allowed and encouraged millions more Americans to cast votes, both for Trump and for Biden. It was the most votes cast in a presidential election ever. That is something we should be proud of as a nation, that as individuals we did not take our votes – and our democracy – for granted.
It is telling that Van Drew did not question his own victory, nor those of Republican House and Senate members who won their races courtesy of mail-in ballots.
We were temporarily encouraged when we saw that Van Drew was not on the list of the first 106 House members to support the Texas lawsuit. We hoped that he was showing integrity – faith in our democratic process – in the face of so many Republican sycophants in the House and Senate who went along with the president’s fantasy for weeks in spite of the overwhelming lack of evidence to support such a victory.
But he crumbled. Instead of fortitude, Van Drew’s weakness showed.
That is disappointing, to say the least. Our congressman has little fear of voter repercussion in this district, one of the most, if not the most, conservative in the state. He calculated that his political aspirations outweighed his integrity.
Next time he hauls out that American exceptionalism speech, we will all know what he really values.