Author Archives: Warren Stewart

Bring on the audits. Really. As a Republican election lawyer who has participated in more than 30 post-election recounts, contests and audits, I am extremely confident: They won’t find anything. The massive fraud that former president Donald Trump claims tarnished the 2020 election has been and will remain illusory — because it didn’t exist. But audits, I believe, can be the friend of sanity, helping everyone in the political process, especially the Republicans who understand that convincing their voters that elections are hopelessly rigged is no way to win elections. Denying reality is not a successful electoral strategy. My argument to Republicans is simple: In the end, Trump’s elections-are-rigged message is going to hurt not only our democracy but also Republicans more than it hurts Democrats. So to the extent that some of those who have bought into Trump’s delusional claims of a stolen election can be dislodged from this view by the repeated conclusions of the audits he himself has called for, my advice is: Bring it on. Welcome them with open arms. The furies have already been unleashed. And if there’s a better plan to dispel the “big lie” out there, no one’s described it. The status quo is not sustainable, Trump is corroding American democracy with his unproven charges of fraudulent elections. Almost 30 percent of the electorate — and an astonishing 66 percent of Republicans — say they buy into Trump’s “big lie.” Constant fact-checking and reprobation by mainstream media outlets and good-government groups have not budged that number.

Imagine that we lived in an alternative universe where Republican George H.W. Bush was elected president in 1980 and stayed in office until 1996. He was then followed by Democrat Michael Dukakis for two terms. Then, for the next 16 years, Republican Mitt Romney was in office. And finally, in 2020, Romney was succeeded by his vice president — Democrat Joe Biden. In this universe, our politics would be more boring — and a lot more sane and sensible. That, roughly, is what Germany has achieved. Helmut Kohl of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was chancellor from 1982 to 1998. He was followed by Gerhard Schroeder of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1998 to 2005. For the past 16 years, Germany has been led by the CDU’s Angela Merkel, governing for most of that time in coalition with the SPD. Chancellor Merkel — who makes Romney look like the life of the party by comparison — leaves office with higher approval ratings than any other world leader. She has reduced the German unemployment rate, maintained stability and successfully navigated challenges such as a euro-zone debt crisis in 2009, a massive influx of refugees in 2015 and a coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Little wonder that the leaders of the CDU and SPD were competing over who would be seen as her heir. The winner, by a hair, in Sunday’s balloting was the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, who served as Merkel’s vice chancellor and finance minister for the past three and a half years. He marketed himself as “Angela the second,” right down to making the same diamond-shaped hand gesture as Merkel. His chief challenger, the CDU’s Armin Laschet — who might still be able to form a governing coalition with smaller parties — was just as dull. “It’s Election Season in Germany,” a New York Times article noted. “No Charisma, Please!”