This is just a short diary entry to wonder aloud why everyone is aghast that Donald Trump said he would refuse to accept the results of the election. Since when has any Republican ever accepted an election?
Just after Obama won, literally on the eve of inauguration, the GOP leaders met to conspire to thwart any and all legislation he favored — refusing to accept his election as president. The GOP leadership even now refuses to accept his Supreme Court nominee, apparently in the belief that an “illegitimate president” has no right to appoint an associate justice.
But this isn’t limited to Democrats or biracial presidents. Republicans sometimes won’t accept election results even when they involve themselves. When Mitt Romney lost, when John McCain lost — in fact when any Republican candidate for any office fails to win an election — they claim that candidate “wasn’t conservative enough” or lost because someone, somewhere “stabbed him in the back.”
It’s really a pretty consistent trend, so I am not sure why anyone is surprised that Trump adopts it. “Rigged elections” is the default Republican mantra to justify the loss of any election in which someone who is not a member of an ever-shrinking minority of elite purebloods is defeated.
They are not just anti-Democrat, they are anti-democratic. It’s not a flaw of their ideology; it’s a feature.