The Republican fetish of "respecting the troops" has always been bullshit, total kabuki. Republicans have always been happy to send American forces into harm's way for the flimsiest of reasons, including their own electoral prospects. When it comes to actually standing up for the troops, they're not just AWOL, but actively undermining them. Like when they dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's efforts to keep banks, payday lenders, and car dealerships from scamming service members and veterans with predatory loans. Or by their refusal to adequately fund the veterans hospitals. Or by their attacks on the U.S. Postal Service, one of the employers of veterans in the country. Nothing really embodies the extent of Republican lip service and disrespect to the military, though, quite like their having handed the entire party to Donald Trump.
Trump's push to disqualify late-arriving and absentee ballots means disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of votes from service members and their families serving overseas or away from their home bases. That might be part of Trump's plan. After all, military support for Trump has shrunk, with Joe Biden leading in a well-publicized poll from this summer, one that Trump was sure to have seen. Maybe Trump doesn't want ballots from those folks to be counted, but it's going to be something to watch Republicans fall in behind him to say that the troops shouldn't have a vote.
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Fully 20% of the 2016 absentee vote from the military was in Florida. Does Sen. Marco Rubio (up in 2022) want their votes to count? Will he push to have the deadline of Nov. 13 for their votes enforced? Or how about in Texas, where nearly 20,000 of the absentee ballots cast in 2016 were military? Military voters there are supposed to have until Nov. 23 to have their ballots in hand. Will Sen. John Cornyn fight for them to be counted? Here's where we'll really see where loyalties lie with Republicans: Trump or the troops.
Retired Adm. Steve Abbot, one of the more than 200 retired general and admirals who have publicly endorsed Biden, explains how Trump lost the military: "His words reflect an attitude that the military is just another entity he can manipulate for political purposes, further harming the traditional relationship between the president as commander in chief and our nation’s military leadership and forces."
"In the vernacular and at its core, Trump is attacking the foundation of the civilian-military relationship." That foundation is being attacked at the most basic level right now by Trump—the vote. If Republicans want to retain the support they've traditionally received from the military and from veterans, they will fight for all these votes to be counted.