Dear Sen. Ted

Jack Doppelt

Jan. 6, 2021

The Honorable Ignominious Raphael Edward Cruz

US Capitol Still Standing

Dear Sen. Ted--

I am writing to let you know how I'm doing and to thank you for for providing me with a week of calm. When you told Maria Bartiromo and Fox News last Sunday of your plans to mobilize GOP congressional colleagues to object to President-elect Biden's convincing electoral victory, you advised the rest of us "to calm down," adding that "this is already a volatile situation."

Democrats, the news media and I calmed down. We had a peaceful, even jubilant, few days as our attention fixed on Georgia, where two novice Democratic candidates defeated two well-known GOP incumbents for the U.S. Senate where you work.

Looking back, I needed those few days of respite to gird myself for yesterday's surreal, yet predictable, assault on the U.S. Capitol. The nation is already experiencing post-traumatic convulsions, trying to determine if the better characterization of the events is a failed coup, an insurrection, mob violence, a garden-variety riot, or a lawful protest run amok. Words matter as you have so sagely noted.

How to characterize it and attempt to move forward might depend to some extent on whether it was premeditated by people who seized the opportunity to terrorize the American people and subvert democracy, or whether it was in eruption of pent up anger stoked by an ingrained belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that Biden should not be recognized as the lawfully elected president.

Both were foreseeable and both were fanned by President Trump when he exhorted the crowd at his "Save America" rally to march in solidarity with him from the mall to Capitol Hill to "fight like hell" or they won't have a country anymore and to give your weak congressional colleagues "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."

Trump chose not to march as thousands of his patriots streamed into the march and met at Capitol Hill.

The Sunday before, after the solemnity of oath takings for your newly elected congressional colleagues,  many told their families to go home. They felt the earth moving under foot.

Recognizing your prowess as a constitutional scholar whose bedrock beliefs of limited federal powers go all the way back to high school, I wouldn't think of taking on the hornet's nest of arguing whether Trump's crowd fulminations were an incitement to imminent lawless action that should be prosecuted.

There is enough blame to go around and to deny with righteous detachment.

Click on the photo to watch the CNN Politics video

Your House counterpart, the estimable contemptible Louis Gohmert told Newsmax, an ultra-conservative mouthpiece, that the effect of one of the many court rulings that unsuccessfully challenged Biden's legitimacy as president-elect was that, in effect, it means that "you got to go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and [Black Lives Matter.]"

On Saturday, you and a dozen of your GOP Senate colleagues issued a statement calling for Congress to pause on certifying the electoral college voting so a 10-day audit by an electoral commission could take place. Why hatch such a baroque idea?

As the statement emphasized: "The 2020 election featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud,  violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities." It invoked a Reuters/Ipsos poll and you directed attention to these numbers: 39% of Americans believe "the election was rigged." 67% of Republicans, 17% of Democrats and 31% of Independents believe it.

Those are curious numbers to cite when the summary of the poll itself reported that 3/4 of Americans (73%) believe that Biden won the election based on what they know or have heard. 5% believe Trump won. When asked who rightfully won the election, 63% of Americans believe Biden has, including 95% of Democrats, 29% of Republicans, and 60% of Independents. Only 20% of Americans agree that Trump, who has also claimed victory, is acting responsibly in doing so. Seven out of ten (69%) think he is acting irresponsibly. Your emphasis and that of your dozen colleagues who signed on is a textbook illustration of the abuse of statistics, cherry picked to indicate the opposite of reality.

Why do that? So you and your GOP colleagues could argue, as you did, that the "deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear."

Apparently the deep distrust that you manufactured, though decidedly among Republicans, would have a better chance of disappearing if people indulged in the need to not certify Biden's victory.

Your home newspaper, the non-partisan, nonprofit Texas Tribune reported on the release of the statement as continuing to pursue unsubstantiated claims of a widespread voter fraud in "disputed states," despite no evidence of fraud.

As a master debater, you are an impressively persuasive fellow. The Texas Tribune reported yesterday that after the assault on Congress, though both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly to certify Biden's election, most GOP house members from Texas voted with you.

To leave you with an indelible sense of what your persuasiveness has added to Trump's exhortations, Ashli Babbitt has a cautionary epitaph you might learn from. Babbitt is the woman who was shot and killed during the storming of the Capitol. The day before she died, she tweeted under her handle Common Sense Ash, "Nothing will stop us… they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours...dark to light."

She declared Jan. 6 as the day Republicans "start winning." You felt the same. In your scenario, Jan. 6 was to be when Congress would side with you and decline to certify Biden as president.

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