On Sunday afternoon, Johnson proclaimed that Biden absolutely, positively could not remain in office for even one more minute.
“He must resign the office immediately,” the Louisiana Republican said in a statement.
Confused? The Republicans certainly are.
They wanted desperately to campaign against Biden this fall, and their party’s nominee, Donald Trump, had built his entire campaign around beating an opponent he could portray as old and feebleminded. But Biden upended everything Sunday with these words: “I believe it is in the best interest of my party and my country for me to stand down.”
His opponents seemed not to know what to do. The Republican response was confused and weak. They accused Democrats of a coup and a conspiracy to hide Biden’s “dementia.” They called for invoking the 25th Amendment and teed up legal challenges. But mostly they responded, in what was clearly a coordinated if illogical plan, by insisting that Biden resign immediately. “If Joe Biden can’t run for re-election,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wrote in a typical formulation, “he is not capable of serving as president for the next six months and needs to resign NOW!”
That’s the best they’ve got? By that reasoning, Republicans also would have required the immediate resignation of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 — and George Washington in 1796. But, of course, there is no logic. If Biden resigned, they’d get President Harris six months sooner.
Just a few days earlier, ebullient Republicans had departed their convention in Milwaukee confident that they were united behind their flawed nominee while Democrats were disenchanted with theirs. But Biden’s patriotic sacrifice flipped the script.
Democrats of all varieties — progressives and centrists, party veterans and insurgents, Black, White, Latino and Asian American — have rallied around Vice President Harris, Biden’s choice to succeed him. Nobody came forward to oppose her (except perhaps Sen. Joe Manchin, who isn’t even a Democrat, and gadfly Marianne Williamson). Assuming that overwhelming embrace continues, Democrats will be nominating the vigorous, 59-year-old vice president to run against the erratic, 78-year-old Trump, the oldest major-party nominee in history.
Until now, voters faced a choice between two deeply unpopular options: Trump may be a felon, a liar and a threat to democracy, but Biden, they feared, was cognitively unfit. Now it’s disoriented Republicans who must ask: What now?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a speaker at Trump’s convention, has an idea. She responded to Biden’s withdrawal by announcing the existence of a “soft civil war” involving “the deep state,” in which Democrats, the intelligence community and the news media staged a “coup” against Biden, following “the assassination attempt on Trump for the crime of winning.” (Trump’s assailant was a registered Republican, with no known political motive.) She further reasoned that Biden must have dropped out because his family “must have gotten the price they demanded for the presidential library.”
Trump couldn’t quite bring himself to stop campaigning against Biden on Sunday. “Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve — And never was!” he wrote in one post on Truth Social after Biden withdrew. “Crooked Joe Biden is the Worst President, by far, in the History of our Nation,” he wrote in another. Finally, he complained that “we have to start all over again” and said Republicans were the victims of “fraud.”
He’ll no doubt come up with some abuse for Harris, though so far he has focused mostly on calling her “laughing Kamala” and “crazy.” He will inevitably find ways to stoke some Americans’ fears of having a woman of color as president, but (Joe Biden stage whisper here) those people were already voting for Trump.
For now, Republicans seem to think their best response is to demand Biden’s immediate resignation, which GOP lawmakers did with military precision on Sunday. Rep. Richard Hudson (N.C.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in his version: “Every House Democrat must now answer: is the president fit to serve the rest of his term?”
They can ask the question — the answer is “yes” — but a better question might be whether some of the Republican loons asking the question are fit to serve.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) joined those calling for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Biden from office. Perhaps nobody told them that this decision would be up to Harris.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) joined Greene in declaring a “coup.” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) joined those proclaiming a “cover up.” It took particular gall for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) — who, like most House Republicans, voted to overturn Biden’s election victory — to accuse Democrats of undermining democracy and “trashing the primary choice of 14 million of their own voters.” (The delegates who represent those 14 million voters will now vote on Biden’s replacement.) Johnson, in his ABC interview, said it would be “unlawful” and cause “legal trouble” for Democrats to replace Biden. (Legal experts see no such troubles.)
Already, some Republicans are recognizing that whinin’ about Biden isn’t going to be a winning strategy. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), head of the House GOP conference, announced that she would introduce on Monday “a resolution condemning Kamala Harris’ role as Joe Biden’s ‘Border czar’” — a moniker Republicans invented for Harris.
Good! Let’s have that debate. Border crossings are down dramatically, and Trump killed the bipartisan legislation that could have fixed the problem permanently. We weren’t talking about such things before because we were all talking about Biden’s age and mental state.
Biden, in his selfless gesture, has returned this campaign to what it must be about: The singular menace of Donald Trump.
What do you think President Biden should do with the rest of his time in office? Share your responses with us, and they may be published in The Post.
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