National Review criticizes ‘Cruz Eleven’: Barbara Boxer shouldn’t be conservative role model

The National Review published an editorial Sunday criticizing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and 10 other GOP senators who announced over the weekend that they will vote for objections to the Electoral College count on Wednesday.

The editors of the publication took aim at the group’s rationale for mounting a challenge to the election results. The 11 senators who intend to dispute the Electoral College votes cited former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who objected to the Electoral College votes that gave former President George W. Bush a second term.

“Barbara Boxer shouldn’t be a conservative role model,” the National Review wrote. “It has always been axiomatic that Republicans shouldn’t emulate the former progressive senator from California, and never more so in this case.”

“If the Cruz-led objectors somehow actually got their way, they’d trample federal law and state sovereignty and blow a hole in the hull of American democracy,” the editors added.

The Republican-led effort to object to the Electoral College results has been criticized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including GOP Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has denounced the actions by GOP lawmakers as “anti-democratic and anti-conservative.”

The objections from Republican lawmakers will not prevent President-elect Joe Biden from being sworn in on Inauguration Day. Both chambers of Congress would need to vote in favor of the objections, an outcome that is all but impossible given the number of Democrats, as well as Republicans who are opposed to efforts like those of Cruz.

“If all they want to do is signal that they are upset that Biden won, this isn’t the manner or the forum to do it. Nor is this the proper way to examine underhanded electoral practices that did not alter the outcome, or to propose election reforms, however needed,” the National Review wrote.

The publication also responded to the reference by GOP senators to the 1876 election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who was victorious, and its relation to the 2020 election. Allegations of voter fraud were uncovered in the 1876 election.

“In 1876, there weren’t just allegations; there was honest-to-God evidence of bribery and ballot stuffing on both sides in the chaotic atmosphere of Southern states still under Reconstruction. There were rival slates of electors from Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina. Black voters were subjected to horrific violence and intimidation to keep them from the polls,” the editors wrote. “To compare any of this to today is perverse.”