CNN’s Rick Santorum: “I don’t see any Republican blocking … democracy from working”

Citation Example: From the December 14, 2020, edition of The Electoral College Vote: CNN Special Coverage

ANDERSON COOPER (HOST): Senator Santorum, the night of the election when Joe Biden won, you said that the president was going to put the country before himself and, at a certain point, would put the country before himself. When is he going to do that? Because he is not doing that yet.

RICK SANTORUM (CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR): Yeah, I would agree with you that he hasn’t come to that moment where he feels comfortable in conceding, which I think is wrong. I mean, obviously, we are going to see here.

I sort of disagree with the tone that the panel and Gloria set. Look: that the Republican party has somehow abandoned democracy, what is going on right now? I mean, they are counting the votes and Joe Biden is going to win. And they are counting votes, and I don’t know of any Republican legislature and there were several of them that could have gone forward and put forth a different slate. None of them did; they stood up to Donald Trump.

Because I can tell you, because I talked to a bunch of them from Pennsylvania. There was a lot of pressure on them to do it. They didn’t. So, the idea that, you know, that supporting Donald Trump and his effort to get to the bottom of fraud which I think a lot of Republicans absolutely feel, there was a lot of bad behavior in this election, but that is not the same as disrupting democracy. Democracy is working. It’s working today. I don’t see any Republican blocking that democracy from working. So I think the narrative that somehow Republicans have abandoned all of their sanity and have thrown in with Donald Trump just doesn’t fit with the facts of what we are seeing happening today. 

GLORIA BORGER (CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST):  Can I just say that there are those 126 Republicans in the House at the national level who supported that Texas lawsuit, which we all know was gibberish, which was —

SANTORUM: And they lost! And they lost! 

BORGER: But I will agree with you at the local and state level, there have been some very courageous Republican officials. But at the national level? Not so much. 

SANTORUM: Supporting a lawsuit is not the same as — you’re allowed to — there are lots of lawsuits that are filed that are frivolous or bad and people are allowed to get on them, but that doesn’t mean that you’re disrupting democracy. That is actually part of democracy.