Certify Biden, Florida Republicans, or support a delusional American autocrat. Your choice | Opinion

Miami-Dade’s Republican representatives in the U.S. House, along with Florida’s two senators, have disgraced themselves before they’ve even set foot into the vaunted chambers of the Capitol. Wednesday, a joint session of Congress is set to certify the president-elect’s Electoral College victory. Happens every four years. Goes pretty smoothly each time.

But not this time. A group of renegade lawmakers, egged on by President Trump’s delusion that he has won the election, losing only because of imaginary rampant vote fraud in key battleground states, are plotting a challenge.

There is one list of a dozen Republican senators who plan to challenge the Electoral College results in states that Joe Biden won.

There’s another list of Republican lawmakers who are publicly calling out their colleagues’ dangerous foolishness.

Missing from both lists? The name of any Republican representative from Miami-Dade or either Florida senator. Unfortunately, just because none has signed up to publicly challenge results that have been affirmed by numerous court decisions, doesn’t mean that they are standing firmly on the side of American democracy, or the Constitution, of political decency and respect.

In fact, they’re not saying where they stand at all.

Mum’s the word

Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott haven’t revealed their positions on the Electoral College certification ahead of the vote. Over the weekend, pro-Trump protesters ranted and raved in from of Rubio’s home in West Miami, demanding that he, too, challenge the election results. “You work for us,” they scolded.

That’s true. Rubio must remember that he also works for the majority of voters who elected Biden the nation’s president. And we hope he’s also enough of an American to sincerely believe that the Constitution stands for something.

Scott, as his spokesman told the Miami Herald, is “reviewing his options.” A courageous stand, no? We only see two alternatives for Florida’s junior senator: violating the Constitution in support of a president who tried to bully Georgia’s secretary of state into dredging up enough votes for him to win, then bully the vice president into throwing out the election — or patriotism.

Spewing “socialist”

Among local U.S. representatives, Mario-Diaz Balart already signed on to the lawsuit alleging “unconstitutional irregularities” in four swing states. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Otherwise, he’s been mum on Wednesday’s challenges.

So have newbies Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez. Keep in mind, these two were among the Republicans who seemed to know a socialist when they saw one — and they saw one in every Democratic challenger in 2020 who sought, say, to provide Americans with affordable healthcare.

It was a specious, cynical accusation but, unfortunately, a winning one. Salazar defeated incumbent Donna Shalala; Debbie Mucarsel-Powell lost to Gimenez.

Now that they’ve decried socialism for all to hear, we encourage them to find their voice once again and excoriate the desperate and unconstitutional efforts of a radical right-wing American autocrat — for all to hear.

We need to know whose side they are on and, as so-called leaders, they should be unafraid to tell us.

This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 6:00 AM.