To listen to the mainstream media, an unprecedented attack on our nation’s norms and standards is taking place, and it’s being carried out by Republicans backing President Donald Trump. Their unprecedented crime? A plan to contest the validity of the electoral votes in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

A quick spin through recent history, though, shows that the Republicans’ actions aren’t unprecedented at all. Take a look at the Congressional Record for three dates: January 6, 2001; January 6, 2005; and January 6, 2017. During the formal count of the electoral votes in the last three presidential elections won by Republicans, Democrats attempted to raise objections. In 2005, they forced votes on whether to toss out Ohio’s electoral votes. And in 1969, a Michigan Democrat was the first to ever file a formal objection during the Electoral College count, when Michigan Representative John O'Hara objected to a single faithless elector in North Carolina’s count.

Does anyone believe that had Trump won the Electoral College on November 3, the Democrats wouldn’t be planning to issue a challenge today?

Here’s what Illinois Democrat Senator Dick Durbin said of Barbara Boxer, the senator who forced the 2005 challenge: “Some may criticize our colleague from California for bringing us here for this brief debate. I thank her for doing that because it gives Members an opportunity once again on a bipartisan basis to look at a challenge that we face not just in the last election in one State but in many States. Because of different electoral practices in States across America, voters who wish to cast a vote for President or Vice President cannot approach the polls with certainty that their vote will be counted or that they can vote in a fair and convenient manner.”

And here’s what former Klansman and West Virginia Democrat Senator Robert Byrd said: “I applaud the efforts of the senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, and the Congressional Black Caucus to defend the integrity of the electoral process.”

Compare this lack of outrage to the indignation over the planned objections of Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and several other Republicans. This is a challenge and remedy sought on arguable legal and constitutional grounds, provided that the procedural requirements are met — and with Hawley’s announcement, they will be, as they were in 1969 and 2005. The only significant difference between Boxer and Hawley is their party affiliation.

Given the credible allegations of voter fraud, the laws being circumvented or flouted, the harassment aimed at those who represented President Trump in his legal battles, and the blatant denial of transparency during the count (see, for instance, putting cardboard over the windows at a Michigan counting center), there’s an undeniable appearance of impropriety surrounding the conduct of the 2020 presidential election. And it may have affected congressional races, too.

Beyond this, there’s also a disturbing pattern to the claims of the Left: They’re being used by Big Tech to increase censorship, tilting an already unfair set of circumstance to be even more so. These hysterical claims will also be used to justify actions like the Cuomo-James war on dissent in New York.

But this isn’t about sedition — that’s just the Left’s phony pretext. The real “crime” is that grassroots Patriots aren’t rolling over and meekly tolerating the intolerable, which is the Left’s insistence that Joe Biden won this election fair and square.

And that, of course, is the ultimate trust-wrecker — a double standard. According to a recent Rasmussen survey, “62% of Republicans say it’s Very Likely the Democrats stole the election, a view shared by 17% of Democrats and 28% of voters not affiliated with either major party.”

Suffice it to say that our nation will have a hard time healing itself when tens of millions of our citizens believe the 2020 presidential election was deeply flawed, and one of our major political parties worked to create that reality.