Some Republicans are putting a lot of value in the results of election audits and recounts in states like Arizona and Georgia. Social media lights up like a Christmas tree at the mere mention of the ongoing process in those states and others. Like Confederate bitter enders or Japanese soldiers found defending remote islands against the Americans in the 1960s (no one told them the war was over), certain Trump devotees keep fighting the last election. But, to what end?

Will the audits and recounts drive Joe Biden from office? No. Will they definitively prove the election was stolen and if they did would Democrats roll over? No and no. Would they confirm that Democrats, and most politicians in any party, will cheat to win? Everyone already knows that. Three individuals, who are all cogent viewers of the scene, one of them is a pro, spoke to this analyst on the subject.

Brad Mills, a Philadelphia businessman and former Marine officer, traveled to Arizona to work with Republican stalwarts. His take on it? “Trump is right that the election was stolen. Read the very carefully worded Maricopa County election audit report and draw your own conclusions. Georgia is probably similar…In Maricopa Co., one of the biggest issues is electronic records of votes with no paper ballots to support them.”

Trevor Da Costa, a shrewd observer of current events, had this to say, “The biggest cloud over the elections imho is that in several states there were radical changes in procedures supposedly because of the Wuhan bioweapon…Mass mail out of ballots that were not requested for example. Why is there no rigorous review of this process to determine how well it worked? And why we couldn’t stick to voters requesting absentee ballots? I’m not saying the elections were stolen but I cannot say they were not…Btw even if Donald Trump had won the last election there would have been enough reasons to question the integrity of the victory.”

However, Dr. Tim Blessing, a former political professional and one of the foremost presidential scholars in the nation told this publication, “Although I intend to analyze Arizona, I want to emphasize something: the 2020 election is over. Done. Finished. All our energies need to go to 2022 & 2024.”

I’ve known Tim Blessing for a while. I know of few sharper political analysts. His words are spot on. Republicans need to look to the future, not to the past. Refighting 2020 will get us nowhere. That dog won’t hunt. And if by chance the audits and recounts showed pro-Biden discrepancies, then all it would do would be to embolden Trump in his obsession with 2020 and thus make him even more of a wacky loose cannon. That is not something the Republican Party needs now or in the future.