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Much of the Left’s Control over Elections Doesn’t Involve Ballot Fraud
President Biden recently Tweeted that he was trying to devote more resources to security at our southern border, but that he was being blocked by Republicans who don’t care about Fentanyl overdoses, and seek to open the border.
This is not a Clintonian lie. Bill Clinton was an exceptional liar — he was very good at suggesting something that wasn’t true, but couching it in clever words that made him difficult to pin down, “That’s not exactly what I said.” He earned his nickname Slick Willy.
Biden is different. He says stuff like this, that is clearly and obviously not true. He acts as if he knows that the media will never challenge him, even on open, obvious lies.
Republicans recently proposed a bill that makes any school that accepts government funding be required to make their curriculum and reading lists publicly available, that those schools allow parents to speak to their children’s teachers and at school board meetings, and preventing school employees from changing children’s pronouns or other gender identity without discussing it with that child’s parents. The Democrat response was predictably unhinged:
“Extreme MAGA Republicans don’t want the children of America to learn about the Holocaust,” alleged Hakeem Jeffries, absent any evidence. … “This Republican bill is asking the government to force the outing of LGBT people before they are ready,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on the House floor. “When we talk about progressive values, I can say what my progressive value is, and that is freedom over fascism.”
I could go on and on, but an article titled “Leftists are often dishonest” would not be terribly interesting.
What is interesting, I think, is that I’m not really sure how Republicans can combat this. President Biden’s casual assumption that the media will back him up on any lie he utters, no matter how outrageous, as long as it attacks Republicans — that assumption is correct. Hakeem Jefferies and AOC presume that their inflammatory comments will be published without scrutiny, have their desired effect of attacking Republicans, and then fade into obscurity. And that presumption is correct.
They also presume that, absent media reporting on this, if the Republicans argue the facts, it will just sound like partisan bickering. Those Republicans are so bitter and argumentative, you know…
Reagan was known for working past the media, and communicating directly with the American people. The media have learned from that failing, have become more powerful through social media, etc., and are now much better at controlling the narrative. I don’t think Reagan’s skills would work as well now. In fact, I don’t think they would work at all.
Much of the left’s control over our elections does not involve ballot fraud.
The Republicans have a problem. I don’t see an obvious solution.
Some Republicans don’t communicate well. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what they say, and it doesn’t matter what Democrats say. All that will be fixed — adjusted and edited for mass consumption — to be sure the proper message gets across. Every time. And everywhere — even the sports pages — absolutely everywhere. It starts to sound true after a while.
Hoping for another Reagan doesn’t help. He had a unique talent. And that talent wouldn’t help now, anyway.
The game is different now. There is a reason that Trump was so successful. But his talent set is unique, as well — there aren’t many of those walking around. Which is probably a good thing.
Pointing out the lies of the Democrats is important. Attempting to ridicule them through satire is important, as well. Although even the Babylon Bee has a hard time coming up with satire of such ridiculous lies. How can you make the absurd sound more absurd without being absurd? A question for the philosophers…
This is a game Republicans can’t win, obviously. That’s the whole point of the game, in fact.
So we need to change the game. But I’m not sure how.
I’m open to suggestions…
Published in General
Sorry, it’s all downhill from here if the electorate doesn’t deal with the budget. There’s nothing Republicans can do. Oh, wait, as you said, “Republicans recently proposed a bill that makes any school that accepts government funding….”
That politicians of one side can tell huge lies and be confident in their impunity is a testament to how rigged the system is.
We’ve reached the Soviet level of corrupt authoritarianism.
I’d like to say it’s a recent phenomenon but it’s not. It’s been like this since just after the 1987/88 Gary Hart “Monkey Business” affair. Democrat star Gary Hart should’a-could’a-would’a been President in 1988 except for the media exposing his extramarital affair. He was forced to abandon any hope of running. That resulted in Mike Dukakis. The media has taken a vow of ‘Never Again’ and been completely in the tank for Democrats ever since.
One radio talk show host I used to listen to many years ago said, “Free speech is a good idea on the off chance that you can persuade somebody.”
Sometimes it seems like we have no chance of persuading others to adopt our views. But every now and then people do change their minds, even if it requires bitter experience to do so.
For example, the district attorney of San Francisco got booted out of office during a recall last year. Remember that San Francisco is one of the most left wing areas of the United States. Yet, the voters saw the rising crime and disorder and voted for change.
Admittedly, these voters didn’t vote Republican. They voted for a slightly less leftish type of Democrat than before. I think there are some voters who are allergic to voting Republican, viewing Republicans as pro-gun, pro-life, anti-gay, pro-rich person and a host of other things they think are bad.
It is a very complicated and difficult situation. But still, it is part of the job description of a political movement to go out and talk turkey with peoplel, not just those who already agree, but even to those who disagree, to see if you can change their minds.
Republicans simply need to start saying “That’s a lie” directly to their faces, or to their media interviewers’ faces, every time they respond to one of these lies.
In simple image form, for convenient sharing:
Bu then it’s just “Republicans pounce . . . “
I would like to see an ultra wealthy conservative or consortium thereof buy a major media outlet and commence the battle of ideas and advance better policies in the media, beyond the reach of the Left.
Trouble is, I think a Venn diagram of ultra-wealthy Republicans with constitutional and conservative values in one circle, and ultra-wealthy Republicans who are not all in with the Great Reset and the WEF in another, might fail to have any overlap of the two circles. What to do??
I agree. I also think Republicans should boycott most national media.
Rather than show votes on DOA laws that greatly expand national government involvement in local schools, how about the GOP just block grants some money states and dissolves the Dept of Ed?
We need to craft a better message than we have been. :)
I had always hoped that one day a “Liberty Lobby” would emerge in the Republican Party. As powerful as the gun-lobby and dedicated solely to individual rights and limited government. One probably got started but was strangled-in-the-crib by Libertarians so busy arguing about Murray Rothbard, Ruby Ridge, and Robert’s Rules of Order that they failed to keep their eye on the prize.
I can’t remember if it was here on Ricochet where I read something like this (and I don’t think the search function would be of any help):
There are two kinds of Libertarians
ADDED: If you are the author of my crude paraphrase above, please drop in and claim your authorship.
Good idea. Now about implementation — there’s the Senate, and then there’s the veto pen. How do you propose to accomplish this?
Even with the slim GOP House majority, you still need 67 Senate votes plus a Republican president to have a chance. Let us pray.
Reagan’s skill set won’t work now. I think you’re right about that. We need Vaclav Havel.
That reminds me:
The main thing the founders got correct is they understood human nature. Most Utopians seem to ignore that.
It can at times seem hopeless. I’ve heard it oft said that the conservative message can’t be summed up in a tidy sound bite, which makes it hard.
That said, I’ve had some real successes persuading people. It can be exhausting but I highly recommend for parents: be relentless. When my kids said something stupid, I didn’t attack them. But I challenged them every single time. The same for all their friends. I didn’t care if it was a first date, or a childhood friend. Say that there’s 46 genders, or that capitalism is evil, you’re going to be asked to explain that. In detail.
I’ve found myself taking the same tact with friends and acquaintances of late. When they say something I disagree with, or is outright stupid, I act interested (sometimes I’m pretending) and ask for more details. Once I’ve let someone prattle on for awhile I’ve found them to be more receptive to a counter view.
I got persuaded to conservatism with one comment from Ronald Reagan. He was defending taking advantage of a tax loop hole where his land was taxed lower because he had a few head of cattle. He simply stated that he wanted everyone to pay less in taxes, and the loop hole was available to all.
Boom.
The biggest tell is why is the left against using an ID for voting?
Why the push for mail in voting and extending the voting period for weeks to months?
And therein lies the rub. If they can’t win the game, you have a few options:
The cross-breeding of politicians and the media, bopping back and forth to jobs in both places, and those relationships, help feed the media monster, the messaging that politicians want to get out. They are aligned in ideology, for the most part. I don’t think linkage can be broken.
The ties between lobbyists and advertising dollars is another linkage that can’t be broken (see: Pfizer). Legislation and messaging in the media go hand in hand.
If we’re talking incentives, we may need to make it so there are less incentives to become a politician, and to stay one for decades. The growth in net worth of many politicians while they are in office is the proof that it’s not about serving the public, but themselves.
So limit them, by terms, or by the ballot. But something has to be done to change the incentives, for them and for us, because they’re spending us into oblivion, and we’re feeling right now the inflation effects of the massive cash dumps and spending that have broken all records in the past 3 years.
I’m pretty confident, however, that we will continue on the same path, until we can’t anymore. And it will be an abrupt stop.
The philosophy has been formally incorporated into the journalism canon as Advocacy Journalism. The basic idea is that journalists can’t be nor should be neutral when one side of a story is obviously correct or beneficial while the other (others) obviously false or harmful. It’s propaganda with a university pedigree. But that’s what the American electorate has been marinated in for almost 40 years.
It was not just communication skills with Reagan. It was the clarity of his vision breaking through the cloud of mandated despair. Each in their own way, Reagan, Limbaugh and Trump all pointed out that the emperor really is naked and you are not crazy or alone if you see that. You don’t have to be absorbed into hive mind.
The only upside to the weird, ugly politics of Biden v. Trump, both in deep decline in tone and substance, is that it may foster an overwhelming national desire for sane, competent, decent leadership such that one speech, one event might launch the candidate who can deliver us from the soul-snatchers.
Good idea. However, we have to explain why it’s a lie, and what the truth is. And when the leftists try to interrupt or talk over you? Slap the bejeezus out of them . . .
yeah
Another reason why Reagan was successful, to the extent that he was, is because in the late 1970s it was clear to nearly everyone, not just conservatives, that America was in decline.
There was 14 percent inflation, long lines at gas stations where sometimes people would settle disputes over gasoline using guns. There was the Iranian hostage crisis. There was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was associated with a large movement towards communism in much of the third world.
There was also lots of domestic terrorism with groups like the Weather Underground and the group that included Patty Hearst.
So, you didn’t have to be a conservative or even a Republican to think that America needed to move in a new direction. Even moderates and liberals believed change was needed. Even Jimmy Carter had to change his views of the Soviet Union after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
In order to win, it isn’t enough to convince conservatives. One must convince moderates and independents.
I just read a painful story about homelessness increasing in Massachusetts. In thinking about what is happening in the economy right now, I realized why I liked having Donald Trump as president, why he was so unusual in our political and governmental environment.
Societies and democracies become stagnant after a while because of social and cultural pressures that build up over time. Stagnation causes poverty always.
I spent a few years reading quite a few anthropology textbooks. The author had studied undeveloped and impoverished communities in South America. These groups could not grow to prosperity partly because of the interactions among the members. Whenever someone succeeded in doing something better than the others, the other members of the group frankly resented the success and minimized it in some way. And they always attributed the successful person’s achievements to luck or other outside forces, never to innate ability or strength or perseverance or simply hard work. The author called these “leveling forces.” These are psychological problems that affect the group’s functioning.
This is the state of affairs in the United States. It’s unusual for us, but here we are. For some reason, probably a genetic personality inheritance, Donald Trump, loner that he is, seems to be immune to these destructive forces. He is a visionary who is also a comic and entertainer. Not only does he have the ability to make an audience laugh, but the first two years of his term in office were pretty amazing in our economic growth.
Law, politics, and government are some of the strongest levelers in existence, and we’re not going to find visionaries in those fields. Governments cannot produce wealth. And they will try to get rid of people like Trump for a lot of reasons. They simply overwhelm anyone who tries to achieve something.
I don’t know how to do it, but it would be great if the Republican Party formed a PAC to address this problem, to exalt individuals who achieve great things. This PAC would create a context, a reference point, within which all Republican candidates could work with the public.
We simply have to turn this situation around and go back to the innovative mindset that built this great country.
Trump was not a visionary. However, he did have a strong pragmatic sense that simply preventing the government worshippers, apparatchiks, and RINO fellow travelers from doing what they wanted to do was good for the country. (Hard to go wrong by doing the opposite of what the NYT and Nancy Pelosi want.)
He achieved policy success, initial political success, and extraordinary economic growth by (a) not letting the left do what they wanted and (b) a bold outspoken defense of that posture.
But Trump was not a good manager. His personnel handling was atrocious–he trashed and turned on people who served him loyally. He never got a handle on the fact that his COVID policy was run by malignant morons.
He failed to achieve a gravitas in office or articulate a positive vision. He needed that next, higher gear than the entertaining, outspoken performer on the campaign trail. The unprecedented abuse of power to try to undo the 2016 election was an injustice he had every right to resent but he did not need to engage pipsqueaks in Twitter fights or make it all about his personal vindication rather than an attack on the office. His ego is currently driving some bad behavior and the absence of a vision leaves only a demand for personal loyalty and vindication.
Yes he is/was. All the resorts and brands he built, the restoration of Mar-a-Lago–he definitely could see things that could be.
I agree with that completely. But those traits often seem to go together–poor managers and visionaries.
It’s why so many artists had patrons in the olden days and why they have managers today. It’s the entire CPA industry. :) :)