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A new fault line
Simple question: will the question of a “stolen election” by nefarious means – D malfeasance on the local level, top-down fraud efforts, Dominion manipulation, all of the above – divide the conservative side in the year to come? I get the feeling sometimes that if you’re not on board with the idea that Donald Trump actually won, full stop, you’re a cuck-shill Tapper-fluffer (cruise ship icon) RINO eager to buff your cocktail-party credentials.
Published in General
There does seem to be great deal of condescension and tut-tutting happening when anyone from the great unwashed masses dares to call into question any specific aspect of the troubling anomalies in this election. For example the disconnect in the vote tallies between down ballot Republicans and Trump which is quickly explained as “Well, of course…what would you expect? Most Republicans can’t stomach the man. I thought that was obvious. His jib is definitely not cut as fine as Mr. Obama’s. And who let you into the country club, by the way?”
“Vote transfers? Poppycock! Conspiracy theorist! Get out you smelly Walmart shopper!”
But other than that everything is fine. No, really.
Cheating was widespread but matters fundamentally in key states and whether we’re allowed to count real non fraud votes or not is not clear but tossed mail-in Trump votes can’t be counted. We might come together when the governing Democrats destroy growth and inflation takes off. That may take some time as concentrated centralized businesses will do well, businesses that deal with China may do well, but if we don’t cut spending we will suffer inflation and I don’t see how they can manage that.
Worked both ways in Texas — Trump won by six statewide, while John Cornyn won his Senate re-election race by 10 points over MJ Hegar, and the four-point difference was pretty much the gap in Williamson County, just north of Austin. Biden won the county by a half-point, while Cornyn won by 3.5 points over Hegar there.
But go down to the border and heavily-Latino (93%) Zapata County, and Trump beat Biden by 5.5 percent, while Hegar defeated Cornyn by 10.5 percent. So there’s the quandry — the establishment Republican did not excite Latino voters who voted for Trump, but Trump turned off suburban white voters who were still willing to vote for Cornyn and other down-ballot GOP state and regional candidates.
Shall I get more illustrative? Yes? All right. Here’s a comment I posted on my most recent post in the Member Feed:
So, here’s another analogy about the state of affairs we’re in right at this moment.
The old guard, cocktail sipping, self-impressed Conservatariat are behaving like the smug, aristocratic and condescending French General Broulard played by Adolph Menjou in Stanley Kubrick’s film, Paths of Glory, who keeps sending men over the trench walls to be ripped to shreds by German machine guns, blinded and burned by mustard gas, and slaughtered by the thousands.
The Inside-the-Beltway types are focused on fighting this election battle in a half-hearted way as though it was still 1917 on the ground poring over paper ballots that have already been compromised and tampered with — while true patriotic men and women – Republicans, Democrats and Independents who voted for Trump – are facing the deaths of their businesses, their jobs, their kids’ education, an oppressive and intrusive technology regime, probable future wars when China, Iran, and Russia all roll senile and dim-witted Joe, and more pandemics used as weapons to shut people up and control their behavior, and more riots because Marxist anarchists are never satisfied and there will be more looting because many have already expressed that police are racist pigs.
Meanwhile, an undetectable cyberwar just occurred on November 3rd and they still don’t even know it.
Like General Brulard, they condescendingly chortle that such a thing couldn’t have happened because they think you need an army of thousands to pull it off which isn’t likely because someone will crack and spill the beans.
From their perspective they believe this election was simply the same old type of contentious election they’ve seen every election season since the 1960s or even earlier. And because they believe that Trump may indeed watch his re-election stolen out from under him by a small contingent of evil men and women. And because they believe that more dark days are ahead. It’s the same condescending mindset they had when they denigrated and dismissed concerned Americans in the Tea Party movement. They didn’t learn their lesson then and they may not learn their lesson now. But we’ve entered into a new, much more sophisticated type of political warfare and if these software tools aren’t investigated and aren’t crippled or eliminated then Republicans or whatever new party emerges from the dead husk of the GOP may not win an election for a long, long time…if we even have elections.
I can almost hear the chortling now.
No one lost to “Joe Biden”, if Trump lost, he lost to the media, giant corporate donors ( both in-kind and fiscal) , and the Democrat machine. He got about 10 million more votes than any other Republican Presidential candidate. Biden couldn’t get a quorum in a high school gym.
Your brand of conservatism- or whatever it is – died in 2016 and now it’s getting autopsied.
One clear indicator of ‘cause of death’ this political coroner sees at the outset, is the willingness – even eagerness – to surrender in all significant battles. This seems to be a product of a psychological aversion to being viewed as unmanly, and a wish to be seen as noble by their sworn enemies, coupled with the illusion that they can role-model fairness into pitched political battles.
Add to that the complete ignorance of the consequences of iteratively folding like a card-table at the hint of any real challenge.
Republicans can only run candidates who are acceptable to their enemies from now on. One could argue they never could, and that DJT was a fluke. But 70+ million votes?
Your faction will never learn. It’s starting to look like it’s been fraudulent, judging by central actors behavior, and by this pathetic OP.
🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳
Does the media tell the truth about Trump? Would Cruz have received different treatment if he actually did real stuff. I don’t think so, but that is beside the point. Do you believe that Biden won honestly, that he sat calmly in his basement while Trump raised huge crowds several times every day and yet Biden won legitimately. Remember mail ins were sent early, there was supposed to be an early win, but in key states they suspended counting. Give me a break. This election was stolen and we’ll be lucky to have real elections in the future.
There’s always been a divide. It’s class warfare. Establishment Republicans for the most part are the same as Democrats. Instead of general welfare, they support corporate welfare. They both support unlimited war. Both parties can’t resist injecting themselves into your life as much as possible. I’ll continue to despise these people, nothing has changed.
The thing is, I don’t really know how the world is, because I don’t know how much fraud actually occurred in this election. I see indications it may have been significant – that is why I support legal challenges.
You seem certain there wasn’t any vote fraud. How do you know this? I’d really like to know. It is one thing to not be convinced right now that there is voter fraud; it’s quite another to be certain there wasn’t any. Yet you seem so certain that there wasn’t any fraud that you dismiss those who disagree with you as drunk (this post) or emotionally immature (earlier posts). Do you see how this tactic reminds us of leftists who don’t answer arguments, but instead poison the well by accusing conservatives of racism, sexism, etc?
Bingo. You would think the Dems would welcome such an investigation to put such fears to rest and create “unity” in the sense we can’t argue they cheated enough to win.
But no. They aren’t about unity, and their fears are an investigation would reveal either they did cheat enough to win, or the extent of their cheating was on a scale previously unimaginable . . .
I am not certain that there wasn’t any vote fraud in the 1976 election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. If Ford had won in Ohio and Hawaii, Ford would have won and both Ohio and Hawaii were reasonably close contests.
But Gerald Ford didn’t respond to the election result by claiming rampant voter fraud. Why? Because Gerald Ford is mentally stable while Donald Trump is mentally unhinged.
Donald Trump thinks that Donald Trump never loses. In Donald Trump’s eyes it just isn’t possible that he lost to Joe Biden. Many of Trump’s supporters view the world in the same way. If the vote count shows Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump by 53,000 votes in Pennsylvania, then Trump and some of his supporters automatically search for some scrap of flimsy evidence that this is due to vote fraud.
You wrote in an earlier comment, correct me if I am misremembering, on another thread that if Trump’s legal challenges to these results fail, you will accept the Biden victory as legitimate even if not one that you supported. Good for you. I think that makes you more mature than many other people and probably disqualifies you as a conservative radio talk show how or cable TV show host.
Once again, this is an instance of not engaging arguments, but dismissing opponents as being fatally compromised by emotional involvement. When someone asserts a position of cognitive or moral superiority like this, it is a mistake to try to defend yourself on those terms. The very act of defense – e.g. by trying to prove that I’m not over-invested – is to cede that such a defense is needed and you’ve already lost. Mitt Romney made this mistake and made a fool of himself by talking about “binders full of women” to rebut charges of misogyny. Conservatives make that mistake anytime they try to defend themselves against charges of racism, sexism, etc. Donald Trump, for all his manifest faults, understood this. When NT’er’s dismiss those who disagree with them of suffering from various moral and cognitive faults, it only convinces them that NTers have more in common with the left than they care to admit.
The thing is, we non-NTers could start offering our own psychological and moral analysis of the basis of the obsessions of NTers. Kevin Williamson would be a fertile ground for this. But I find that sort of “argument” non-productive and ultimately boring.
Did you welcome Al Gore’s efforts in Florida to get a fair count of Florida ballots or did you view Al Gore’s efforts as the actions of a sore loser, as I did?
I think it only further divides where divisions already existed.
Meaning, if you were an NT before November 3rd and now you are a self-important prat more self-righteously intellectual than the conspiracy theorist vote fraud hooligans, divisions will be even worse than before (which is a hard thing to accomplish, so returns may be marginal).
If you were a Trump supporter before November 3rd and the evidence of fraud just doesn’t seem to be enough to convince you to keep challenging the vote, no I don’t think it will cause a huge divide. Maybe enough for some back and forth debate if these guys aren’t taking this position to avoid conflict. If they are trying to avoid conflict, I doubt they’d make much of a stink cuz they, well, avoid conflict.
What if the shoe were on the other foot?
Imagine that the year isn’t 2020. Instead the year is 2000. It looks like George W. Bush has won the presidency. But Al Gore is demanding recount after recount in Florida, supposedly in order to make sure “every vote is counted.”
I didn’t buy it for a minute. I viewed Gore’s actions as a strategy to steal the 2000 election from George W. Bush. Similarly, I see Donald Trump’s actions as a strategy to steal the election from Joe Biden.
Neither Al Gore nor Donald Trump were willing to accept the outcome of the election, in my view. I can elaborate more on this later.
There is a difference at the moment though, in that in the 2000 election, Gore’s supporters weren’t alleging Bush’s people stuffed the ballot boxes with fraudulent votes in Democratic-run South Florida counties. Instead they were alleging that voters in those counties were confused by the ballot format those counties approved, and either voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake, or didn’t make their punch card perforation clear enough, which led to the ‘dangling chads’ and ballot counters attempting to divine what the voters’ intention was.
You also had the Gore people attempting to do selective recounts, only in those Democratic-run Florida counties, in an attempt to find votes for Gore, and it was the selective, non-statewide recount that the Supreme Court eventually smacked down. As of right now with the current question, Trump might still lose, but the debate isn’t centered on trying to add votes in Republican leaning counties; it’s the question of the authenticity of ballots in Democratic-leading counties (the fact that Georgia has opted to do a hand-recount of all state ballots is a way of avoiding the 2000 problem that only certain counties were targeted for recounts, even though almost all the complaints in Georgia at the moment center around the Fulton County/Atlanta ballots).
“Ignore the statistical anomaly behind the curtain! Nothing at all strange about this. Fraud? How dare you! Security!!”
Its the kind of manliness that surrenders his own wife to a beating so as not to appear like a baddie.
I don’t care about Donald Trump and his mental state. I care about my own mental state and what I see as indications of voter fraud. I did not see similar indications of fraud in 1976. Do you think that even if I think there was fraud, I should dismiss it because Donald Trump also thinks there is fraud, and Donald Trump is a baby? That’s not reasonable.
A lot of people would accept the election as legitimate. It may be that there was massive fraud but nothing legal can be done about it now. Once the ballot is cast it is difficult to uncast it. What I want to see is the evidence brought to light and aired in court, whatever the result.
And Sarah Hucklebee is providing us completely accurate information, right? LOL !!
Brian, I seem to be in the middle on this one. I’m observing condescension, tut-tutting, and worse (like insults) on both sides. Some are insisting that there is no reason for concern, and anyone who disagrees is nuts (in denial, a sore loser, etc.). Some are insisting that the election has been clearly stolen, and anyone who disagrees is a traitor.
I see cause for concern, but nothing conclusive yet. I support the President’s position that investigation and litigation should proceed, in the hope of figuring things out. There could be a good investigation that nevertheless fails to resolve the issue.
I prefer a wait-and-see attitude at this time.
Since Georgia is going to hand recount every ballot, we will find out if Huckabee’s numbers are accurate. Shooting the messenger beforehand seems petulant.
@arizonapatriot
Given the path that Trump has travelled already, I think it will be helpful to see how Trump’s lawsuits fare in court.
Merely by breathing the words “vote fraud” Trump has convinced many conservatives that the election was stolen. So, perhaps at this point the best way forward is to see if Trump’s attorneys are successful at all.
I believe that Trump’s attorneys will lose most of the lawsuits they have filed in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
This won’t do anything to convince the most die hard Trump supporters. But it might convince some people who supported Trump but are open to the possibility that the problem wasn’t so much vote fraud but Trump’s fragile ego, not being willing to admit that he lost.
Please send me your list of approved news sources and personalities.
John Yoo, in his discussion of recounts with Peter Robinson yesterday, mentioned that recounts usually only result in changing a maximum of a few hundred votes. Right now Trump is behind Biden in Georgia by about 14,000 votes. Trump is behind Biden by about 53,000 votes in Pennsylvania and about 140,000 votes in Michigan.
There just seems to be an unwillingness to accept the outcome. Yes, I would call that Sore Loserman, a la the 2000 Gore Lieberman ticket.
My bet is that you would disagree with mine just as I would disagree with yours.
@jclimacus
I read somewhere that so far Trump’s legal team is 0 and 12 in terms of the success of their election lawsuits. In yesterday’s Zoom call with John Yoo, I tried to ask John Yoo if this was accurate. I don’t think Yoo ever read my question. But John Yoo did say that Trump’s legal team has hurt their credibility by talking publicly about “massive voter fraud” but not being able to assemble the evidence to support it.
Now, maybe you think John Yoo isn’t a credible source of information. But that’s interesting to me.
Also, Karl Rove has indicated that adding tens of thousands of votes for a candidate in an election is “something out of a James Bond novel.”
I agree it doesn’t look good for Trump on the numbers. But in Georgia especially that’s a separate issue from the possibility that much of Biden’s margin is fraudulent, because of the Senate runoffs in January. Even if the hand recount doesn’t change the outcome, the threat of exposure and prosecution for attempting to stuff the ballot boxes needs to be out there, so that you don’t see fraudulent ballots provide Ossoff and Warnock with margins of victory two months from now against Perdue and Loeffler.
Not true. He’s had many failures in business. He doesn’t think he’ll never lose. He just hates losing, like most normal people . . .
HW, this is an example of a bit of irrationality on your side.
I don’t think that it’s reasonable to believe this tweet because of its source, or to disbelieve it because of its source. It might be right, or it might not.
In evaluating a claim like this, I am skeptical unless there is a link to an official source. I endeavor to provide such links, when I make factual claims.
Here is a NR article debunking Huckabee’s assertion. This NR article looks credible to me, though I have not double-checked the numbers myself.
I am troubled by poor analysis on both sides. It’s often hard to tell whether this is the result of conscious deceptiveness, or carelessness, or innumeracy. Innumeracy is remarkably widespread.
I think that may not be well represented:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/a-warning-on-georgia-revisited.php