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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
We the People may need one. But so far, enough of those on one side don’t want one.
Like I said. Video and pictures exist. They are not conclusive of anything.
I’m just doing some myth busting. “I’d believe in Jesus if I had caught his resurrection on video.” Well, no you wouldn’t.
And open borders, and birthright citizenship, and one sided trade with China. Generally, when one side in a trade relationship sells bulk food commodities and raw materials and the other sells high tech items needed by the lifestyle of their trading partner, the first is a colony.
+1
That division on the conservative side already exists, and the fault lines have been clear for more than a decade.
The difference post-election is that the larger of these two sides will be far more vocal about how much they despise the tiny “cuck-shill Tapper-fluffer (cruise ship icon) RINO eager to buff your cocktail-party credentials” side.
Also the larger of the two sides may not see much point in “unity” with the cuck-shills.
Agreed.
Very Jordan Peterson of you
It seems to me to be too early to start wondering about what we’re going to do now that Trump has lost. He hasnt’ lost. That is not decided yet.
I really don’t. The way the establishment GOP joined with Democrats in denouncing the Tea Party movement as a bunch of racist hicks was very eye-opening. This after the Tea Party movement worked to put that same GOP in power.
If you immediately turn on the people who helped you succeed, . . . the problem may be with you.
And here’s a clue: That Skyler is saying this (who I believe has never been a big Trump fan) suggests the fault lines are becoming clearer all the time. The NTers are crowing that they have succeeded in defeating the Orange Man, but their cruise ship is going down rapidly.
I don’t think the conservative movement or the Republican Party will divide permanently over the disagreement about the 2020 election. The practical reality is that there’s nowhere to go for people on the Right. The two parties are not interchangeable parts. They have vastly different ideas on simple money management, the proper use of government might, and basic philosophy.
That said, history is repeating itself. FDR took the same approach to unseating Herbert Hoover as the Democrats and Never Trumpers have taken to unseating Donald Trump. FDR told a lot of lies.
I don’t have to look any deeper or any further than the published Democratic Party 2020 platform for proof of fraud in this election. Having said the things about Trump’s handling of the pandemic that are in black and white in that document, all the Democrats and Never Trumpers had to do was sit back and watch their army fight for them. It became a holy mission.
I don’t think I’d ever respect the intelligence again of any Republicans who went along with this effort or supported it. I’d vote for them because I don’t have another choice. I’ll never look up to them again.
I thought that Yoo had a good point about the difficulty in concealing a widespread, concerted effort at fraud. This makes is more difficult for me to accept the theory that authorities in some locations halted their counting so that they could determine how many votes Biden needed, and then inserted the correct number of fraudulent votes. It is possible, but I agree that this is very difficult to do.
Another possibility is widespread but uncoordinated voter fraud efforts.
Cue: Gary
Michael Yon:
I fail to see where anyone is following Trumps personality. Just because it is a total turn-off for you, does not mean the opposite it true of his supporters. There are other dimensions to why a leader deserves support than his/her personality. However the core of the NTers cannot seem to see this, or even grasp the concept.
Another level of how most of us came to support Trump is because of who his enemies are and how they have acted. If you can’t see how despicable they are, and how much they hate you ( despite your Trump loathing) and what they are doing to you and our country and how they will attack and undermine any and all of our representatives – as has been fully demonstrated – then you might as well not engage in politics at all and live your ‘conservative’ life in isolation.
To pretend that there is some cultish enthusiasm for the man’s personality and not his willingness to fight, take arrows, and advance conservative policies and claim those like myself lack ideology is absurd.
Please tell me what a “conservative” is by your definition. I suspect it is mostly personality-driven.
That’s not conservatism in my book. That’s a fantasy, and it has already proven to be a complete failure.
Now the amazing thing is that many actually believe that going away quietly after this obvious fraud, this blatant hijacking, will somehow result in future victories.
Right now, this works:
Hat tip Michael Bane, who closed his latest podcast with it.
The left now considers freedom of speech to be an “alt-right” idea.
Which is just amazing if you think about it. It’s been fascinating learning of some of the griping by House Democrats who lost because the party has gone way too far to the left. Even some Democrats recognize this. The party leadership does not.
So . . . by ceding more and more of their party to leftist radicals, things like the Constitution, freedom of speech, law enforcement, patriotism, the importance of family, liberty, equality, the very idea of America itself — these bedrock things that should be at the core of both parties are now connected only with the right. Worse, they’re considered “alt-right” or even “white supremacist” by the radicals.
The only way for the Democrats to turn this ship around is to start embracing these bedrock ideals again. But their base says all these things are racist and fascist.
Reading through the comments, it seems we have forgotten the elephant in the room. How the media covered this election is a huge ‘tell’ on what is actually happening. Compare it with how they covered the 2000 election. I dare you.
How was AZ called so early? Why was counting stopped? What of the statistical anomalies? How did Biden win more votes than Obama, after a lackluster non-campaign? There are many more examples that point to massive fraud just on the surface.
But to pretend now that it’s some weird conspiracy theory that some real – and unprecedented- shenanigans could not have been employed is beyond comprehension.
The media has been trying to take this guy out for four years, using any means necessary including lies, fraud, slander, censorship and dirty tricks, and this is the continuation of that behavior. Or somehow, not?
This issue can divide conservatives even without the separate issue of being a true-believer that Trump won.
There is fraud that can be detected with the result that vote tallies are changed. There is fraud that should result in perps being punished. There is fraud that should result in electoral reforms.
People who are opposed to the maximum efforts to do that can be cast out, as far as I’m concerned. That includes those people who are thumb sitters or foot draggers. That’s a worse misbehavior than voting for Biden, bad as that is, and certainly worse than refraining to vote for Trump, for which I have some slight but dwindling twinges of sympathy.
But whether overturning the fraud that was detectable and overturnable would be sufficient to elect Trump is hard to say. That’s still an open question. To cast out those who are not true believers in Trump’s victory would be bad for us.
Personally, I think that enacting reforms to ensure fraud-less future elections are even more important than a Trump victory. But maybe some of us need an unshakeable belief in victory now in order to actually motivate us to get it done. I wish it wasn’t like that.
Saying “there is fraud” in the abstract is quite different from trying to actually get some actual individual person or group of people charged with the crime of participating in voter fraud and getting a conviction.
Trump’s Attorney General, Bob Barr, put out a memo instructing the Justice Department to investigate claims of voter fraud. But this was basically a way of staying off of Trump’s deep doo doo list. The Department of Justice doesn’t actually have any leads, unless one wants to call internet and cable TV rumor mills “leads.”
Trump is doing a dis-service to his base with the “I won – massive fraud” rhetoric.
There may have been fraud. It may have been “massive” (depending on your definition of massive). But we’re not talking about turning one state by a few hundred or even thousand votes. We’re talking about multiple states by 5 and 6 figure vote totals. Barring revelations of proof of a top-down conspiracy (which seems unlikely), he’s not going to win , and he should be preparing people, and himself, for this.
I’m not saying he should concede. I agree that allegations of fraud need to be investigated.
But the rhetoric should be less Churchillian “We will fight on the beaches and landing grounds…we will never surrender” and more along the lines of Hirohito at the end of WWII, that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage”.
Keep the counts and recounts going, pursue plausible and valid cases of documentable fraud, but quit the flailing “my grandma heard from her neighbor that the postman was throwing ballots away” crap.
No, I’ve been a Trump fan since shortly after the 2017 inauguration. I was pretty skeptical prior to that.
So much mind-reading.
My apologies. I must have picked up a different sentiment from something you’d written here.
Heck, I think we were all skeptical before the inauguration.
@drewinwisconsin, it’s me you are thinking of. I’m still not a huge fan, but I want Trump to fight to the bitter end on this. I want all of it in court and public record. Because if I have to choose between creepy old liars for President, I’ll at least go for the one I mostly agree with on policy.
It’s more the dogs that are not barking. All of the US Attorneys were appointed by Trump and it seems none of them are filing charges against Biden’s fraudsters. It seems Trump’s US Attorneys are directing their attentions elsewhere.
I suppose one could argue that all of the US Attorneys appointed by Trump are “Never Trumpers” who are willing to overlook voter fraud.
Republican US Senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford, has said that he will intervene if Trump does not being providing Joe Biden daily intelligence briefings by Friday, saying that the recounts are unlikely to change the result.
So, if there is division between those who will not accept the legitimacy of Biden’s victory over Trump and those who will, you have a GOP US Senator from Oklahoma that is on one side of that division.
Is it customary to do this before the electoral college meets?
Is it actually true that our constitution is nothing more than formality at this point?
That the media gets to call the winners and not the states themselves?
Or the democrat play book.