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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
This. ^
I keep hearing the following:
I have to ask myself, if #2 is true, how come #1 is as well? If Fraud does not work, why do people keep doing it?
Good question.
I also remember when, say four years ago, people who used to say that the integrity of our elections is of utmost importance. I suspect they were speaking with forked tongue.
I enjoy the left’s “sudden new respect” for Karl Rove.
First, I think that you are expressing things poorly. “This election will not be overturned.” We don’t even have certified results yet from the counting, and that is only the first step.
Second, to answer your question, I don’t know what Rove said, and I don’t recall the particular words that Yoo used. I think that a reversal of the current, preliminary vote counts in Biden’s favor, in a sufficient number of states to affect the result, is unlikely but possible. There is quite a bit of information that we still need.
As Yoo discussed, the late-received ballots in Pennsylvania are a wild card. I suspect that these will be thrown out by SCOTUS. Yoo suggested that there weren’t many of these, but I haven’t seen an official report, so this remains difficult to quantify.
Yoo suggested that there weren’t many of these
He’s obviously never spent much time in Philadelphia.
Gore did NOT want a fair count of Florida’s ballots. He wanted a favorable count of ballots where he thought he won. SCOTUS told Florida to count them all or stop. Florida chose to stop – in order to avail themselves of safe-harbor provisions.
Learn the difference.
Yoo is from Philly.
I don’t recall who it was that suggested on another thread – no votes should be tallied or announced in any state until a final count of the number of ballots received in that state has been announced (and any ballots received or found after that announcement are invalid). That way jurisdictions can’t “find ballots” if their candidate is slightly behind.
The other set of facts that has me puzzled is:
Not me.
It seems that after the 2000 recount controversy, Florida did a complete rewrite of their election laws and they were able to report their vote very quickly. I watched on Fox News an interview with incoming US Senator Tuberville from Alabama who also described Alabama’s election process as very quick.
I suppose “quick” does not necessarily mean accurate or completely free of fraud. But I prefer a system that reports the final results before Thanksgiving.
That isn’t necessarily true…there is a video of a GOP observer who films himself in the ballot counting area saying that, due to Covid-19 they were kept 30-100 feet from the actual counting. We have the video and photos of the windows being covered in Detroit because the clerk felt that people might video the counting and capture PII. Then we have the video of the group of poll watchers in Detroit being blocked from entering the facility by a security guard who was told not to admit them due to occupancy limits, it if a person left that did tnean anyone new was allowed in.
Is any of that fraud? Nope, but they are red flags of improper behavior for some reason.
@jclimacus
Taking up the question of whether Trump is a “winner” or a “loser.”
I am trying to imagine the discussions we might have starting around 2023 here on Ricochet regarding who the Republican nominee for president should be for the 2024 election, assuming that Joe Biden becomes president in January 2021.
One of the names that could conceivably be talked about is Donald Trump. So, I could imagine a scenario where someone who would want Trump to the 2024 nominee would say, “Trump won in 2016,” whereas someone who would prefer Trump not to be the nominee in 2024 would say, “Trump lost in 2020.”
By the way, This “Fault Line” isn’t new. It’s exactly the same one that emerged around 2010.
We’ve discussed this ad infinitum on these virtual pages. I thought Lilleks understood that, even if he doesn’t entirely agree with those of us who see our opponents as mortal enemies to freedom.
That James is expressing this in these terms is quite telling.
The problem is that the Party in political control of a State or a precinct, or any voting jurisdiction, usually also controls the election machinery, the Election Boards, the workers, the local and state judiciary, law enforcement, etc, etc, and can manipulate the electoral process to their hearts’ content without fear of consequences, except possibly botching the cheating and getting voted out of power. And all this doesn’t even get to the gerrymandering part. When you have One-Party States, the sky is the limit. As Joe Biden’s business partner said, all you need is plausible (and many times not even plausible) deniability. When your party also controls the MSM and Social Media and the Administrative State not even the sky need be the limit. So, Biden can lie on national television during a debate about his son’s laptop and…no repercussions. American elections are nothing but fraudulent.
James Jacobs, in his notable book, Mobsters, Unions, and Feds, make the observation that the Mafia was in defacto control of the US federal government for the better part of the 20th Century (through the labor unions that the Mob controlled). After Giuliani took down the NYC crime families in the 80’s, the Democrats, who were mostly in cahoots with the mob, simply in-sourced the mob’s role. Political machines, such as that in Chicago, operate pretty much like the mob. Perhaps sans the same lethal efficiency, but, given mysterious circumstances involving Jeffery Epstein’s death, who knows.
Georgia’s hand count may not change any results. But if that hand count comes to a different conclusion than the machines, then a serious look at the voting machines (an audit of the machines, as Sidney Powell called for) would be in order. Of course, getting an audit of the machines will be more difficult in most jurisdictions than getting a look at the tally sheets in Alice, Texas for Precinct 13 in 1948. Listen to the comments of Luis Salas, the election judge: “We had the law to ourselves there. We had iron control. If a man was opposed to us, we’d put him out of business. Parr was the Godfather. He had life or death control. We could tell any election judge: ‘Give us 50 percent of the vote, the other gut 20 percent.’ We had it made in every election.” The legal challenge to Johnson’s fraudulent election went to the U.S.Supreme Court, which voted to let the Democrat Party in Texas certify the stolen election for Johnson.
When Karl Rove says the apparent outcome of the election will not be overturned, he knows whereof he speaks.
It’s Chinatown.
Okay. This isn’t the least bit enlightening.
@heavywater,
I’ve always been suspicious when smart people play dumb. You have been full of all sorts of specifics and nuanced historical analogies and parallels but now I have heard your response to the Antrim County, Michigan software ‘glitch’ with a surprising agnostic tone of, “Hey, that internet sure is a whacky thing. People can post anything.”
It even seems you lack intellectual curiosity on this event while are more than willing to shower us in Gerald Ford and Al Gore historical parallels.
I am always suspicious when smart people begin to play dumb.
I just read a story about Antrim County in the Detroit Free Press. It’s an interesting story. But I don’t understand why what seemed to have happened would cause people to reach the conclusions that they have.
Trump won Antrim County 56 percent to Joe Biden’s 42 percent and by about 2,500 votes. Okay.
I’m quite happy to move on from Donald Trump. The man has obvious limitations. The problem is the “moving on” process seems to involve the same sort of surrender-without-fighting to the left that led people to countenance someone like Trump in the first place. It’s possible to learn things even from bad people, and there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the Trump Experience, mostly involving not playing the game as defined by the left.
I have a sinking feeling that Republicans aren’t going to learn those lessons. Maybe they don’t want to learn them. I understand why the Republican elites of donors and expensive campaign consultants don’t want anyone to learn them. Trump showed, if nothing else, that these groups are out of touch with huge swathes of the electorate and, despite their money-no-object computer models detailing how policy X will change the vote in county Y, they actually don’t know what they are doing. Trump not only didn’t play the game according to rules of Democrats, he didn’t play it according to the rules of campaign wizards like Karl Rove. Karl Rove wants nothing more than the Republican Party to go back to thinking Karl Rove is an indispensable genius. In fact, he’s exactly what is wrong with the Republican Party. I hope we learn that; I fear we won’t.
After they caught the error. so Trump would have lost without catching the error.
@jclimacus
I think if you look at the way Senator Mitch McConnell and almost all of the Republican senators handled judicial nominations not only during the Trump administration but in the last year of the Obama administration, you could reasonably think that the Republicans are capable of fighting on some issues, even if they aren’t willing to fight on all of them.
When Antonin Scalia died, my first worry was that a significant number of Republican senators would say, “If Obama nominates a qualified liberal judge who isn’t super dooper far to the Left, we will confirm him.”
Instead, almost immediately, McConnell said that no matter who Obama nominated to fill the vacancy, the seat would remain vacant. And almost all of the Republicans in the Senate backed McConnell up. The seat was not filled by Obama.
Then in 2017 after Trump nominated Gorsuch, the Democrats used the filibuster against the Gorsuch nomination. My worry was that the Republicans would not have the votes to nuke the filibuster. But even normally weak kneed Republican senators like John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted to nuke the filibuster, which did break a “norm,” and confirmed Gorsuch.
With the Kavanaugh nomination, that was a situation where the Republicans could have reacted to the heat the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) placed on the process and said, “Sorry, Mr. President. The votes aren’t there to confirm Kavanaugh.” But they did confirm Kavanaugh.
Then when RBG died, my worry was that a handful of Republicans would prevent the Republican Senate from acting before the election on the Amy Coney Barrett nomination. But they did confirm ACB to the court, over the objections of Chuck Schumer and the Left.
So, yes. The GOP is often very weak and timid. But not always. And even after Trump is gone, I suspect that there will be victories and defeats. Lots of both.
Trump is behind in Michigan by over 140,000 votes. But errors do happen. No question.
Either way, Trump is toast in Michigan.
Betcha he can’t muster the curiosity to wonder why they would be motivated to “catch” the error or to even wonder in how many other places the same “error” might have occurred.
6000 votes in 1 district. Software used in at least 41 districts.
Let’s see, maybe I could cipher this out.
one times ought = ought
one times ought = ought
one times ought = ought
one times six = six
four times ought = ought
four times ought = ought
four times ought = ought
four times six = twenty four
ought plus nothing = ought
ought plus ought = ought
ought plus ought = ought
six plus ought = six
Twenty four plus nothing = twenty four
So, put the comma in the right place and
Two Hundred forty six Thousand potential votes mis recorded
Take from one side and add to the other and you have a swing of four hundred ninety two thousand votes – (wow, seems like a lot to me)
Say, is four hundred ninety two thousand bigger than 140,000?
I grant you that the Congressional GOP has shown some backbone with respect to judges. Not so much on illegal immigration or other leftist initiatives. But I’m talking more about the Presidential level. They seem to think “moderate” Republicans who play nice with Democrats are the way to go with Presidential candidates. They should have unlearned that lesson with Trump’s 2016 victory after the defeats of McCain and Romney. Probably not though.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is the math you’re describing supposed to mean?
I think it is a bit tongue-in-cheek.
That’s what I mean.
A new fault line? Probably. But there are two ways to be unified, either by shared attraction or shared repulsion. While a significant number of Americans are attracted to Trump, a significant — and I think greater — number are repelled by his opponents and the transformation they promise. That repulsion was, for most conservatives, enough to overcome a distaste for Trump. I expect that force to grow stronger as the left accelerates its cultural overreach and drags the Democratic party ever farther away from where most people want to be. And as that revulsion toward an ever more radical left grows, the specific identity of the alternative will probably lessen. Four years from now, anyone whom we believe will stand in opposition is likely to have our support.
By the way, I’m not going to forgive you for “cuck-shill Tapper-fluffer” and the images that inspires.