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The Rule of Law
I support the rule of law, and never more than in a Presidential transition. I reject whatever violence is occurring right now.
The law was abused and broken in states that couldn’t bother themselves to manage their most important civic responsibility in a competent way. I have little doubt that, in many instances, they set us up for failure, knowing that the resulting chaos would serve one side well.
My side lost. I think we were cheated, but we were cheated in such a way that there’s no effective legal recourse.
Now we have to live with the results, and work to prevent it happening again.
I categorically condemn violent protests and attempts to disrupt the orderly transition of power. I often criticized the President for his intemperate rhetoric, and I disapprove of it now, but I’ll stop short of harsh condemnation so long as he stays within the law. I do condemn those who think their outrage gives them a justification for violence.
And I will preemptively dismiss anyone who wishes to pile on the President now for his words, but who wasn’t willing to speak out in his defense over the past four years while he was unjustly savaged by a dishonest press.
Published in General
Why would that be? Prior to this, there was no conservative rioting.
I agree. You know, I actually wrote a post about that at the time:
Don’t Blame the Left
While I did manage to get through all of several multi-page threads kicked off by OPs on today’s Capitol Hill events, the election, President Trump’s conduct/rhetoric/etc., I didn’t have the strength to wade all that deep into the 10-page-plus thread kicked off by Jon Gabriel’s intemperate OP just earlier. So if I missed someone else’s saying exactly the same thing I’m about to remark on here, please forgive me in advance.
With that prefatory burbling out of the way…
I haven’t noticed anyone making the point (at least in *today’s* Ricochet disputes) that the election cheating very much has indications of having been coordinated at least across GA, MI, PA, and WI.
(I can’t recall/confirm offhand, but perhaps Dan Oliver alluded to this suspicious aspect in his OP from a day or so ago.)
I bring this up because any number and variety of arguments have been tossed around to the effect that “We’re just going to have to investigate and improve for next time, but for the current go-around we’re duty-bound to agree to the Electoral College results as reported…” and/or “It’s too much of a challenge within such a short November-through-January timeframe to investigate properly and make a compelling case for outcome-determinative electoral malfeasance, especially when the wrongdoing happened at the level of several individual states”… etc.
I say fast-track investigation at the multi-state coordination level, at minimum with the 4 above-mentioned states. Those can’t possibly be a coincidence.
Moreover, find a way to detain and interrogate under caution Bob Bauer, an attorney/adviser with the Biden campaign who previously held the same role in the Obama White House. (Bauer’s wife is the odious Anita Dunn.)
Bauer is colleagues within the same practice at Perkins Coie LLP as the infamous Marc Elias — the guy responsible for creating the litigation pretexts at minimum in GA, and probably all the other suspect states, for gutting existing election laws’ integrity provisions. Bauer has also familiarized himself, through a disturbing association during his White House years with the deeply unsavory Robert Creamer, with the black arts of ballot box manipulation.
Even if Bauer himself wasn’t the person who ultimately took care of the organizing and go-sign communication for that same manipulation in GA/MI/PA/WI, that actual person is likely only 2 or even just 1 degree away, and was accountable through Bauer anyway.
There’s a *reason* Joe Biden made that on-air “fraud organization” slip of the tongue. He may be coming unhinged, but President Trump certainly is not.
Indeed, if the POTUS sounds shrill, *you* try finding yourself increasingly bereft of allies in a world where 99 percent of the power elite prefer the lucrative to the true.
@manny
POTUS-44, not 45.
Because of the counting pauses followed by Biden surges?
This has not been shown to be true. Several courts have addressed lawsuits and no evidence has been produced. None.
No election has been stolen. Trump lost because he was a terrible candidate.
If the election was rigged, how did the down ballot republicans do so well?
https://ricochet.com/822533/keeping-track-of-election-fraud/#
Please let me know if you find any mistakes.
Bill, I’m sorry, but I don’t find it plausible that, after mailing out millions of unsolicited ballots and reducing or eliminating signature verification and postmark checks, and then discovering mail-in ballot rejection rates a small fraction of normal in several states, that fraud wasn’t widespread. That doesn’t mean it was determinative of the outcome. But I have no doubt there was a lot of it.
I don’t know that the election was stolen through ballot fraud. You don’t know that it wasn’t. I simply know that the laws were tortured by courts in contravention of clear Constitutional guidelines, and that fraud occurred.
Henry, thanks for this post. We all need to step back.
It is angering, but we are a civil people.
I’d love to see some artwork of the Hammer wielding a Scorecard in defense as the literal Kraken inflicts epic tentacular damage.
Bill, it would be interesting to know how many President-only ballots were cast, wouldn’t it? Perhaps very few. I’ve really no idea. Of the ones that were, I wonder how many broke for the Republican and how many for the Democrat.
It won’t be proof of anything, of course. But it might indicate whether or not certain scenarios were plausible.
What is sad for me is that I don’t know who I could rely on to report on the results of that honestly.
I do what I can to analyze the question at https://ricochet.com/822533/keeping-track-of-election-fraud/#. National Review people do the best work critiquing flawed fraud claims, and they covered this angle well, I thought.
(I just wish they’d do a better job with the fraud claims that appear to not be flawed.)
How do we fix it again? There is no fixing this. The country needs to end. What so we can go through the last four years again, to think that some Mitt Romney type wouldnt be treated the same way is insane. This country is DONE! Otherwise our future will be full of sexually abusing children at libraries and other deviant activities….
I’ve sworn off making snarky comments in response to defeatist talk. So I’ll merely suggest that you reconsider, that you try to look at America in perspective, at all we’ve accomplished and at the quality of life most of us enjoy, and then resolve to engage constructively. We are still the world’s great country.
Amen to that.
We must look forward and upward and look at the blessings we have, and build on them. There is great opportunity in America, but not if we give in to defeatism.
Oh you mean Obama concerning Antifa and BLM? Well, I didn’t say Trump should go to jail for it. It’s a smear on his legacy and reputation. Yeah, Obama is equally smeared. I hold Obama in utter contempt. And given what he did with the FBI and the whole Russian hoax maybe he does belong in jail.
I agree that no evidence has been produced. However the states changing the rules on mail in ballots and month long voting was bogus. That was where the election was stolen, and unfortunately the courts permitted this. As a candidate, Trump had his pluses and minuses. You’re obviously a NT and only see the minuses. But he got 74 million votes, the second largest in history and if they did not make those bogus election rule changes he would have won.
Not even any of this?
Right on, right on, right on, and write on!
The Marines.
Henry, I don’t know what we’ve accomplished. Can you name things to be proud of as conservatives? What are our great accomplishments? This place will be a South American hell hole in a generation. Good job everyone
Anyway I have to go to my HR enforced reeducation meeting today.
You put together a nice post at that link St.A. I didn’t get a chance to read it all but I’ll try later.
Well, thanks.
And, seriously, it’s MASSIVE; read what works for you.
One of these days I need to find a chance to read it myself. Blasted thing may need reorganizing again. Surely needs proofing.
It’s worth clarifying that, aside from fraud, the presidential election was certainly rigged. Start about 5 minutes in, if you’re pressed for time.
What violent protests? What orderly transition of power?
The protests weren’t violent. Even breaching the Capitol wasn’t violent. They were let in a side door by the police. The only violence came at police hands.
And do you call this election and the political runctions in the House an orderly transition of power? It was grossly irregular and unfair, if not strictly speaking illegal — which it may have been — and if it was, we will never know — because… Supreme Court.
Rule of Law? I’ll say again: The Rule of Law is dead.
If the Democrats (along with the CIA and mega-Media and, as it now seems, the Chinese) can get away with this they’ll never go back. They’ll never hold a legal and fair election again.
Perhaps you and I are using a different definition of “violent.” If people did in fact overwhelm the police and force their way into the Capitol as described, then I’m going to call that “violent.” I don’t mind if you wish to use the word a different way, but I won’t agree with you.
I believe that the election was riddled with fraud. However, I also believe that the only appropriate recourse was through the courts, the state legislatures, and the Congress. Failing that — and, alas, those options failed — I expect, and demand, an orderly transfer of power. I expect, and demand, that the President step down when his term ends, in accordance with our laws.
I believe he was cheated, certainly out of the honor and credit due him and quite likely out of a second term. But I won’t condone violence. We must now address what happened through the political process, and find our victories in the legislatures and in the courts and in the ballot boxes — and not through lawlessness and violence.
Rubbish. That’s a copout, to declare that since the other side cheats and breaks the law there’s no way to fix it short of joining in the chaos. We have hundreds of new, young, originalist judges. Let’s fight the lawlessness in the courts.
I know some people feel that way. I can only imagine how much that view must rob people of hope and motivation. I don’t think America is as wounded as some people think, I don’t think the rule of law is dead, and I don’t think our government is particularly more dysfunctional than it has historically been. No one said preserving the republic was easy, and there’s no guarantee the effort will even succeed, but I don’t see any option but to press on. So I’ll press on.
And you are certainly entitled to your views as well. I won’t dispute them other than the above quote. The video, which I might have misinterpreted, but which I watched several times, clearly, to my eye, shows policemen standing at the temporary fencing of the Capitol building, opening wide gap it it, and one policeman was smiling while another waved his hand in the air beckoning the protester to a door that was open. This was also supported by an eyewitness report. I say, the police set this up. And that those who led the influx were not Trump supporters.
The Rule of Law is dead and has been so.
Dinesh D’souza went to prison. Timothy Geithner did not. One for political speech that fell afoul of campaign finance laws. The other did not go for his five figure IRS debt.
There are different laws for different people.
Ergo, Henry, the Rule of Law is dead.
Unless you can tell me that in fact, there are not different laws for different people, and refute every example I can come up with, I am with Flicker.
Oh, let me add Bill Clinton. What he did would have landed most CEOs in prison.
Change. My. Mind.
The law is imperfectly applied, I’ll grant you that. But then, very few things are perfect, and if I went about declaring every imperfect thing defunct, my life would be pretty empty. So I won’t do that.