Republican efforts to take control of elections are nationwide

Steve Bannon’s poisoned water well

Dispensing poisoned water to the thirsty internet every day

A ProPublica article, Heeding Steve Bannon’s Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP — and Reshape America’s Elections, reports on how deep the sentiment in the fascist Republican Party (FRP) is about not allowing an election to ever be stolen again. Once again, the power of dark free speech to con people into blatantly false beliefs and behaviors that flow from them is clear and undeniable. The FRP action is aimed squarely at undermining election integrity and especially not allowing democrats to win elections. ProPublica writes: 

When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room” podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action,” Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.

The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don’t have an option,” Bannon said on his show in May. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.”  

After Bannon’s endorsement, the “precinct strategy” rocketed across far-right media. Viral posts promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory.  

The new movement is built entirely around Trump’s insistence that the electoral system failed in 2020 and that Republicans can’t let it happen again. The result is a nationwide groundswell of party activists whose central goal is not merely to win elections but to reshape their machinery.

It is too early to know how important or effective this movement will be. The laws that FRP state legislatures have already passed to both suppress votes and to rig elections in the FRP’s favor will be relevant. ProPublica also looked onto whether there was a similar democratic surge at the precinct level, but found no significant surge. Some or most rank and file Republicans believe the Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen, which would explain why they are increasing their local level presence in elections in some areas.

At present, it is reasonable to draw some conclusions. First, the infrastructure needed to subvert elections and democracy is now being put in place, at least in some states and key areas of the country. Second, the belief among many of the FRP’s rank and file that the 2020 election was stolen is intractable and that false belief will probably not change any time soon, if ever. Third, because of that it is significantly possible, maybe likely, that the 2022 and 2024 elections will be adversely affected, maybe literally flipped for some races, by the FRP for the benefit of the FRP and its elite supporters and to the detriment to democracy and the rule of law.

Steve Bannon is probably right to try to move the deceived and angry rank and file at an increased presence in local elections. The FRP cannot win free and fair elections honestly, so they have to suppress votes and rig elections to win dishonestly. By now, it is clear that the FRP leadership and elites have to keep harping on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. If they did not, there would be no effective way to move the rank and file who have lost faith in election integrity to act to “protect” elections as they are now. 

Questions: Is this more evidence of a malicious FRP attack on democracy and elections, or is it just democratic politics with little or no anti-democratic intent? If there is no anti-democratic intent in Bannon’s precinct strategy, then (i) exactly what is the point of it, and (ii) exactly what pro-democracy actions are all those deceived and pissed off Republicans planning to take in the next election that were not already taken in the last free and fair election?