Republican tactics for subverting elections is coming into focus

Actually, it's been in focus for at least the last year or thereabouts. But that quibble aside, Salon writes:

GOP officials refuse to certify primaries: “This is how Republicans are planning to steal elections”

Election officials in three states refuse to sign off on primary results in a preview of likely November chaos

Republican election officials in at least three states have refused to certify primary votes, in a sign of things to come amid the party's baseless election fraud crusade.

Numerous allies of former President Donald Trump have echoed his lies about voter fraud on the campaign trail. Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Adam Laxalt both claimed evidence of "election stealing" before any votes were cast. Colorado secretary of state candidate Tina Peters has twice demanded recounts of her Republican primary race after losing by double digits. Nevada gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert filed a lawsuit alleging that his GOP primary loss was a "mathematical impossibility," even after a recount he requested confirmed the results.

While candidates are free to challenge the results of their elections under various state guidelines, Trump-allied election officials pose a more insidious threat. Echoing the same false narratives as Trump and his endorsed candidates, county officials in New Mexico, Nevada and Pennsylvania have tried to circumvent state laws and refused to sign off on primary results.

Republican commissioners in Otero County, New Mexico last month refused to certify primary results in their GOP-dominated jurisdiction, citing unspecified concerns about Dominion voting machines. These apparently stem from TrumpWorld's crusade to stoke baseless allegations that the machines had "flipped" votes from Trump to Joe Biden. The Otero County commissioners ultimately relented and certified the votes amid concerns that they could go to jail after state officials took them to court.

Well, at least there's still the threat of jail for people who subvert elections. Once that goes away, the dam is going to burst. Republican election integrity is going to gush out bigly. What's left of democracy that's still standing in the way will be swept away, never to be seen again.

The GOP plan for elections:

kill 'em with a gusher of election integrity

Republican Party social re-engineering tactics: Cowardice, lies, slanders & emotional crackpottery

By now, GOP propaganda tactics are well-known to people who can see them for what they are. Divisive lies, slanders, emotional button pushing and idiotic reasoning are all front and center as usual. That is at the heart of the morally rotted Republican Party. Adam Serwer at The Atlantic writes:

Republicans’ Cowardly Excuses for Not Protecting Marriage Equality

Republican senators such as Marco Rubio and Ben Sasse, as well as conservative outlets such as National Review, have insisted that the Respect for Marriage Act is unnecessary because there is no case currently on its way to the Supreme Court that has the potential to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry. Rubio said he would vote against the bill because it was a “waste of our time on a non-issue.” Sasse told reporters that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “trying to divide America with culture wars. I think it’s just the same bullshit. She’s not an adult.”

The reason some Republican senators are complaining about the existence of a marriage-equality bill is that they do not want to be forced to take a real position on the issue. They do not want to publicly take the unpopular position, even among the Republican rank and file, that these families should be destroyed, but they also do not want to do what is necessary to protect them and potentially earn the wrath of right-wing media and other members of their political coalition. This is cowardice, but also a GOP plan for as long as they can hold the Court: to avoid taking risky stands in Congress while the conservative justices act as a super-legislature that imposes an unpopular right-wing legal agenda on the entire country. Because the justices cannot be voted out of office, they can take the heat for imposing policies that elected officials would be nervous about supporting. If marriage equality were truly a “non-issue,” passage of the bill would be assured; GOP legislators are waiting for the Court to do their dirty work for them.

Contrary to Sasse’s blubbering about dividing the country, if the legislation were passed and successfully dissuaded the Supreme Court from trying to invalidate marriage equality, it would leave Democrats without a popular issue with which to criticize Republicans. And that’s good, because the duty of the Democratic Party should be to make sure their constituents—and by extension, all Americans—can retain their basic rights, not to have culture-war grievances to run on forever. I can understand, however, why Republican elected officials, used to offering their constituents little more than a steady diet of culture-war red meat, might have trouble grasping the concept.

Sasse lies when he claims that defense of same-sex marriage (SSM) is a non-issue. The Christian nationalist wing of the GOP, of which all six Republicans on the Supreme Court and Sasse himself are elite members of, is crystal clear that SSM has to go. God hates SSM so Christians nationalists hate it too. Because of that alone, there is no reasonable basis to claim that this is a non-issue. It is an issue.

The group that has the most influence in dividing America with culture war is the Republican Party. Sasse arguing that Pelosi is trying to divide us by doing what most Americans want is divisive. 

That exemplifies another prominent trait of Republican Party propaganda. Republican elites rhetoric projects an awful lot. When they accuse and criticize Democrats of doing something, it is usually a good bet that the Republicans are the main culprits. 

Gallup, June 2022

What is more divisive, 

supporting it or opposing it?

Raising enough hell might finally get it done…

People often claim that the Democrats’ messaging is weak.  I guess I can get that, especially vis-à-vis what happened late last week, with enough Republicans voting against the PACT Act* for it to fail. 

What we, the Dems, need is some people like Jon Stewart to raise a little lot of hell.  If Dems “came out swinging” on the issues they feel passionate about, maybe it could get the media’s attention.  (So far, Beto O’Rourke is one of the few passionate Dems I’ve seen.  And he is still lagging in the polls behind bastard Greg Abbott for Governor of Texas.)

Yes, we Dems need outrage.  We need passion.  We need to call a Republican spade a Republican spade.  Call them out!  Make a scene.  That always get the media’s attention, since the media always goes where the trouble goes.  But Jon is making “good trouble.”  And without media, our messages, especially “good trouble messages” go nowhere. 

Well said, Jon (warning, strong language):

-Does America owe the veterans, less than 1% of the population, anything?

-Does not passing the PACT Act disgust you as much as it disgusts me?

-Am I just blowing off some steam here?  (Oh, you betcha!)

______________________________

*The PACT Act, also known as the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022, is a bill that directly addresses the impact on veterans and others who were exposed to environmental toxins, burn pits, radiation, and Agent Orange while serving.

Republican Party racism steps into daylight

A Washington Post opinion piece makes it about as plain as it can be made:

Opinion | A hero of the Trump right shows his true colors: Whites only

Thank you, Viktor Orban, for showing us where the American right is heading.

The Hungarian strongman, who derailed his country’s nascent democracy, has been a darling of the MAGA crowd for his anti-immigrant policies. He has enjoyed a fawning interview and favorable broadcasts from Budapest by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, and he has been invited as a featured speaker to next week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas alongside a who’s who of Republican senators, governors and members of Congress, as well as former president Donald Trump himself. Several such luminaries addressed a CPAC gathering in Hungary in May, at which Trump described Orban as “a great leader, a great gentleman.”

During a July 23 address (in which he said immigration should be called “population replacement or inundation”) he gave voice to the belief underlying his nationalism: He opposes the mixing of races.

“Migration has split Europe in two — or I could say that it has split the West in two,” he said, after commending to his listeners a 50-year-old racist treatise. “One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations. They are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.” He went on to contrast that with “our world,” in which “we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed race.”

That was too much even for Orban’s longtime adviser Zsuzsa Hegedus, who resigned and lambasted the prime minister for “a pure Nazi speech worthy of Goebbels.” She said the speech could “please even the most bloodthirsty racists” and suggested he was “advocating an openly racist policy that is now unacceptable even for the Western European extreme right.”

But not for the American right! CPAC’s organizer confirmed to me on Wednesday that Orban is still scheduled to address the group next week. “Let’s listen to the man speak,” Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, told Bloomberg News on Tuesday. Orban’s name remained on CPAC’s speakers list, along with Trump; some two dozen GOP House members; Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Rick Scott (Fla.) and Bill Hagerty (Tenn.); Fox News’s Sean Hannity; Texas Gov. Greg Abbott; and former Trump aides including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.

Republicans have hailed Orban as “Trump before Trump” (Bannon), whose government is doing “so many positive things” (Sen. Ron Johnson). Among the things it has been doing: seizing control of the judiciary and media, banning the depiction of homosexuality, demonizing Jewish billionaire George Soros, expelling asylum seekers and erecting a wire fence on the border, forcing out the country’s top university, and halving the size of parliament and redrawing districts to keep itself in power.

At its core, Orban’s rule has been about sustaining, and being sustained by, white nationalism. His July 23 speech was an extended articulation of the “great replacement” conspiracy idea — embraced by Carlson and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), among others — that non-White people are plotting to wipe out White people.

One would think that given how sophisticated GOP propaganda can be, they would be less blatant about their racism. There's nothing wrong with opposing most immigration on grounds of overpopulation and/or concern for the environment. But, maybe Republicans cannot base their opposition to immigration on either ground because they do not believe either is a problem. That leaves racism as the cause.

Well, at least Republicans are being honest about their motive. That's a refreshing change.