R09Q nM= Old Guard Out Of Touch With Their Voters On Election Integrity

[Ubiquitous]

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden gave a speech asserting that people who
oppose his plan for a federal takeover of elections are domestic
enemies and racists.

"Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you
want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?" Biden
asked in his speech falsely claiming that the "right to vote" was in
doubt throughout the country.

Biden is lobbying to end the Senate's legislative filibuster in order
to push through his plan for a radical takeover of elections. The
election bill would unconstitutionally empower the federal government
to control state election procedures, and help make permanent the
decreased election safeguards that caused so many problems throughout
the country in 2020.

The response of the old guard of the Republican Party this week has
been to wholeheartedly endorse the media narrative that the 2020
election had no significant problems, while also opposing Biden's plan
to run elections. It's a politically insane approach.

The 2020 election was riddled with problems. Voters know this.
Republican voters know this very well. Time Magazine described what
happened with the election as "a well-funded cabal of powerful people,
ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the
scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media
coverage and control the flow of information." They added that it was a
"revolution in how people vote."

The rigging of the election included changes to hundreds of laws and
processes in the months prior to election day, flooding the system with
tens of millions of mail-in ballots even as scrutiny of those ballots
was decreased. Mark Zuckerberg spent $419 million to finance the
private takeover of government election offices - primarily focused on
the blue areas of swing states - to enable Democrats to run their Get
Out The Vote operations from government offices. The funding was
significant enough to affect the outcome of races, independent analysts
have concluded. And that's to say nothing of Big Tech's election
meddling in the form of censorship and algorithmic persuasion nor of
corporate media's move into straight-up propaganda.

On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos - formerly President Bill Clinton's
press secretary - asked in his usual biased way for Republican Sen.
Mike Rounds to opine against election integrity:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You voted to certify the election last year.
You condemned the protest as an insurrection. What do you say
to all those Republicans, all those veterans who believe the
election was stolen, who have bought the falsehoods coming
from former President Trump?

Even the dumbest Republican should have been able to answer this
question without accepting the premise of the biased Democrat reporter.
Knowing that the filibuster and election integrity are on the line,
even a lowly, distracted Republican precinct person should have been
able to respond by talking about fighting the federal takeover of
elections, fighting the private takeover of government election
offices, fighting the unconstitutional changes of voting laws, and
fighting the second-class treatment of Republican voters by the media
and Big Tech.

Instead, Rounds made bizarre claims about looking at "accusations" in
"multiple states," saying that while there were "some irregularities,"
none were significant. Then he claimed - ludicrously - "The election
was fair, as fair as we have seen."

I mean, heck, if the election was as fair as any in history, why not
join with Democrats in their push for a federal takeover of elections
to make permanent the "revolution in how people vote"? But also, why
say something that is not true?

The 2020 election was not the fairest in history, not by a long shot.
It was riddled with problems, whether it's the Zuckerberg funding or
the coordinated Democrat campaign to weaken election security. The man
who ran that coordinated effort was Marc Elias, the same man who ran
the 2016 Russia collusion hoax. His partner was recently indicted by
John Durham for just some of his lies associated with that hoax that
did so much damage to the country and which itself was an attack on the
2020 election's fairness.

As soon as Rounds showed himself subservient to Stephanopoulos, the
Democrat media went wild. They amplified his comments, knowing how
helpful they were to their cause of decreased election security and
opposition to Republican victories.

One corrupt media outlet that excitedly amplified Rounds' comments and
used them to advance their political agenda was CNN. Russia hoax co-
conspirator Manu Raju, known for pestering Republicans to get them to
support Democrat narratives, wrote an article gleefully headlined "Top
Republicans stand up for Rounds after Trump's attack: He `told the
truth'." Some lowlights:

• "I think Sen. Rounds told the truth about what happened in the 2020
election," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN on Tuesday.
"And I agree with him."

• Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican who contended Democrats
took advantage of more voting rules eased during the pandemic. "I've
moved on a long time ago, and most members of Congress have, including
Mike."

• Other Republicans said it was time to focus on something other than
2020. "I say to my colleague, welcome to the club," Sen. John Thune,
the senior South Dakota Republican, said of the Trump attack on Rounds
- something he has endured himself in the past. "I don't think re-
litigating or rehashing the past is a winning strategy. If we want to
be a majority in 2023, we've got to get out and articulate what we're
going to do with respect to the future the American people are going to
live and the things they're going to care about when it comes to
economic issues, national security issues."

It is absolutely charming that Cramer has the luxury of "moving on"
from the important election integrity battle, but Biden sure hasn't
moved on. Pelosi hasn't moved on. Chuck Schumer hasn't moved on. The
entire corporate media hasn't moved on. Why has Cramer moved on?

North Dakota is a state that voted for Trump in 2020 by 33 points. Its
senator should probably be able to use some of his political capital to
tackle the top issue of the week for American voters.

Thune says the politically wise thing to do is to not relitigate the
past but work on issues people are going to "care about." Someone
should tell him that one of the top issues Republican voters care about
is . election integrity.

The Washington Post this month reported that at least 69 percent of
Republicans are seriously concerned about the 2020 election. Perhaps
the worst thing a party could do if it cared about serious political
power would be to signal that the issue means so little to them. This
pathetic cowardice and incompetent weakness are exactly what Republican
voters are sick to death of.

In previous months, Biden has falsely claimed that the country is
experiencing "Jim Crow" resistance to the right to vote. He asked
corporations to boycott the state of Georgia after Georgia's
legislature passed a bill to mildly improve its election security. Some
of them bowed to the pressure. Major League Baseball, for instance,
pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Biden's request,
causing untold economic damage to the Peach State.

All of this is clearly an effort to keep Republicans from stopping
Democrats' 2020-style assault on election security. It works precisely
because too many Republicans are too scared to fight. What if instead
of Stephanopoulos easily pressuring Rounds into spouting Democrat
talking points, Rounds had instead fought hard against these attacks on
election security? What if he knew the facts about what actually
happened enough to speak knowledgeably about what Republican voters
want their leaders to advocate for?

What if establishment Republican politicians put away literally any
thoughts about Trump - much less their anger or petulance about him -
for a minute to think about the importance of election integrity and
how to obtain it?

What if Republicans stopped running interference for what Democrats did
in 2020 at the same moment that Dems are trying to take over the entire
country's election system? This isn't merely academic. Old-guard
Republican cowardice and fecklessness could lead to Pelosi becoming
America's election czar.

In general, Republican voters deserve a far better class of politician
than what the old guard of their party has been forcing on them.

--
Let's go Brandon!