Friends, I trust that none of you are Democrats, but maybe some of you are democrats -- that is, believers in democracy. Well, if you are, you should be pleased and proud that Senator Ted Cruz is proposing the formation of an "Electoral Commission" to study allegations of fraud before Congress hastily certifies Biden's "win". My latest article addresses this proposal. No, it isn't likely to succeed, but it does expose the "high-handedness", as I describe it, of Trump's implacable enemies. They won't even study the possibility that fraud exists -- not if asking the question could lead to anything other than their preferred, predetermined outcome.
Read on, and see if you agree:
Ted Cruz is No Amateur
Kudos to Senator Ted Cruz of the great state of Texas, who is leading an effort by twelve Senators and Senators-Elect to challenge Congress's expected certification of Joe Biden's “victory” in the 2020 election.
On January 6th, Cruz and his colleagues will propose that, instead of blindly accepting Biden's reported 306-232 win in the electoral college, Congress should create an “Electoral Commission” to investigate, in the course of just ten days, the circumstances of the election in the disputed states. Depending on the findings of the Commission, those states would then have the option of reconsidering the disposition of their electoral votes.
In other words, Cruz and his team are calling for an election audit.
As they put it:
A fair and credible audit-conducted expeditiously and completed well before January 20-would dramatically improve Americans' faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next President. We owe that to the People.
Indeed we do!
The “gang of twelve” further note that, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 39% of Americans believe “the election was rigged”. As many times as the Democrats and their creatures in the media may repeat the mantra that such beliefs are “baseless” and “unfounded”, such a widespread rejection of the legitimacy of a U.S. presidential election cannot stand, if our democratic institutions are to enjoy popular support and thus survive.
In addition to being right on matters of substance, moreover, Cruz and his colleagues are also being canny and astute. It would be pointless to ask the House and the Senate to vote to change the outcome of the election by rejecting the reported tally in the electoral college. It would be pointless because a bipartisan majority clearly exists in both houses of Congress to evict Donald Trump from the White House, whether or not he was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.
Cruz and the other eleven Senators are not asking Congress to invalidate the recent election, however. They are merely asking that Congress do its due diligence by rapidly examining the evidence of irregularities and fraud proffered by the Trump campaign. Presumably, they also intend that the full resources of law enforcement will be brought to bear — for the first time since November 3rd — to investigate whether systemic malfeasance and/or fraud occurred.
Cruz thus aims to put the entire Republican Caucus in the Senate, and perhaps even a few Democrats, in an awkward position: Will they dare to oppose one last, good faith effort to establish that the 2020 election was above board? Will they oppose a thorough, professional audit of the election results, when to do so means that the next president will take office and (presumably) serve for four years under a cloud of suspicion? What, precisely, would be the harm of waiting ten more days to certify the outcome of the electoral college?
Reasonable as these questions may be, there is little doubt that, in the end, fortified in their contempt for any and allegations of “fraud” by biased reporting and Beltway elitism, most Congressmen and Senators will vote down Senator Cruz's proffered resolution. That is a shame, because it is, in all likelihood, the only way that faith in our democratic institutions and processes could be restored.
The probable outcome of the bold gambit of the “gang of twelve”, therefore, will be to challenge Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to show their collective hand, to confirm, once more, their animus for the current President, and their high-handedness in dismissing the notion that he could ever be the victim, rather than the perpetrator, of political dirty tricks.
Remember: many of those Congressmen and Senators who roll their eyes at the idea that there could have been cheating in “the most important election of our lifetimes” nonetheless believed implicitly, based on a “dossier” composed of truly baseless calumny, that Donald Trump was an agent of an enemy state.
These elected officials may or may not pay for their arrogance and their lack of imagination at the ballot box — likely not, if future elections are as flawed as this one — but we will all pay for it in due course.
That's because, as Cruz and his colleagues point out: “deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear”. No. Instead, it will fester.
As it does, Americans are bound to ask: if Congress is determined not even to look for electoral fraud, is it truly because they believe that none exists, or is it because they are afraid of what they might find?
Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com. He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
And here it is at WND:
https://www.wnd.com/2021/01/biden-won-fair-square-not-support-ted-cruzs-audit/
Also, check out this article by Newt Gingrich, which will summarize how many of you feel about "President" Biden:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/21/why-i-will-not-accept-joe-biden-as-president/
Nick, the outcome of this political stunt is that even the Senate is not likely going to vote down the electors (Toomey, Sasse and Murkowski are already publicly against the ploy, Perdue and Loeffler (even if they win) may not be sworn in on time if it is a close election, and none of the Democrats will vote for the move. The House won't.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, it will also reveal the stunt for what it is, particularly in the Senate -- a crass move to appeal to Trump's base in order to secure their support for future elections.
This could all backfire on the Trumplicans when the public sees that there is not sufficient evidence of fraud to overturn the election, and that it is just one last desperate act to overturn a free and fair election.
Rod, you're right that it's likely a "stunt": a symbolic act with no realistic hope of success. That's all right with me. Better to try and fail, than not to try at all. Will the voters punish those "seditious" GOPers from now until the end of time? I highly doubt it. If Trumpism was fatal to someone's political career, there's a lot about the 2020 election that doesn't make much sense, right? No, I think we "Trumplicans" will be just fine...assuming our future elections aren't rigged, which they may well be! In that case, you have nothing to worry about, Rod.
ReplyDeleteDR. NICK
DeleteYou know very well that future elections will be rigged! Very difficult to believe that real Republicans (whoever they might be these days) did not know that the 2020 elections would be rigged, unless of course they are not real Republicans, and are in fact RINO, which seems more likely. The LAST free election was in 2016.
The "Democrats" (and assortment of various types of Leftists, and just all around assholes) will make sure that no Republican ever gets back in The White House, or at least they will do everything they can to ensure that such does not happen. Their goal is to create an already well developed Marxist oriented society into a United Socialist States of America. Clearly Trump interrupted this goal, but our "Democrats" will not let this happen again, you can be sure of it.
Nick, you listen to the phone call that Trump and his minions had with the GA Secretary of State and tell me who is trying to rig the election!
ReplyDeleteRay, you may be right. I hope and pray that you aren't. "Rigging" isn't necessarily a yes or no proposition, by the way. To Rod's point, he's right that both parties try to game the system to their advantage. That's to be expected. Our system is still competitive, however, in the sense that, for now, its electoral outcomes are legitimately in doubt. What I fear, though, is that propaganda and cynicism increasingly give both parties cover to intensify their efforts to subvert genuine democracy. At this point, I believe that, if Republicans win an election by a significant margin, Dem fraud and trickery wouldn't be enough to change the outcome. My fear is that, with each passing year, the cheaters may get better at it! Rod would have us believe that Republicans have just as much expertise in the cheating department as the Dems do. Oh, how I WISH that were true. ;)
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