Arizona Audit results leaked before release tomorrow- Reveals nothing changed in results

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/first-look-at-draft-of-election-audit-report-ahead-of-friday-release

Basically it confirms nothing changed, lmao. I could go on a rant about this drivel all day....

Oh well, why not?

I’m a partisan Republican and I will never stop being one. But even I have my limits.

Stop wasting money on this drivel and actually focus your money and energy on 2022 and 2024. Stop. It.

And stop blindly listening to Trump and Lindell’s election stolen drivel as if it was the gospel’s word. Trump is now asking for an audit in Texas, a state he won by 5- for what purpose or measure? How does this man’s perfectly apparent mental breakdown help us win? Just pass election integrity laws that minimize activities such as ballot harvesting, as so many red states have, rather than focusing on “audits” that achieve absolutely nothing but a waste of money and a ton of embarrassment. Stop being obsessed with a personality cult and fight for conservative values, you imbeciles.

If Trump runs in 2024, and confirms my worst fears and runs an “election stolen 2020” style campaign I will either make sure he isn’t the GOP nominee (difficult) or leave the presidential ballot blank (even as I write down all down-ballot races for Republicans elsewhere) or write in DeSantis or Ronald Reagan. Or William F. Buckley. Or Clarence Thomas or Anton Scalia. But I've had enough of this balderdash.

They won't stop. Trump will come out with some new bs line about how the audit were all a bunch of RINOs or some other crap, bully the brain dead and spineless into uttering it and demand conformity around that line otherwise "he won't be your friend anymore" and he will get you primaried.

Trump, the circus clowns and all the rest will be pushing this line about the stolen election until Trump dies and they will be fundraising off it and trying to preserve as much clout as possible. The only question is how much damage does the Republican Party sustain before the vast bulk of its members wake up and realize they are being used by a bunch of criminals and this gets pushed to the fringe sidelines where it should have been all along.

I have said before, I am not fond of the neoconservatism embraced by Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger but I adore the fact that they both have a pare of brass balls the size of cannon balls and should be celebrated because of that fact alone (and reelected as well). However, they will not be the ones to wrest control of the party from Trump. Were any populist or nationalist to come along, go hard against the media, multinationals and the Democrats aggressively and also stand up to and oppose Trump, Trump would be yesterday's news almost instantly.

This is the peril for the populists and nationalists, because at the end of the day Republicans want power and the risk becomes if some populist or nationalist doesn't step up and show some balls, eventually the party could just default to the old guard neocon types in a scenario that I warned about simply because it is tired of losing. I have warned about this scenario in posts responding to BG-NY and it emphasizes why they need to get beyond Trump especially. It also illustrates why Trump is harmful to his own movement's long term success and longevity, because all of the big Trumpists are a combination of craven opportunists and cucks and they are all cowards and no one will ever take them seriously as leaders.

DeSantis has plummeted on my list of potential Presidents and Hawley practically doesn't even exist anymore in my eyes because I look at him and I see Ted Cruz 2.0.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/first-look-at-draft-of-election-audit-report-ahead-of-friday-release

Basically it confirms nothing changed, lmao. I could go on a rant about this drivel all day....

Oh well, why not?

I’m a partisan Republican and I will never stop being one. But even I have my limits.

Stop wasting money on this drivel and actually focus your money and energy on 2022 and 2024. Stop. It.

And stop blindly listening to Trump and Lindell’s election stolen drivel as if it was the gospel’s word. Trump is now asking for an audit in Texas, a state he won by 5- for what purpose or measure? How does this man’s perfectly apparent mental breakdown help us win? Just pass election integrity laws that minimize activities such as ballot harvesting, as so many red states have, rather than focusing on “audits” that achieve absolutely nothing but a waste of money and a ton of embarrassment. Stop being obsessed with a personality cult and fight for conservative values, you imbeciles.

If Trump runs in 2024, and confirms my worst fears and runs an “election stolen 2020” style campaign I will either make sure he isn’t the GOP nominee (difficult) or leave the presidential ballot blank (even as I write down all down-ballot races for Republicans elsewhere) or write in DeSantis or Ronald Reagan. Or William F. Buckley. Or Clarence Thomas or Anton Scalia. But I've had enough of this balderdash.

They won't stop. Trump will come out with some new bs line about how the audit were all a bunch of RINOs or some other crap, bully the brain dead and spineless into uttering it and demand conformity around that line otherwise "he won't be your friend anymore" and he will get you primaried.

Trump, the circus clowns and all the rest will be pushing this line about the stolen election until Trump dies and they will be fundraising off it and trying to preserve as much clout as possible. The only question is how much damage does the Republican Party sustain before the vast bulk of its members wake up and realize they are being used by a bunch of criminals and this gets pushed to the fringe sidelines where it should have been all along.

I have said before, I am not fond of the neoconservatism embraced by Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger but I adore the fact that they both have a pare of brass balls the size of cannon balls and should be celebrated because of that fact alone (and reelected as well). However, they will not be the ones to wrest control of the party from Trump. Were any populist or nationalist to come along, go hard against the media, multinationals and the Democrats aggressively and also stand up to and oppose Trump, Trump would be yesterday's news almost instantly.

This is the peril for the populists and nationalists, because at the end of the day Republicans want power and the risk becomes if some populist or nationalist doesn't step up and show some balls, eventually the party could just default to the old guard neocon types in a scenario that I warned about simply because it is tired of losing. I have warned about this scenario in posts responding to BG-NY and it emphasizes why they need to get beyond Trump especially. It also illustrates why Trump is harmful to his own movement's long term success and longevity, because all of the big Trumpists are a combination of craven opportunists and cucks and they are all cowards and no one will ever take them seriously as leaders.

DeSantis has plummeted on my list of potential Presidents and Hawley practically doesn't even exist anymore in my eyes because I look at him and I see Ted Cruz 2.0.

I really can't follow your post, or at least discern what it is you are looking for in a more perfect world. The best I could infer from your text is that you seem to much prefer "populists and nationalists" over "neocons," whatever that might mean in real life applications on the ground these days.

Nothing in this post was a statement of my opinion or preference other than admiration for the willingness of Cheney and Kinzinger to oppose Trump.

As for my personal preferences, I generally identify as a Burkean Conservative on government structure, a developmental capitalist economically (which has some economically nationalist aspects think Lincoln nationalism as opposed to say modern white nationalism) and a pro-life social libertarian (though with a lot of personal opposition to many vices, I am just against using government to stop them). Personally I find populism as an unrestrained political force to be a horrifying prospect, but I am also a realist and thus for the sake of preserving the sanctity of institutions, it is also necessary for politicians to service the needs of their voters and not "leave them to die on the beaches" is a phrase that I often used in 2016-2018 to describe how the establishment opened the door to Trumpism. This is somewhat populist itself, but is in stark contrast to the wild men of the land running the asylum. This distinction is one that I made back in the early 2010s to differentiate between the populism of Santorum and Huckabee, the former backing Mitt Romney against Huckabee in 2008. I loathed Mike Huckabee coming out of the 2008 cycle.


All of the rest of it is analysis based on what the Republican Party is right now. The Republican Party has shed a lot of higher end suburban voters and picked up a large number of down market ones, especially in the South Central and Midwestern United States. These areas are historically isolationist, historically sympathetic to protectionism, have experienced the ills of outsourcing, the drug epidemic and so forth. This means that the Republican economic policies of the 1980s and the Foreign Policy of the 2000s doesn't mesh well with the Republican Party of today.

Furthermore, every time there has been something of a revolt by this group within the Republican Party, it has been hijacked by the same groups of think tanks, consultants, and other donor influence people and groups and thus used to promote the same combination (hyper religious and hyper business was how I termed it in a recent post responding to BG-NY), and taken to even further extremes. The Tea Party started as a populist uprising against Gov't and Business being in cahoots and devolved into the likes of Ted Cruz. The Trumpist movement was a revolt against the direction of the likes of Ted Cruz in turn. I have called this "cyclical revolution".

Trump is seen as vehicle by which this vast group of people can flex its muscles against the neocons, the neoliberals and the like, whose influence via the money means that they often end up winning out in the end as illustrated above and the ironic thing is Trump Presidency was thoroughly hijacked by the same donors, think tanks and the like, largely with Trump's blessing (illustrating how imperfect a vehicle he is for the populists).

As a quick aside, the monied interests have actually fed, grown and created the populist beast within the Republican Party that is now the Trumpist movement, beginning in the 1960s with Nixon playing both sides on Civil Rights to absorb the Wallace Vote (who as I have posted many times over were not conservatives for the most part), continued with the absorbing of the ex Clinton voters in the 1990s and 2000s using "Gods, Guns and Gays", and then finished off with Trump and the non-college white vote. This occurred alongside the shedding of Yankee Republicans in the 60s, the loss of suburban moderates in North and West in the 1990s and now the loss of the sunbelt suburbs in the 2010s.

The monied interest have also forced the GOP to go more extreme in various areas to compensate for the fact that they cannot do what would literally be best for their own base and for their electoral prospects (move to the center on economic policy). The donor influence means that the situation and condition economically and socially for these Republican votes has been degraded even as they continue to support the Republican Party, because the donor's interest is contrary to theirs and thus the Republican policy is as well. So they compensate by going to the extreme on social and cultural stuff to whip up the base and then after that burned through its course in the 2000s, it was discovered that immigration was the best way to achieve this same objective and while irritating to the donors, they tolerated it as long as they came out ahead and got their precious tax cuts, deregulation, free trade and the like.

That is until 2012 when Romney lost trying to pursue this formula, at which point the donors over played their hand by trying to force comprehensive reform down the GOP's throat. This meant that all of the GOP candidates in 2016 were either silent on or openly in support for amnesty to some degree, or had waffled on it in the past. This created the opening for Trump and Trump didn't just assail the party on immigration, but also now on trade as well.

The Republican Party as it is constituted demographically is going to be in with Trump on immigration, trade and foreign policy. Trump didn't create this present situation, it is where it is at after decades of actions by the GOP to make it that way, but it is now what keeps Trump in a position of so much relevance along with the fact that no one of similar views has the balls to show any kind of leadership and if there is ever a group that wants a tough guy to lead them, it is these people.

This is why I said that while Cheney and Kinzinger should be celebrated and renominated, they are not going to be able to wrest the party from Trump. Only someone who is similarly in line the current base, and also comes across as tough as nails will be able to dethrone Trump, unless and until the Republicans get so desperate to win they nominate anyone for the sake of protecting their Supreme Court majority (the three term Democratic Presidency scenario basically also the perilous one for the populists and nationalists I mentioned in my previous post).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

That is quite an essay, NCY - well thought out and crafted, and I am flattered that you took the time to compose it for me. And I think you are probably right to boot, as much as I loathe the content of much of your perspicacity personally. What the polity needs to bring the Pubs back from the abyss, and detoxify it of Trump, is someone even more ruthless than Trump, albeit less self destructive, more thoughtful, and most important of all, far less of an amoral bordering on sociopathic narcissist. But what that further means is that higher SES types that are moderate on economic policy will not and cannot go back to the GOP, and the Dem party will also begin to have more acute intra-party tensions.

It depends on what you mean by moderate higher SES types. I think the GOP will necessarily regain some ground with college educated whites post Trump but in select areas and states, mainly in the Midwest.

There is another x-factor at work here and that is if the Democrats were to actually govern and severely restrict the influence of money in politics. That would also impact the Republican Party and reduce their influence on economic policy.

I also think we tend to over-estimate the popularity of some policy aspects of this and/or just the willingness of certain voters to vote on these issues versus other ones. Sure libertarians and academic finance types loath the minimum wage, tariffs and immigration laws, but I think the biggest driver's of suburban trends are actually college debt (and education in general), the environment, health care and Trump's style, personality and behavior. This along with the decline in religious affiliation and the shift of the suburbs more towards the secular over time. This points to a general decline of any natural base for a Reaganite GOP as the suburbs themselves are abandoning conservatism of that sort in almost equal proportions to the GOP abandoning the suburbs. Its a two front war on the 1990s style Mark Sanford Republican.

Therefore a moderately economic populist type, even one who primarily draws on non-college whites, but who is well put together, respects the law and constitution and comes up with some kind of policy on the above three issues would perform rather well with higher end voters. The ability to do any of this is severely limited by the donor class.

The two party system works far less well when there are more cohorts out there that are very distinct from each other, and cannot very easily paper over their differences within one party. The collapse of reasonable newscasts and newscasters in favor of outrageous shills has also caused that source of glue for the polity to melt away in the pandering demagogic heat.  Who can one trust these days about much of anything?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The two party system works far less well when there are more cohorts out there that are very distinct from each other, and cannot very easily paper over their differences within one party. The collapse of reasonable newscasts and newscasters in favor of outrageous shills has also caused that source of glue for the polity to melt away in the pandering demagogic heat.  Who can one trust these days about much of anything?

Forgot to actually respond to this section in the above post.

Yes the Democrats are going to become a chaotic mess for a while but I fully expect the progressives to win out in the end over the centrist, business, DLC types. The Democratic Party (without turning this into a party flip thread stable release v.21501525) has historically deviated several times away from the interests of the debtors, workers, laborers and the like in favor of business interests as such. Money chases power and so powerful incumbents and politicians get corrupted over time by monied interests as such.

However, every time that this has happened before the agrarians, populists or progressives always won out in the end.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

They won't stop. Trump will come out with some new bs line about how the audit were all a bunch of RINOs or some other crap, bully the brain dead and spineless into uttering it and demand conformity around that line otherwise "he won't be your friend anymore" and he will get you primaried.

So did anyone have just "straight up lie your a@^ off" for 500?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

I think being so dismissive over questions of election integrity only fueled the conspiracy theories. It doesn't hurt to have transparency over an election held in a novel way. The emphatically dismissive/hostile attitude towards those who wanted a clearer review of the results is suggestive of fraud in the minds of conspiracy theorists. The courts often just treated the cases as a way to make a statement about election integrity, but that only satisfied those who don't doubt election results, and did not engender trust in the election system. Perhaps if they heard more of these cases in their entirety the Trumpers would've had to grasp at straws more, thereby weakening the big lie conspiracy theory.

The thing is, this is not about concerns about the election integrity.

The only reason this is even begin discussed is because Trump refused to concede and goes around the country saying that he won a landslide and it was stolen from him.

This leaves a whole lot of Republicans who feel like they have to go along with him or end up a pariah like Liz Cheney. Even if you take Fuzzy's concerns in PA and GA, that isn't enough to shift the election. Most people don't question WI and MI and the audit confirmed what we already knew, Biden won Arizona.

There is nothing that will ever validate what Trump is saying out there, Trump will never stop saying it for ego, power and money (he cannot admit to losing) and Trump has a death grip on the Republican primary base. Unmovable object versus unstoppable force essentially. Unfortunately realty has proven to be very stoppable and a good number of people will believe whatever crap Joe Smith shares on Facebook because the media cannot be trusted.

You can do all of the audits in the world, Trump will still go out like he did in Georgia, say he won a landslide, say it was stolen from him and then proceed to lie about the results of the audits,  and claim the media is actually the one that is lying not him.

There is no way to satisfy "legitimate concerns" where they may exist because Trump and his sycophants will always come back with some new ridiculous claim, or straight up make up crap like Paul Gosar and the echo chamber will run with it, "stirring the concerns" anew because nothing short of "Trump won" will ever be enough for Trump. Minor issues here or there, some process changes for the sake of confidence etc, the issues about mail in voting in PA etc, none of that put's Trump in the White House.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Every sane person trusts in the election results and does not doubt their veracity, but why not just hear the cases and let them do their audits? Especially when the further investigation confirms the previous results and diminishes the conspiracy theories.

 The audits are not being done with proper procedure and are potentially damaging to future elections. Giving voting equipment and real cast ballots to third party organizations that are not properly trained to handle them is a colossally stupid idea.

In addition, it doesn't diminish the conspiracy theories among the true believers.  Now that the Arizona audit, flawed as it is, failed to provide any evidence of fraud, the MAGA believers are now claiming that it was undermined or suppressed by the Deep State (I'm not kidding).  There is no benefit from flawed audits.

Even down to circulating a fake doctored version of the report on social media, claiming it is the "real report" that was suppressed.

They cannot stop because once they do, Trump is done for and a whole lot of Republican Representatives are going to be resigning or primaried as the lying traitors they are.

So the big lie gets bigger like a mafia guy who keeps digging the hole deeper to delay the inevitable prison sentence and making it worse in the process.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think post marked by election day is sufficient.

Other than that I am fine with in person early voting (That is how I voted in virtually every election here in NC since 2010, the first election I could legally vote in).

The thing is, that's certainly not the standard used by Trump, nor his acolytes and if this AZ audit has shown anything it is that any attempts at Trump Whispering by people to say "Trump and all of us only wants this" has been demonstrated to fall flat the moment it doesn't deliver the desired result.

This is the Trump standard:

1. Trump won this election in landslide
2. Anything that says otherwise is fake
3. Anyone who doesn't agree is a traitor to him personally, no longer his friend, and on his way to a mafia style hit by way of primary.

Even if you account for the issues that BG-NY raises, it affects a few thousand votes in two states. Trump still loses the popular vote by millions, still loses the electoral college and still is not President. This is not winning, much less winning a landslide.

Something has to give here. Either Trump is right and the whole election is a complete and total fraud on the level of Mike Lindell/Sidney Powell, or Trump is intentionally lying to achieve some kind of gain (political, monetary or both) and to preserve his ego. There is no middle ground between these two points, because Trump has entertained no middle ground here.

Furthermore you have the situation in Idaho where Trump was over counted, again. And you have Rudy admitting in sworn depositions to making stuff up without verifying his evidence (something we already knew from Gabriel Stirling's detailed response especially concerning the clipped video that "proves" suitcases full of votes", the full footage of which completely refutes that notion).

At some point there will be a reckoning for those involved in this.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A couple of new developments in this.  First, the pillow guy turns on the "audit" since it didn't get the results he wanted:

https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo/status/1448050816024293381

Second, as reported upthread, the released totals of the Ninjas' hand count closely matched the official Maricopa County results.  However, there's apparently more to the story.  According to some Arizona sources, the hand count originally came up about 312K ballots short out of 2.1 million.  These numbers were not published.  But when the third count (a machine count done on specialized machines newly purchased by the AZ Senate) closely matched the county results, the Ninjas went back and fudged their hand count numbers to make them look reasonably close. 

They won't stop. Trump will come out with some new bs line about how the audit were all a bunch of RINOs or some other crap, bully the brain dead and spineless into uttering it and demand conformity around that line otherwise "he won't be your friend anymore" and he will get you primaried.

Not Trump in this case, but it is the same dynamic, "Audits are deep state, RINOS in on the conspiracy/cover up".