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

[Inmate Trump]

There's a noticeable lack of Trumpsters in this thread.

[SteveRogers]

There's a noticeable lack of Trumpsters in this thread.

This is typical when Fuzzy is awaiting his new conspiracy theory talking points from the Donald.

[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.

[Torie]

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.

[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).

[Torie]

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.

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]

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?

[Torie]

Yes indeed. You have an internationalist information economy that rewards education and the ability to think about abstract concepts, at the same time that education becomes more expensive at about 3 times the rate of inflation, that hollows out the lower middle class, and a tax code that is much more friendly to the high paid upper middle class and the rentier class. So it is hardly surprising that we are where we are. And it all saddens me.

But other things give me joy and hope. I see it in particular in NYC. Interracial couples and young people of all backgrounds interacting "naturally" with each other, and both seeing and interacting with persons of color and varying backgrounds who are obviously quite well educated and doing well economically.

Quite the opposite of upstate NY, where you have the gentry, now most typically people who brought their money with them to retire or recreate, and then the serfs, with a thin veneer of middle class types who provide services to the gentry or require some level of education to make the system function at all. I am overstating things of course, but not as much as I would like.

[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.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

(Post trimmed down to the paragraphs I wanted to focus my reply on.)

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.

I think you are gravely mistaken if you think your party will ever see any real recovery from Trump. The advent of Trump has destroyed the GOP's facade. It will never be a party for workers who are not white, ostensibly Christian, and predominantly men. It will never be a party for a country that is not dominated by white, purportedly Christian, men.

That said, I think you are on to something when you mention the possibility for a successful politician who actually opposes the status-quo, pro-corporate establishment (what Scottish SF author Charles Stross calls the Beige Dictatorship). Our country and government have, in many very real ways, failed. (At distributed prosperity, education, corporate regulation, justice, basic governance, morale, national vision, at leadership, and even at successfulyl administering our globe-spanning hegemony. The "American empire" runs on self-interest of the powerful and inertia, which I think makes for a brittle combination under stress.) And our current systems and elites show little inclination or ability to make meaningful and ultimately necessary changes.

A politician who can successfully tap that energy (and not Donald Trump and the GOP's racist, ignorant charade, nor Obama's soaring rhetoric and hollow follow-through) will be riding a political tsunami of massive proportions. And that worries me. because there is so much untapped distrust, anger, and desperation, that there are no guarantees the cure will not be worse than the disease. Donald Trump demonstrated how weak the safeguards of our rights and Republic are. A more competent man, given the exact same circumstances, would be a dictator now. And I don't think dictators ever turn our well. Not even if I agree with their motives and goals.

Backing the Democratic Party against Trump and his Republicans was an easy choice, because the Trumpublican party is fractally awful, and worse than the Democrats on any apparent or conceivable measure.  (More abusive, more authoritarian, more bigoted, more corporate, more destructive to the rule of law, more incompetent, etc.) Maybe I'm being too optimistic, and it really is just the racism, and an honestly populist candidate would get less support than Trump. But if I'm not, we could be easily looking at a future where someone with more genuine appeal to credible grievances with the economy, the justice system, and our system of government could roar into power on an anti-establishment wave, but then be far worse than Trump for our democracy (and anything much worse than Trump will kill our ailing Republic).  

tldr; I think there are a lot of people with real grievances, not just the imaginary ones Republicans whine about. But I worry that it will be all too easy for our failed establishment to be replaced by something that is actually far worse.  And I don't have any answers for that right now.

edited: added a rather key "not" (that hopefully was apparent from context) to my post

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Thanks to last night's COVID superspreader event, we now have the official Trump-cult position on the audit: it shows he really won.

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1442129588503580675

[Inmate Trump]

These people are not well.

[emailking]

Their logic is that the audit found 17K duplicate votes (not specifying a breakdown by candidate). They're calling these illegal votes, and since the margin of victory is 10K votes, this means Biden didn't win and the election should be decertified. Trump is going a step further and saying this means he won the election. The secretary of state's office responded that the duplicate votes are not duplicate and represent different people with the same name.

[DaleCooper]

These people are completely deranged. You might as well try and convince a paranoid schizophrenic that his neighbors aren't spying on him.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

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.

Wait, did THG actually make a reasonable argument?!?

[Badger]

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.

Wait, did THG actually make a reasonable argument?!?

I know, right?

[Progressive Pessimist]

So, what is even the point of pretending to care about evidence with these fraudits if the findings are just going to be ignored anyway? Stop bulls***ting and trying to force some kind of legitimacy. If you don't actually care about that why should anybody else?

I hope Democrats run on what a waste of taxpayer money these are (even more so with the completely confounding one coming up in Texas!), especially in the face of the congressional GOP wetting their pants over debt and deficits again.

[Alben Barkley]

[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?

[GregTheGreat657]

There's a noticeable lack of Trumpsters in this thread.

Howdy. Trump supporter here who doesn't believe the election was rigged.

[Badger]

There's a noticeable lack of Trumpsters in this thread.

Howdy. Trump supporter here who doesn't believe the election was rigged.

 Congratulations on being one of the few.

[GP270watch]

These people are completely deranged. You might as well try and convince a paranoid schizophrenic that his neighbors aren't spying on him.

 Totally deranged. But we can't miss why. Democracy and elections are illegitimate to the Republicans only because they lost.

[Hindsight was 2020]

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.

Wait, did THG actually make a reasonable argument?!?

[Never Made it to Graceland]

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.

Wait, did THG actually make a reasonable argument?!?

All the people he suggested writing in are revoltingly bad and similar to Trump in many ways.

[kwabbit]

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.