No middle ground here, folks.
With most of planet Earth outside of Russia, China, and the Republican Party congratulating President-elect Joe Biden on his hard-won victory over Donald Trump in last week’s election, Trump’s refusal to concede and the Republican “dead enders” raging on against hope that some development may yet be uncovered mandating a do-over, or Trump getting another four years anyway, or something similarly insane are increasingly out on a limb.
And to carry that metaphor through, as Politico reports, it had better be a strong limb:
Multiple new organizations announced Biden as the election winner on Saturday after four days of counting in several swing states. Following the news, 70 percent of Republicans now say they don’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair, a stark rise from the 35 percent of GOP voters who held similar beliefs before the election. [Pols emphasis] Meanwhile, trust in the election system grew for Democrats, many who took to the streets to celebrate Biden’s victory on Saturday. Ninety percent of Democrats now say the election was free and fair, up from 52 percent before Nov. 3 who thought it would be.
Among Republicans who believed that the election wasn’t free and fair, 78 percent believed that mail-in voting led to widespread voter fraud and 72 percent believed that ballots were tampered with — both claims that have made a constant appearance on the president’s Twitter thread. Like President Donald Trump, a majority of the people that thought the election was unfair, 84 percent, said it benefited Biden.
The lack of trust in the election system has led to Republicans being more skeptical about the election results. Although only 18 percent of Republicans had said the results would be unreliable prior to Election Day, now 64 percent feel the same way following Biden’s victory. By contrast, 86 percent of Democrats say they trust the results.
It’s possible and optimists will certainly hope that the results of this Morning Consult poll reflect only a temporary irrational discontent over the outcome of the 2020 elections, much the way any football fan scrutinizes the referees after losing the big game. Unfortunately, years of Trump’s loyal Republican base being steadily weaned off fact-based information sources has created a distressingly large segment of American voters–much larger than believed to exist before last Tuesday–who really do believe and internalize the Trump propaganda that the mainstream media laughs off along with most Americans not in the bubble.
Over the years, we’ve had many occasions in this space to ridicule the far-right fringe that took control of the Republican Party at all levels, beginning with the “Tea Party” and the fateful 2010 elections that gave Republicans the power to stymie Barack Obama’s agenda. When Sarah Palin warned of “death panels” and Bob Beauprez worried aloud that Obama was “pushing the country” toward civil war, we laughed with the assumption that most Coloradans like most Americans were also scoffing at such unhinged babble.
Today, with 70% of Republicans telling pollsters that something for which there is absolutely no evidence of occurring has just occurred, rejecting all of the good faith Americans are supposed to presume for an institution as sacred as our election process, the deep damage done to our nation by the last decade of Republican total political warfare is revealed.
Those responsible have done something terrible to our country, and we can’t say today how to fix it.
It was, but poorly. The Trump Post Office intentionally ratfucked massive numbers of mail-in ballots, but Biden won anyway.
Republican poll workers, Republican county clerks (or their elections division heads), and Republican Secretaries of State need to be making statements. Media ought to be paying as much attention to those sources as they do to somebody showing up in the driveway of a lawn care organization or on the sidewalks outside a court building.
The Republican SOS in Georgia did. And the two Republican senators demanded his resignation.
On 60 Minutes on Sunday, the Republican head of the elections commission in Philadelphia was interviewed and reported receiving death threats.
I'm not surprised. Didn't the Leader once refer to RINOs (which is now defined as any Republican who does not whole-heartedly support the Leader) as sub-human?
Close, maybe. Dear Leader did refer to us Never-Trump Republicans as "human scum."
Wasn't it "lowest creatures on the planet"?
Didn't hear that particular epithet. But it wouldn't surprise me.
But in all fairness, 70% of the GOP think Obama was born in Indonesia and Hillary Clinton got off on a hung jury at one of the Salem Witch Trials.
The 70% is the result of the mass exodus of sane Republicans (I’m looking at you, Republican36 and CHB) from the Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan leaving only the batshit crazies standing (I’m looking at you, Lauren Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Greene).
Yes, and their policy platform is to drive sane people and the libs crazy no matter how irrational their beliefs, and no matter how much it works against their own self interests and/or destroys the country and our democratic system. Also, if it plays into their racism and xenophobia then bonus points. The crazies feel they're under constantly attack from non-rural, non-white America and a government that doesn't work for them. Evidence be damned.
You are precisely correct RandR. I left the party because the people who had control then and still retain it today, refuse to deal with facts or reality. Trump is merely the latest form of this continuing nonsense along with Qanon and other unfounded conspiracy theories.
At the moment Trump is doing great damage to the fabric of our country. Once he loses in court, he will then proclaim the courts are part of the national conspiracy to deny him a second term.
Once one conspiracy is disproven, Republicans move on to the next one which usually is designed to show they were correct about the previous one. Its a never ending cycle that leads to nowhere.
" 'tis a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying… nothing"
" leads to nowhere."
I hope
Without the intervention of some power within our government, The Orange Destruction is going to pull off his attempted coup. Someone must intervene. I wonder who?
No one in the Senate.
Or Russia.
Or Saudi Arabia.
whatever happened to the Florida Secretary of State who chose George Bush?
Or the KY clerk who decided who could or could not get married?
@ R & R: I'm still a registered Republican. Remaining in the party allows some credibility in criticizing the nutcases.
The election WAS rigged; in favor of Trump, but the inept fools couldn't figure it out. What about the operatives who were arranging robo calls to black voters in MI and PA telling them not to vote?
You're saying the quiet part out loud Banger!
Tucker Carlson must have a new contract at Fox and no need to get a contract on Tvtrump
Brasil is still in a holding pattern vis à vis congratulating JoBiden.
However, Erdoğan just congratulated him.
Such an ingenious election rigging, Democrats – arranging for your own party to lose so many downballot offices and yet win the presidency, and doing it all without even the slightest paper trail during a pandemic. Brilliant! It's almost as if there hadn't been any vote-rigging whatsoever and this just happened to be a free and fair election outcome.
I guess those vote-rigging leprechauns and unicorns came in handy this year.
Gee whiz! Who would have guessed that the fraud claim was fabricated by a disgruntled (and possibly mentally 'postal') worker?