How the GOP will continue spreading lies about elections in the United States
How the GOP will continue spreading lies about elections in the United States
“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the filing quotes Fox Washington news executive Bill Sammon as saying.
The midterm elections have showed us the influence of fascism at the ballot box but the angling of the Republican Party to escalate their war on American institutions they have not yet captured. Almost 308 election deniers ran in the midterm elections across the country. While the Republican Party was able to capture the House of Representatives through gerrymandering, the runoff election between Hershel Walker and Reverend Raphael Warnock resulted in a very razor thin Democratic majority with Warnock’s successful re-election for a full six year term. The joy of his victory was short-lived. The defection of Senator Kyrsten Sinema to become an Independent representing the state of Arizona in the U.S. Senate tipped the balance.
Representative Ruben Gallego has since announced his intention to challenge Kyrsten Sinema and entered the race for U.S. Senate. He continues to point out that Senator Sinema aligned herself too closely to her wealthy donors and special interest groups at the detriment of Arizona voters and avoided Town Halls and her constituents request for comment on her votes in the U.S. Senate.
Alarmingly in the midterm elections 308 election deniers ran for office who believed in the ‘Big Lie.’ According to NBC News:
Out of 94 races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in 2022, just 14 election deniers were elected into office (five in Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas and Wyoming) or won re-election (nine in Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas), according to States United Action, a nonpartisan group that closely tracked the issue throughout the 2022 election cycle. All 14 races where election deniers won were in states that voted to elect Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
While the midterm elections may have come to a close, the people who attempted to spread lies and disinformation have also been exposed for their part in contributing to the distrust in the American political system. AP is reporting that as a result of Trump and the conservative media apparatus spreading deliberate lies and disinformation about the outcome of the 2020 election [which as well know Trump lost], there have been revelations about the true state of affairs at Fox News thanks to a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which was the target of Trump’s ire after his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. DVS is seeking over a billion dollars in damages for the unsubstantiated claims that have led to dips in American confidence in elections.
That worry — a real one, judging by Fox’s ratings in the election’s aftermath — played a key role in Fox not setting the record straight about unfounded fraud claims, the network’s accuser contends.
“It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” the filing quotes Fox Washington news executive Bill Sammon as saying.
The details were included in a trove of private communications unearthed by lawyers and contained in a redacted brief filed Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion claims in a $1.6 billion lawsuit that Fox aired allegations that Dominion had doctored the vote against Trump, even as it knew that was untrue. Fox says it was doing its job as journalists by airing the accusations made by Trump and his allies.
As we head into presidential primary season on the GOP side we will see many prominent election deniers continue their effort to discredit our legitimate election system through their support of the contenders that emerge to ‘direct the Republican Party in a new direction.’
When Nikki Haley announced her run decision to run for President, she kicked off her campaign in the fashion that she is known for, for being deeply contradicting but also platforming members of her party that are forgone from the ‘Moderate Republican’ of John McCain’s time into a party that has used its influence to fight Critical Race Theory, introduce bans on LGBTQIA+ communities and their right to exist, and fought for the vision of ‘freedom’ that they believe in when it comes to preventing a woman and her doctor from making decisions about their own reproductive health care decisions as we witnessed not only in the Supreme Court ruling ing Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Clinic but the decades-long assault on Roe vs. Wade.
Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina who serves the 5th Congressional District and Pastor Hagee headlined her announcement on February 15th. These two men are of particular concern as Rep. Norman is a noted election denier and Pastor Hagee is deeply antisemitic. When Pastor Hagee opened up the campaign rally with a prayer, Haley jokingly said, “I want to be you when I grow up.” With her opening line of “its time for a new a generation of leadership” it seems that Haley is glued to old school bigotry and hatred.
Representative Ralph Norman who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and serves on the House Rules Committee had been reported to have urged Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to impose Marshall Law, days before President Biden was to be inaugurated according to Business Insider.
"We are at a point of [no return] in saving our Republic!!," wrote Norman in a text message first revealed by Talking Points Memo. "Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!" - Rep. Norman’s text to COS Mark Meadows
Norman’s only regret was his misspelling of Martial Law.
Norman and Haley had served together in the South Carolina legislature and pushed a new vision of the Republican Party.
Senator John McCain had also courted Pastor Hagee’s endorsement during the 2008 election and as of a month ago, former Vice President Pence - who is weighing a decision to run for President- was also courting him.
In a video released by Right Wing Watch, Pastor Hagee is going after the legalization of Marriage Equality in 2015 and is showing his bigoted hatred of the LGTBTQ community.
Seth Cotlar, who teaches U.S. History at Willamette University talks about Pastor Hagee and his legacy in the Republican Party in his thread on the emergence of this figure
You can find more information about the Pastor through this Mother Jones piece.
Haley’s Contentious Relationship with Trump
The loss of Donald Trump to Biden in the 2020 General Election meant that Republicans who were jockeying for power post-Trump would have to live with the reality that he may as well run again —but that is in limbo as Donald Trump and his family continue to be investigated, subpoenaed and otherwise remain under the scrutiny of law enforcement —the same one that Trump stood so staunchly by until it came time for him to have his day in court. Donald Trump announced his run for President on November 15th.
As Trump spiraled after his loss to Biden, there were indeed very frightening days for the Republic had Trump acted on some of his more nefarious methods to remain in power [ not that the constitution would have permitted because of the need for a peaceful transfer of power].
Here are some ways that Trump aimed to stay in power:
Seizing the voting machines from states like Georgia. Politico reports that
“Among the records that Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators are a draft executive order that would have directed the defense secretary to seize voting machines and a document titled “Remarks on National Healing. The executive order — which also would have appointed a special counsel to probe the 2020 election — was never issued, and the remarks were never delivered. Together, the two documents point to the wildly divergent perspectives of White House advisers and allies during Trump’s frenetic final weeks in office.”
This is a snippet from the Executive Order obtained by the January 6th Committee, that Trump’s lawyers were trying to hide from the general public.
“Dominion Voting Systems is based in Toronto, Canada, and assigns its intellectual property including patents on its firmware and software to Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation (HSBC), a bank with its foundation in China and its current headquarters in London, United Kingdom. The Dominion Voting system is owned and controlled by foreign entities. Multiple expert witnesses and cyber experts identified acts of foreign interference in the election prior to November 4, 2020, and continued in the following weeks. In fact, there is probable cause to find a massive cyber-attack by foreign interests on our crucial national infrastructure surrounding our election––not the least of which was the hacking of the voter registration system by Iran. (B.O. 143500 of May 11. 2017)
After Haley’s announcement on Feb 15th, Trump was looking forward to facing off against his former Ambassador according to an interview done by Brooke Singman of Fox News:
"I’m glad she’s running," Trump said. "I want her to follow her heart — even though she made a commitment that she would never run against who she called the greatest president of her lifetime."
Donald Trump
Haley has been flexing her influence in the nominating contests, both in South Carolina and also across the country to show her influence in key races for Republicans. During the 2022 midterms, she campaigned for Hershel Walker in the Georgia U.S. Senate race. She also stumped for Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator from the state of Florida in 2016 during the GOP Primary for President and U.S. Senator Tim Scott [her potential rival in the race for President] when he ran for U.S. Senate in South Carolina.
Astoundingly she said that Warnock should be “deported” in a speech to a white crowd in Georgia:
“Legal immigrants are more patriotic than the leftists these days,” Haley said, “so the only person we need to make sure is deported is Warnock.”
My parents were trying to rent a home in Bamberg and the same physician so kindly tried to help. He found a wonderful small home and we moved in. That night he returned to take back the keys as the owners did not want an Indian family renting their home. He found us a second home and we moved. The next night he was back. Once again we were being evicted because of our brown skin.
Morgan Brinlee Bustle- 2016
Several commentators noted that the only reason that Haley and her family were able to have the opportunity they did, was because of the Civil Rights Movement and sacrifices made by Black leaders to fight for equality in America that every racialized community has benefitted from. The reason her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa was allowed to make the decision in 1969 to teach at Voorhees College [a Historically Black College or University is rooted in the Immigration and Nationality Act which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson to remove the quotas on Asian immigration into the United States on October 3rd, 1965, a mere four years before Randhawa would decide to take his position as an educator in Bamberg, South Carolina.
How would Republicans fare against one another in a primary?
On January 2nd 2022, the NY Post, found how Republicans stacked up against one another in a potential primary.
In a recent Morning Consult poll released on February 14th, 2023, Republican voters weighed in how they feel about newcomers Nikki Haley and Tim Scott [who is still weighing a decision to run for President]:
Just under half of potential Republican primary voters (47%) would back Trump in a hypothetical contest, compared with 31% who said they would support DeSantis.
Haley is supported by 3% of the party’s electorate, while 1% are backing Sen. Tim Scott, her fellow South Carolinian who’s also reportedly preparing to launch a bid.
Nikki Haley backs up Governor Youngkin
Governor Youngkin swept into office in Virginia and began work on dismantling the public safety net that exists to keep residents safe. The fractures within the Republican Party itself are pretty evident indicators that there will be huge contention on issues such as outsourcing manufacturing to China, as Senator Hawley is in favor of American-made products, which Haley supports.
In an Economic Times article, the war within the GOP to retain some semblance of a future is for certain playing out.
Reasonable people might disagree on whether legislation along these lines is the best mechanism for reshoring American supply chains, but opponents like Haley appear woefully unprepared for the debate. The name-calling is robust, the logic less so. American capitalism will beat Chinese communism “every single time”, she said, but China is “continuing to move faster on things, from technology to everything else, that’s a wake-up call for us”. Government cannot respond to that wake-up call, though, because any public intervention in the market is “socialism lite”.
Republicans have repeatedly made the same error in recent decades, forgetting that a successful political movement must not only attain power, but also govern well. Neither the recent election wins, nor the performance of GOP House and Senate leadership, nor the rhetoric of the aspiring leaders who would return the party to its pre-Trump sclerosis, suggests the existence of any coherent agenda beyond the dog-eared 1980s playbook of tax cuts and deregulation. Sure, that’s all one needs for a lecture celebrating Thatcher. It does little, though, to address the decline of the family, decades of stagnant wages, socially corrosive technology, financial markets run amok, corporate concentrations of power or competition from China.
“The breakdown of the nuclear family is a much bigger problem than the lack of economic dynamism,” he observed. “What does that mean for taxes, trade, regulation, and welfare programmes?” It means a conservative rethink is well under way.
It does seem that the GOP is open to swallowing itself internally but is united when it comes to blocking voting rights, mandates for federal workers, and protecting the right to an abortion for those who bear the economic brunt of raising children. While the Economic Times argued that the GOP can not effectively govern, one just has to see the decades of razor-sharp focus on capturing American institutions, from the Supreme Court to the School Boards across this country. The challenge remains for any Republican to imagine themselves being at the top of the helm in an age where they still have minority rule benefit and are able to mobilize their base to seemingly asinine cultural issues they legislate along the lines of.
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