GOP election lies come home to roost
Protesters gather at the U.S. Capitol on the second day of events fueled by President Donald Trump's continued claims of election fraud in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results on Jan. 6. Credit: Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag/Kent Nishimura
For Democrats across the nation, last Tuesday’s election returns went down like a broken-glass sandwich. Losses and perilously close wins on Long Island and in most places with significant contests were even worse than predicted, downgrading the 2022 outlook for the blue team from cautious gloom to spittle-spraying panic.
But there should be one silver lining. Seeing Democrats stomped like wine grapes ought to convince Republicans that the Democrats didn’t steal the 2020 election.
Because if the Democrats could fix elections, wouldn’t they steal all of them? Or at least all that matter, or all the ones in the states where they allegedly have that ability?
If the Democrats could steal an election in Pennsylvania, as Donald Trump and his followers say Democrats did in 2020, why would they not steal the three statewide races there last week, for a seat each on the state’s Supreme, Superior and Commonwealth courts, all won by Republicans?
Nothing matters more in long-range political planning than the bench, for both parties. Whether it’s new voting laws you need, or just a damning case sealed, judges are the best kind of friend!
If Democrats could steal elections, wouldn’t they snatch the Virginia governorship for Terry McAuliffe? He’s so thoroughly rooted in Clintonworld that serving up a torturous theory about the satanic cannibalistic cabals of child-snatching Democrats that doesn’t include him is like serving a drink without a nosh!
But even discussing why Democrats would take 2021 off, and let the GOP win so many races in states and counties where the conspiracy theory said they kiboshed Trump, raises other more fundamental questions.
Like "Why the heck are Republicans voting at all?"
According to a recent CNN/SRSS poll, 78% of Republicans say they believe Biden "did not legitimately win enough votes to win the election." That, though, likely covers a wide variety of views. There are the mainstream "I know Biden didn’t win because no one in my suburban megachurch, country club, fourth-generation family law firm or my daughter’s debutante cotillion planning committee voted for him!"
But there are also more sophisticated doubters, doing their own research. They know the 2020 election was a fraud because famed "Hollywood Squares" regular Paul Lynde set it in motion via coded messages to fellow cast member Morey Amsterdam in 1967, and because "In God We Trust" is an anagram for "Winged Trouts."
They won’t be ruled by lab-created fearsome flying freshwater fish, and I get that.
But there may be a third subgroup within the cohort of Republicans who say the 2020 election was fixed: those who very much want Trump to be president, and think people who disagree are un-American and should not be allowed to vote, and feel the closest poll answer to that is "STOPTHESTEAL!"
Because the key to last week’s GOP victories was high Republican turnout. And people who believe their votes will be flipped via Venezuela-hacked voting machines don’t bother to cast them.
In most elections, the party whose loyalists are angriest wins the turnout battle, and the electoral war.
This year, Republican leaders triumphed because they got their base mad enough to vote, often by giving credence to the idea that the way those votes are handled and tallied is a corrupt scam.
Meanwhile, every bit as nonsensically, Democrats know their votes count … but mostly couldn’t be bothered to cast them.
Columnist Lane Filler's opinions are his own.
Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
