Republicans flaunted polls throughout October, echoing the claims of an inevitable “Red Wave” that was going to happen this midterm election. With staggering inflation and President Biden’s slipping approval rating, it statistically made sense that Republicans could win a significant majority of the 35 senate seats and 435 house seats up for re-election in November. Unfortunately for Republicans, their “Red Wave” never materialized as Trump's unpopularity seemed to hinder his endorsements. Trump-endorsed senate candidates like Dr.Oz and Don Bolduc were defeated in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, as they decided to cling to President Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Surprisingly, the majority of Trump's endorsements who were defeated conceded without the same defiance that President Trump modeled.
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| Republican Kari Lake |
Lakes claims stem from issues with the voting machines in Maricopa County, the largest in Arizona, which were said to have some ballots with markings too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Lines were backed up amid the confusion, while Lake claimed that her voters were “dissuaded from voting as a result”. She filed public lawsuits, along with Republican attorney general candidate Abraham Hamedeh claiming “malfunctions” with the Maricopa County voting machines. What was largely left out of her claims was that the voters were given another box labeled Box 3, a collection box that would scan the 17,000 ballots that could not be scanned at the precinct-based vote counters. Along with this, Maricopa county said that 85% of the voting centers never had lines longer than 45 minutes.
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| Lines to vote in Maricopa County, Az |
This year's election day seemed calmer than what may have been expected, but remnants of Trump's rhetoric remain in the form of Kari Lake, a many Republicans are using election myths to explain a disastrous midterm. It is clear Lake is trying to ride the Trump wave of Republicans, attempting to prolong the certification of the election to appease those voters and potentially further her political career. Her commitment to Trump also makes her a potential VP candidate in his candidacy for 2024.
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| Trump and Lake at campaign rally |
15 comments:
I think the Republicans need to leave the "Stop The Steal" campaign in the past to move forward for the sake of their party and the current state of politics. It's not that voter fraud isn't impossible, but when Republican candidates make claims without evidence it makes them seem idiotic. The Maricopa County issue seems to prove this point in which Lake did not carefully review the evidence of the situation and made false claims. This is very similar to the many cases and lawsuits filed by politicians that have been dismissed by the courts because of the lack of substantial evidence. This is a part of the disillusion with politics in America where it seems politicians are acting out of line with little professionalism. The vast majority of Americans who are more center are being drawn away from the GOP, and if the party desires a future where they are seen as competent they have to drop their voter fraud campaigns.
I wonder how much longer Republicans will continue to deny election results. Before Trump, I believe that people didn't really doubt that the elections were genuine and it was very unusual to imply that there was fraud. It is crazy how much influence Trump has; as one person, he has caused half the Republican party to follow him blindly and go against norms. Also, it is interesting how if the county doesn't certify the results, they just don't get counted. Doesn't that mean that if a county official didn't like the results, she or he could basically void them by not certifying them? This seems like it could be a loophole. Usually, I would assume officials wouldn't do this as it goes against democracy but with Trump's influence, I think they would.
Republican’s tend to have consistency with not being able to accept and acknowledge defeat. It seems that turning to topics like voter fraud or issues with ballots having markings too light are highly unlikely factors that are easy to pick up when trying to justify loss. The use of focusing in on pollsters claims towards a “Red Wave” and the Republican’s chance at overturning the Senate to their side is hindered by multiple factors that many candidates are either not able to see or look past. Transparent in many candidates “clinging to President Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen” highlights a piece of campaigning that should have been left in the past. The idea of candidates trying to ensure a win or spike their popularity through bashing or endorsing an alleged “stolen election” is immature and obvious towards not giving the candidate any type of leeway. Not only this but in some cases, like in Arizona, election results aren’t even going through as countries are failing to certify results before their deadlines. This skews from the topic of refusal to accept defeat but it does highlight a lack of professionalism that was once present in a concrete and fluid system.
I think the Republicans are in a similar spot that the Democrats were in a few years ago: they are divided. Whereas moderate Democrats are able to bully the rest of the party into voting for their candidate, pseudo-fascist Republicans are so dogmatic that the moderate wing of the party is unable to unite them. Several other commenters have implied that we need to return to the original, "professional" way of doing politics but how I see it, America was designed to give conservatives more power. It was only a matter of time before idiotic fascists like Trump started changing the system for the worse.
As Leia pointed out, American elections are far too vulnerable to being highjacked by rouge officials. The system clearly needs reform to avoid a serious issue from occurring in the future. Improved state oversight of elections to prevent local officials from influencing election results would be a great start, but more federal oversight of state elections and laws surrounding them would be far more effective. However, this solution would be difficult to implement, as aspects of it would likely require a constitutional amendment.
I agree with Lucas in that the Republican party is deeply divided: some have seemed to move on from Trump's antics while others still cling to it. However, Trump and his followers are almost an entirely different party. There was never any election denying previous to Trump and I hope it doesn't become something that politicians continue to do as it ruins our political culture and encourages an ignorant (and dumb) attitude. Overall, it is a bad showing for the country as a whole in the last couple of years.
I think it's ridiculous that the whole idea of the 2020 election being rigged is still going on. The fact that people with power, such as politicians, are furthering this false claim can become dangerous if people start thinking that any election that doesn't go their way is rigged. I'm not sure why people like Lake are engaging in this same, wrong idea, but it's probably because these far-right politicians know that it is tactics like these that create greater dissent toward the Democratic party. If these patterns continue, we will most likely see the trend of increasing polarization in America continue.
Extreme Republicans who are endorsed by Trump, and who share his anti-Democracy rhetoric, really seem to be digging themselves into a hole. Many Trump-endorsed candidates have lost elections, such as Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania. In contrast, Ron DeSantis, who shares many of the strong conservative views as Trump yet isn't publicly in support of the "stop the steal" rhetoric performed exceptionally well in his race for Florida governor. It seems like some Republican voters have finally had enough of the anti-Democracy rhetoric. Yet, as governor DeSantis' success demonstrates, the underwhelming Republican performance in 2022 may be a greater indicator of anti-Trump sentiments rather than anti-Republican sentiments (towards Republicans who aren't as extreme as Trump).
https://www.politico.com/2022-election/results/trump-candidates-endorsements-11-8-22/
I think this is the foundation of what is wrong with the republican party and how Donald Trump affected it. Republicans are becoming the embodiment of the old grumpy white man with a shotgun and a trucker hat because they are going against their own government that they are trying to raise the ranks in. Where are the democrats that don't follow basic processes like peacefully transferring power. There are so many times where republican incumbents have made entire electoral processes delayed or made a crime investigation topics solely based off of their morals and high heads.
I agree with a lot of what others have said. Elections are really vulnerable to hijacking by someone willing to combat the system. Yet, what this reflects isn’t as much a deficiency on the part of the system, but rather it highlights the extreme levels that Lake and the rest of Trump's followers are taking in their “Stop the Steal” campaign. While the system definitely needs reform to prevent something like this from happening in the future, the fact that something like this was never even considered highlights just how crazy it truly is. The fact that people cling on to a campaign to overturn an election that ended years ago is the main problem here. It also emphasizes just how much devoted Trump’s followers are, and how much they are willing to listen to virtually anything he says no matter how little of it is based in fact.
I'm not going to claim that I have a complete idea of the political climate in Arizona, but as someone who visits quarterly and is very connected to the state, I think I have some perspective about the kind of ideologies that this stems from on a local level. The white supremacist, Trump/MAGA camp exploded after 2020; I can remember when Katie Hobbs, the current governor-elect, ran for secretary of state in 2018 and garnered a lot of support, even across party lines. All of that bipartisanship went out of the window. Grassroots campaigns for Democratic candidates had to work doubly hard to keep or win more seats during these past midterms. Despite how it may appear, Arizona definitely has the potential to lean more liberal. Kari Lake and her defeat are good examples of Arizona's ability to shift the tide. Her claims of fraud are null, just as people in Clark County's claims were in 2020.
I find this really interesting in the fact that she is filing lawsuits against something that happened years ago. It’s over. The republicans need to move on and show what they can do for the American people through their actions and not trying to regain their reputation by trying to change the results of something that happened a couple years ago. The past is in the past is what my mother always says. If you cannot move forward, then what’s the point of even trying to succeed in life. I agree with everyone else that the Republican party is divided and that is why they are still angry about the election results from 2020. While there may have been voting centers that showed potential “malfunctions” according to Lake, I still believe that every election isn’t going to be perfect. There are always going to be parts that don’t work out and anger a certain party because it’s either unfair or unfavorable to them, which could cause them an election, which is what the Republican party sees in the 2020 election that there was fraud and prevented Trump from being reelected.
I find this supper interesting, seeing the majority of republicans excepting defeat gracefully. this clear shift from the trump election deniers, I think on a larger scale shows a posible shift in the Republican Party. even something so simple as conceding after loosing an election shows the spectrum of the Republican Party. I wonder if this represents a split in the party as some move away from the maga centered agenda of the past few years.
It is really surprising seeing a candidate trying to create such hysteria just so she can have a recount. I think this will become a growing trend of candidates more and more not accepting that they lost their candidate race. I feel like this could cause a chain reaction that even more candidates not only in the house and senate race but also governor race or presidential race as well. Candidates using this strategy to rally more and more support after the elections for the opportunity to increase their chances of maybe a revote or next year's candidacy, I believe they are actually hurting their campaign because it puts them in bad lighting that they don't believe in our democratic process. Similar to what happened on January 6th, one thing that could make be an issue is that similar to how Trump rallied support to storm capital hill, what if in 2024 candidates who lost did that again rallying support and what if its not only Capital hill, what if it becomes other government building or even the white house. I believe this behavior from candidates is unacceptable and is causing radical extremist to have a reason to attack the other side.
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