Is this really a contradiction? You have to play the game by the existing rules even if you are also attempting to change the rules.
“If you want to win races, you have to play by the rules that are given to you. You can cry all you want about what the rules are, but if you want to change them you’ve got to win elections,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, who has made a focus of her tenure as the chairwoman of the California Republican Party bolstering the party’s ballot-collection efforts.
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He's right. There is no way Republicans can ever win without cheating like the Democrats.
Cue "Trump promotes vote fraud scheme" media blitz.
There's nothing inconsistent about saying the world should be a certain way even as you live in the world as it is, but some lazy thinkers call it inconsistent, even hypocritical. Especially when it's someone they don't like. The standards are different, you see, when someone's political affiliation clashes with yours.
Some of us are too good for this world, but we're not in politics.
Water seeks its own level. Politicians are born competitors and feel no peace unless they are in power. This applies worldwide and throughout recorded history. The tough guy with a sword will be in control or die. The US constitution tried to stop it via checks and balances. I don't think it actually changed human nature much, as the US Civil War started not too much later and as the state took effective full control with FDR's New Deal.
The best one can hope for is that all the political zealots and psychopaths accept 'eye-for-an-eye' morality. Many pacifists and nonpolitical people live the Christian "do unto others as you want them to do to you," but 99% of politicians never did. They always exploited the votes of the trusting for a strong-arm edge, be they religious believers or be they the naïve and the young who routinely vote for endless compassion and unlimited free gifts. See Lyndon Johnson.
The Democratic Party changed practiced voting rules in 2018 and 2020...so politicians are going to be political and water will again be level. No one will stop it.
I hear what they're saying, but I don't like it.
But Trump's 'vote fraud scheme' is successful and conservatives are in position to dial voting back towards more sane policies, then it will become 'voter suppression.' I'm not seeing a win anywhere in sight.
Through the Maricopa County results, the Democrats have shown how far they’ll go to block the opposition’s votes. It’s a shame that election laws are not treated more seriously when challenged in the courts. People are getting away with election fraud, so it will keep getting worse, I fear.
It's taken the Repubs this long to figure that out? That's cause for worry in and of itself.
If you can't beat them, join them.
I agree that you have to play by the rules, like them or not. If the rules include early voting and ballot harvesting, let the fun begin.
OTOH, might this be a clever way to get the rules changed? If our President Emeritus Trump starts promoting ballot harvesting and the rest of this bullshit, can the dems continue to support it? Doesn't it push them towards banning it?
And if they do ban it now, with less than 2 years to go, can they come up with something else that is at least arguably legal?
What they really need to do is come down to Puerto Rico and learn how to run an honest election. Probably too late for 2024 but maybe for 2028.
And I am not sure what it means but tomorrow the Supremes will look again at whether to hear a case on 2020 fraud and whether it deprived voters of their rights. I have no great hopes but still, something is something.
John Henry
This is good news to me.
I think Trump finally understands the evil we are up against. He was never a "play fair" Washington Generals Republican but he always played nice with the Con Inc. traitors.
I look forward to Con Inc. attacking him relentlessly just like they went after Mitt's opponents in 2012. More masks will be removed.
Con inc. thinks they are going to get a Desantis/Haley ticket.
They will not.
Isn't "MASTER" on the list of forbidden words now?
There will now be 250 million votes cast for president.
This is the approximate number of citizens over 18.
Not what the founding fathers desired
You have to play the game as the rules exist. We have rugby because frustrated boys were breaking the rules of football by picking it up and running with it. Not a bad idea, you say. Voila, a new set of rules for a new game.
Ideally, a situation that never exists in the real world, you use the current rules to regain power, you institute voting changes in the battleground states that have fallen from the straight and narrow, and let the future arrive from there.
What I would propose is that we move election day to a Saturday in November, eliminate absentee balloting, require strenuous voter ID (at least on a par with driving a vehicle or buying alcohol or tobacco) and suddenly you have elections pretty much as the constitution would have envisioned.
Cue the complaints that voting on a Saturday ruins your weekend. Of course, the same people saying that would be the same people complaining about how difficult it is to vote on a Tuesday in the middle of the week. My point of view is that if voting is too hard for you, you probably shouldn't be voting.
While I'm instituting these reforms I'd also like to raise the voting age back to 21 (truthfully 25 or 30) and have a requirement that you are paying some taxes other than sales.
Enigma above says "The US constitution tried to stop it via checks and balances. I don't think it actually changed human nature much..."
From my point of view human nature has never changed, human nature has no history, it's been a constant.
We have tried to restrain our baser urges and we have succeeded in making things more peaceful by creating an enormous level of wealth that removes the necessity to scratch and claw each other for survival. Remove the abundance and watch human nature assert itself.
If you want to win races, you have to play by the rules that are given to you.
Too many Republicans would rather whine.
Ballot harvesting is big here in Arizona.
In the 2022 election, Democrats came to our door twice (wife is registered Dem) and set up tables outside the public library to collect ballots. We never saw any Republican presence.
Unless the ballot harvesting rues change, Republicans are screwed if they continue to ignore it.
I was amazed that Trump didn't have a vote-harvesting operation in 2020. The 2018 ele3ctions saw about 20-30 HR elections decided in favor of Democrats after election day "when all the votes were counted." Trump wasn't paying attention, I guess. He loved the love-bath that he got at his rallies. In 2020, the Demmies played the same game they played in 2018. Trump ran the same campaign that he won with (barely) in 2016. It didn't work in 2020.
Sad. Wasted opportunity. The GOP just underperformed again in 2022 because they didn't embrace vote harvesting. AZ showed how the Dems can tip over the "safety of voting on election day." If you lived in Maricopa County, your chances of casting your vote went way down if you waited until election day. The ballot printers didn't work. Great.
It is almost impossible to change the outcome after the ballots have been processed. You have to win before election day.
Finally.
Now that Trump has a declared opponent he might get serious about winning. I'd love to see him shift gears from the backward-looking whining to the problem-solving that impressed us in 2016. Start your engines.
Maynard said...
"Ballot harvesting is big here in Arizona."
Ballot harvesting is big any where democrats are in charge.
Yes of course they should try to maximize the votes they get by legal means! Those of us in opposition have been shocked by the stupidity of undermining your own vote count by railing against mail-in voting etc (shocked, though happy to reap the rewards).
However, entirely unproven accusations of cheating are not justification to cheat. Playing by the rules means playing by the rules.
I thought vote harvesting was illegal?
oh right - it's all cool if the democrats do it.
This effort will have to be executed by republicans/conservatives/populists outside the purview of the RNC, which has already spent 20 years proving it exists solely to line the pockets of insider consultants that have been approved by the GOPe master blasters.
The RNC has no one in leadership that has ever led such an effort. They have a get out the vote database that is completely antiquated and useless to anyone attempting to identify actual voters, active and intermittent. No ability to collaborate with 3rd party groups to get the legion of feet on the ground needed to execute a plan like this. No bank of lawyers in every state at the ready to oppose the inevitable democratical ploys to sweep republican foot soldiers off the street and disallow republican ballot harvesting measures.
Even worse: the RNC doesn't WANT any of those things. ANY of them. At all. The RNC despises the grass roots so why would anyone expect the RNC to collaborate with the folks in the states on the ground?
The RNC measures "success" by how large their personal portfolios and bank accounts become.
Then there is the high probability that any lawyers that might take up the challenge of fighting the DNC/dems in court will almost certainly be blackballed by the DC insiders on the Dem side and the GOPe side. So many firms will not play along.
Unfortunately for the conservatives, the DNC is completely wired into their 3rd party groups networks, are amply funded by their lefty billionaires (the same lefty billionaires that fund The Bulwark and The Dispatch and increasingly the National Review, amongst others), an army of lawyers and have much better systems in place across the nation to gather ballots (and it doesn't matter to the dems who fills the ballots out) and get them in to be counted.
But you gotta start somewhere and this might be that step.
Yup, ballot harvesting is the new name of the game, gotta compete harder. It has been shown that it is easy to screw up the republican turnout on election day, just "forget" to provide enough paper ballots in republican areas, voila, turnout reduction.
Then claim incompetence and "oh well".
As usual the Republicans seem incapable of fighting back against the D's attempts to rig the votes in their favor and committ Fraud.
Anyone what to provide a reason why GOPe, especially Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan were so indifferent to doing anything about voter fraud in 2017? Or were so eagar to concede in 2020, or never talk about electoral vote reform and voter ID?
Any way, since GOPe and the RNC will NOT fight, the only alternative is the one Trump made. Since you can't beat them (because you won't fight), you join them and start ballot harvesting.
It's not to be mastered. It should be outlawed. If not the credibility of any election and the legitimacy of the government will always be in question.
The question is, if the Repubs adopt the Dems game and actually start winning races, will the Dems argue for a return to fairness and strict rules? I’m not sure they will and if they don’t then, what will we have? A complete breakdown in democratic processes. Is that better than what we have now?
While I agree completely with the sentiment expressed by Trump, the reality is going to be this: Republicans won't be allowed by the DoJ to do ballot harvesting the way the Democrats do it, and everyone understands this even if they won't admit it.
etbass: "The question is, if the Repubs adopt the Dems game and actually start winning races, will the Dems argue for a return to fairness and strict rules?"
The dems will use the DOJ and FBI to shut down any ballot harvesting efforts by republicans that appear to be successful.
The full weaponization of the federal govt against republicans/conservatives is too far along now to be stopped.
I'm not sure what tactics will be used by republican ballot harvesting groups to withstand the coming lawfare attacks.
When in a sanctuary state/State... All's fair in lust and abortion? Hopefully, our passage through this modern twilight fringe will be quick and conclusive... Just as we hope to go to war to reestablish peace.
It's a shame
It may be a game
But I won't play to lose
etbass said...
The question is, if the Repubs adopt the Dems game and actually start winning races, will the Dems argue for a return to fairness and strict rules? I’m not sure they will and if they don’t then, what will we have? A complete breakdown in democratic processes. Is that better than what we have now?
This was always the goal.
The WEF Globalists are just dictators and kings and emperors that have existed throughout history.
Joe Biden is no different from King Louis in any real respect. He just used voter fraud instead of hereditary lineage.
I don't think there will be a silver bullet in this conflict. There will always be shitheads like George Bush or Barrack Obama or Bill Clinton or John Kerry or Nikki Haley or Ron Desantis that plan out their lives in order to live out their dream of telling everyone what to do.
We are always going to have to fight the career politicians until Leto Atreides takes command or AI stomps us out of existence.
It is in our DNA.
Yancey Ward said...
While I agree completely with the sentiment expressed by Trump, the reality is going to be this: Republicans won't be allowed by the DoJ to do ballot harvesting the way the Democrats do it, and everyone understands this even if they won't admit it.
In every fight you have to take the next step.
There will never be an end to this conflict.
This is why the people who live for this fight, even though they are a small number of horrible people nobody likes, will always have an advantage over the vast majority of us who just want to be left alone.
Drago said...
etbass: "The question is, if the Repubs adopt the Dems game and actually start winning races, will the Dems argue for a return to fairness and strict rules?"
The dems will use the DOJ and FBI to shut down any ballot harvesting efforts by republicans that appear to be successful.
The full weaponization of the federal govt against republicans/conservatives is too far along now to be stopped.
I'm not sure what tactics will be used by republican ballot harvesting groups to withstand the coming lawfare attacks.
You should really stop referring to this as Republican vs. Democrat.
This whole vote fraud fiasco was spearheaded by Republicans in 6 specific states.
This is ruling class vs. people. Trump's most vicious and aggressive enemies are Republicans serving their WEF masters.
The problem is that Republicans would be trying to compete on a field on which Democrats have a decided advantage. It takes less time and effort to collect ballots in densely populated urban areas than rural ones.
We still need to get rid of no-excuse absentee voting.
Daniel12 said...
"However, entirely unproven accusations of cheating are not justification to cheat. Playing by the rules means playing by the rules."
Bless your heart.
Joe Biden bragged of having the apparatus to steal the election.
81 million? Seriously?
So my state of Michigan has been a big focus of election disputes and claims of widespread election fraud.
In 2016, Trump won the state by the slenderest margin in state history. A little more than 11,000 votes. I voted for Trump in that general election, after having opposed him in every way I could think of in the 2016 primaries.
In 2020, Trump lost. I voted against him. Trump lost the state by 150,000 votes.
In between, it wasn't "Democrats" who changed the rules. In 2018, a statewide referendum was passed, to make us a no-excuse absentee voting state. It passed easily, by a big majority. A bigger majority than any other statewide race at the time.
We have not had ANY early voting in Michigan heretofore. We will have some early voting in the future; not because "Democrats" forced a changed but rather because another statewide voter referendum has made it so, in the 2020 general election. Again, a solid majority.
I personally voted against each and every voting law change. We do have a voter i.d. requirement, which I favor.
However, entirely unproven accusations of cheating are not justification to cheat.
Nope. We'll cheat and you won't be able to prove it. That's how it goes now.
You built it. Own it.
Doesn't matter how you vote. It matters who counts the votes. BTW did you watch 2000 Mules? The very same technology used by the investigators to track the mules' operations, which the critics rejected, was used by DOJ to arrest Jan 6 "Insurrectionists".
Achilles: "You should really stop referring to this as Republican vs. Democrat.
This whole vote fraud fiasco was spearheaded by Republicans in 6 specific states.
This is ruling class vs. people. Trump's most vicious and aggressive enemies are Republicans serving their WEF masters."
Completely correct.
If the republicans become better cheaters, democrats might end up going along with much needed reforms.
Why do you guys, who think that Trump was cheated out of an electoral victory in 2020, and that Democrats cheat big time in most important elections, still bother? Why vote? Why make the effort? If there is but one single overpowering uniparty, why worry about electoral politics? Why not just go to the desert in Utah, or the mountains of Idaho, or some lonely farmland in the Michigan Thumb region, and work on your militia training?
Drago said..
"This whole vote fraud fiasco was spearheaded by Republicans in 6 specific states."
Do share the information you have and the proof. Names would be a start.
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