In Praise of Honest and Decent Conservatives

Even though I disagree with Liz Cheney on most policy opinions, she is right on here. Speak that Truth to Power, Representative Cheney!

"Today we face a threat America has never seen before. A former president, who provoked a violent attack on this capital in an effort to steal the election, has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him.

He risks inciting further violence.
Millions of Americans have been misled by the former president, they have heard only his words, but not the truth. As he continues to undermine our democratic process, sowing seeds of doubt about whether democracy really works at all...

"I am a conservative Republican, and the most conservative of conservative principles is reverence for the rule of law.

"The Electoral College has voted.
More than 60 state and federal courts,
including multiple judges the former president appointed,
have rejected his claims.

The Trump Department of Justice investigated
the former president's claims of widespread fraud and
found no evidence to support them.

The election is over.

That is the rule of law. That is our constitutional process.
Those who refuse to accept the rulings of our courts are at war with the Constitution.
Our duty is clear. Every one of us who has sworn the oath must act to prevent the unraveling of our democracy.

"This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans.
Remaining silent and ignoring the lie emboldens the liar.
I will not participate in that. I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins the former president's crusade to undermine our democracy."

~Liz Cheney, in a speech on May 11 that helps mark the downfall of the modern GOP and much of modern conservatism and modern white conservative evangelicalism.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/11/liz-cheney-house-floor-slams-trump-calls-him-threat-america/5047782001/

I'm glad that Cheney, W Bush, Romney and other responsible and decent conservatives have been speaking out or have started speaking out. I would hope that they could also recognize the part that they played in leading the US to this crisis time where a pervert conman could overtake the GOP that they helped shape... and maybe they do. But stepping up to clearly denounce a great existential threat to a free Republic is a starting point.

Oh, what has become of modern conservatism... Where facts, truth, decency, honesty, integrity used to matter? I truly believe that to be true, because I was raised amongst conservatives who held to those ideals.

And while I recognize that there are sort of three camps of conservatives -
those who've sold their souls to Trump-style corruption and dishonesty,
those who recognize Trump as a deviant but remain silent to appease their fellow conservatives and
those few who have publicly spoken up to denounce this for the deviant and dangerous corruption it is -
the latter seem to be a pretty small group and the Silent group is enabling the Deviant groups to maintain power.

Maybe, when people like Cheney and George W Bush speak out, the silent ones will find their spines and sense of decency and join those who are breaking away from the deviants. Time will tell and history will judge.

Solutions to Problems that Don't Exist...

The experts are agreed: There is no data that shows we have a widespread voter fraud problem in our nation. That is, there is no evidence that bad actors are cheating the system in one way or another to change election outcomes via election fraud.

Conservative experts agree (here, from the Hoover Institute)...

https://www.hoover.org/research/no-evidence-voter-fraud-guide-statistical-claims-about-2020-election

The ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation notes... "The Heritage Foundation’s database includes 1,296 “proven instances of voter fraud” out of the hundreds of millions of votes cast going back to 1992. Of those cases identified, 1,120 resulted in criminal convictions."

[In fact, 1200 cases of fraud out of hundreds of millions of votes is an INFINITESIMAL amount of voter fraud. And, to be clear, HF described this, rather breathlessly as "Database SWELLS to 1,285 cases of Voter Fraud!!!" (emphases mine)... as if ~1300 cases out of millions is evidence of a problem, instead of evidence of NO significant problem. ~DT]

https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

GOP voting experts agreed that there was no significant voter fraud happening leading up to the 2020 election...

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/republican-experts-are-in-agreement-the-2020-election-is-not-rigged-212332034.html

Experts agree...

"Despite this dramatic increase in mail voting over time, fraud rates remain infinitesimally small."

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/false-narrative-vote-mail-fraud

US Election officials agree...

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54926084

Over and over and over again, from GOP to Democrat, from election watchers to election experts... the people who know and who are responsible for free elections all agree that we have NO SIGNIFICANT ELECTION FRAUD happening in this nation.

Experts agree!

"That shouldn’t be a surprise. One exhaustive study of 12 years of elections in five states found only 500 cases of alleged voter fraud.

In 2016, North Carolina’s Board of Elections found that 4,769,640 votes were cast in November and that one would probably have been avoided with a voter ID law."

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article247291039.html

Trump's OWN LAWYERS didn't try to make that case in this last election, because they knew it was a stupidly false claim to make and they can get in trouble for that sort of foolishness.

"Trump Cries Voter Fraud. In Court, His Lawyers Don’t."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-cries-election-fraud-in-court-his-lawyers-dont-11605271267

The facts are not in debate by rational people who know what they're speaking about. We don't have election fraud problems of any significance in our nation. It happens, the experts are not saying that it doesn't happen. We know it happens because pretty regularly, Republicans get caught doing it.

"North Carolina Republican operative charged in election fraud scheme"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-north-carolina/north-carolina-republican-operative-charged-in-election-fraud-scheme-idUSKCN1QG2FS

The experts are just noting that it's not a significant problem at all and doesn't impact elections.

Over and over again, I can cite the experts from across the political spectrum saying that there is no problem. Handfuls of voter fraud in hundreds of thousands of votes. Or 500 cases of voter fraud in millions of votes across many years.

Those are the facts, Trump and his useful idiots be damned.

So, after this last election, instead of agreeing with reality, some large number of GOP voters (70%!!) are denying reality and GOP politicians - many of them - are creating laws to restrict voting. IN SPITE of the reality that we have no serious election fraud problems. When they do this immediately following a loss due to high minority and young folk turn-out, people take note. We can SEE it's not because we have an election security problem. We can SEE that they're clearly doing this to try to maintain power in a nation where they are a decided minority and their candidates just can't win if they have a large population of brown/black/gay/young citizens to convince.

But what about the case for increasing election security, even though there is no significant election fraud?

First off, we have to admit that we're trying to find a solution for a problem that practically doesn't exist. But what IF we could more effectively prevent those handful of Republicans from cheating, by using Voter ID laws, for instance?

The problem in implementing "solutions" for non-existent problems is the consequences. If I were more naive, I might call them unintended consequences, but when the experts note that the restrictions put in place will tend (possibly) to damper more Democrat voters rather than Republican voters... at a time when the GOP voting base is dwindling... well, I'm not naive.

We could, for instance, be even more secure in our election process by demanding that each voter have an ID - better yet, three IDs! - and bring their parents along to confirm they are who they are? AND their pastor or rabbi or imam!? After all, having a photo ID AND parental confirmation AND religious leader confirmation would certainly dry up almost ALL cases of voter fraud of that sort.

But - and there's the vital part - it would certainly decrease the voter turnout and just wouldn't be necessary, given that this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist!

That is, creating rules and restrictions that serve to decrease voter turn-out (especially of one party's voters... especially making it more difficult for the poor and marginalized) when there's not a problem that needs to be fixed, it's just wrong. It's creating more problems than the one they are trying to fix.

If the GOP wants to increase their chances of winning elections, let them do it by renouncing racist, misogynist, anti-LGBTQ, anti-environmental policies and win over their citizens by creating policies that more people will support... Or making a better case (if they can) for the policies they do support. In other words, let them do it by being candidates that appeal to more people.

But you don't do it by "fixing" problems that don't exist and especially not by lying and saying that there IS a significant voter fraud problem to (try to) scare people into supporting these unnecessary policies.