Let’s say it’s a tight race between Barack Obama and whoever emerges from the GOP scrum — the Real Clear Politics poll summary currently has Obama leading Romney by less than a point, and though Obama has a much bigger lead over Gingrich, the economy isn’t getting better all that quickly, and it’s impossible to know what could happen in Europe in the next year. So if it’s Obama vs. Gingrich, that could be close, too.
So imagine Obama ekes out a win in November, barely ahead in the popular vote and with one or two tight states separating him from the Republican in the Electoral College. Now, imagine that this comes after Eric Holder has promised an aggressive pushback against Republican laws restricting voter participation:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday entered the turbulent political waters of voting rights, signaling that the Justice Department would be aggressive in reviewing new voting laws that civil rights advocates say will dampen minority participation in next year’s elections….
Do you think the aftermath of such a squeaker victory might be the point at which the demagoguing of the “massive Democratic voter fraud” myth goes utterly mainstream? By which I mean that prominent Republican officeholders and officials may literally not accept the results of the 2012 election, and may work to get them overturned, or at least to make hearings on the subject the main business of Congress (or whatever part of Congress is GOP-controlled)? And isn’t it possible that, if they work this hard enough, it could actually seem credible to parts of the mainstream press, even though the “evidence” will be overwhelmingly anecdotal and mostly irrelevant (e.g., Mickey Mouse’s signature showing up on petitions before being invalidated under the usual perfectly adequate fraud-detection procedures)?
This stuff pumps up the rubes, and Republicans use it as the basis for restrictive laws in the states, but they don’t seem to try to sell the voter fraud myth to the broad general public in a serious way. Under these circumstances, would they make a mainstream move with it? And could they get, say, The Washington Post to bite? Could they effectively nullify Obama’s reelection that way?
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
The Other Chuck
They didn’t accept 2008’s. Or 1996 or 1992. Pretty much any election won by a Democrat is by definition illegitimate according to these guys. Why give a shit about the tantrum you _know_ they are going to throw after 2012?
robertdsc-iPhone 4
Then arrest every one of those fucking bastards and deport them to Gitmo .
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Like it matters what percentage points he wins by. He blew McCain away in 2008 and yet his election wasn’t valid.
Samara Morgan
It is not demographically possible for either Newt or Willard to beat Obama, and the punditocracy and the republican elite understand this full well.
However, pointing this out– indeed, even talking about it– would spoil the horserace, plus suppressing the “animal spirits” of the republican base.
Benjamin Franklin
Holder? Promise? Oxymoron.
We need an asskicker like the AG from NY who kicked Obama’s ass on the
wrist slap punishments for Banksters. We don’t need no pantywaists in the likely re-play of 2000.
No more Mr. Nice Guy…
Davis X. Machina
You can’t win the Mandate of Heaven in an election. It just is.
The strangest journey in political terminology isn’t what’s happened to the word ‘liberal’ since John Stuart Mill’s day — it’s what happened to the word ‘republican’.
Our Republicans are monarchists.
Bill ORLY
What does it matter? He could win with a landslide and they won’t admit that he actually has the authority to run the country.
c u n d gulag
The GOP will dog-whistle that this is what you get when you have a Kenyan Socialist Muslim as President, and a Black Panther as his AG.
And somewhere – ACORN, too, dammit!!!
How’s a poor white man to win an election when all of them brown people get to commit voter fraud by not being white conservative voters?
The one thing besides death and taxes (if you’re not rich, anyway) that you can count on, is an aggrieved base of Conservatives.
Especially over race.
Victimization is what they do best.
Convincing non-victims that they’re the real victims, is what modern Conservatism is all about.
That, and doing the opposite of what Liberals want to do.
To be adjusted daily – or whenever necessary!
rlrr
Fox “News”, conservative talk radio, etc. already claim Obama’s decisive victory in 2008 was due to voter fraud…
BGinCHI
Well, yes. The right wants to use government to loot the economy and transfer that wealth to the few at the top.
Elections are an annoying inconvenience.
John Dillinger
We’re scheduled for an impeachment during Obama’s second term. This sounds like as good as any other “Trump”ed-up grounds.
rlrr
Imagine the shit storm if Obama loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College…
japa21
If you think that myth hasn’t gone mainstream already, then you are living under a rock. What do you think the whole fuss about ACORN was. It was based on Democratic voter fraud, even though Acorn was probably one of the most diligent groups out there in terms of making sure fraud didn’t exist.
And not only has the Democratic voter fraud theme gone mainstream, hidden in that is the “black democratic voter fraud” with a little Hispanic thrown in as well.
As to whether they would make a push, that is debatable. Understand, the Republicans know there is no real signifcant voter fraud, specially nothing that comes close to their voter suppression techniques and I don’t think they would want that to be fully exposed, so there would be a lot of compalining but no real attempt to overthrow the results of the election. They just want people to believe there is voter fraud so they can go the voter suppression route.
Samara Morgan
anyways, the next birtherism is islamophobia.
its very seductive– even Anne Laurie is a JAFI.
Midnight Marauder
This is a joke, right? You are not seriously making an argument that this has not yet gone mainstream, are you? Are we just going to pretend like the entire ACORN debacle and the numerous congressional hearings and pronouncements about President Obama’s “czars” have not happened the past three years?
What a joke.
SteveM
There’s questioning and there’s questioning. Republican officeholders didn’t say flat out that Obama’s victory was electorally illegitimate — they just acted as if “elections have consequences” had no meaning in his case. I’m asking whether there’s going to be an escalation this time if the race is tight.
Davis X. Machina
I don’t think you’ll see another impeachment any time soon. There’s no need for it… yet.
The whole point the last time, except for 30 or so hard-line GOP representatives, wasn’t to actually get Clinton, but to blunt the impeachment sword, so to speak. (Recall that the Republicans in the Senate basically tanked the trial.)
If you reduce impeachment to a transparently partisan thing, or even worse, a joke, then the next time you need to use it, people will just laugh. And when it’s needed, it will be needed to check the excesses of a Republican president.
It was desperately needed against Bush II — but it was by then a joke, and a fresh one, after the Great Clinton
DickSnipe Hunt.amk
@Benjamin Franklin: which NY AG are you speaking of ? The guy who was sniffing panties of women or the other guy who shot his wad once and went limp forever?
And this thread takes the cake for navel gazing.
Brachiator
Too many hypotheticals to make any comments even remotely worthwhile.
Crazy conservatives will always look for any excuse in an electoral storm.
fmbjo
Hey,we have enough to worry about now, don’t start jumping ahead to worries. ” sufficent unto this day….”
SteveM
@japa21: But your average CNN-watcher hasn’t been actively ACORN-baited — he or she just saw all the ACORN stuff and thought, “Hunh? What was that?” i’m talking about an escalation from there.
gaz
Steve,
It appears you’ve bought into a false narrative about the elections.
The GOP does not have an electable candidate. Your hypothetical is about as likely as me waking up in China tomorrow morning.
Romney is not electable. Gingrich is not electable.
I’ll say it again.
Romney is not electable. Gingrich is not electable.
You can’t believe anything you read in the papers or on teh teevee n00ze. You should know better by now.
GregB
Except this time around the Brooks Brothers rioters will be carrying Glocks and M-16’s.
*Real Clear Politics numbers are most definitely skewed by Rasmussen’s skeevy GOP meme setting numbers.
Do not use their aggregate numbers.
ant
@Samara Morgan:
What do you mean by this?
Violet
The ad I’m seeing on the left side of this page says, “Support Ron Paul’s Tea Party Day Money Bomb.” Tea Party Day? WTF?
Tractarian
Yep.
You bet.
Nope.
Next post please.
The Bearded Blogger
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): it does actually matter… for instance, in terms of a possible lawsuit that could hold up the presidential inauguration for months, and even overturn election results, given the composition of the supreme court.
Goopers are willing to try anything, but they do fear popular bakclash.
Davis X. Machina
@Violet: The original Boston tea party was in mid-December…
kay
It’s already mainstream. Worse, it is completely accepted by rank and file GOP voters. It’s HUGE to them. They ALL believe it. It’s “hot” and incredibly emotional to GOP voters. When I was a poll worker, the “discussions” on this would get really ugly, really fast. Ten more minutes and people would have been throwing chairs.
There’s a huge sort of enthusiasm gap, too, because not all liberals and Democrats believe suppression is a real problem, and ALL conservative believe there’s a huge voter fraud problem.
We would lose, because we’d still be convincing our own voters.
gaz
@ant: Samara is right for once.
In no real scenario are these people electable.
Bush at least had his base. The base would like to burn both these clowns at the stake.
Steve is just plain wrong here.
eemom
Damn, I wish I had a life in which this ridiculous exercise in masochistic dystopian counter-fantasy was all I had to do on a workday morning 11 days before Christmas.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@SteveM: You mean all that “I’m not sure where Obama was born” stuff or the need to investigate his birth certificate stuff you heard from Republicans wasn’t about him being rightfully president?
The Bearded Blogger
@rlrr: A lawsuit to the supreme court ensues: Gingrich v. Obama. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and co. award the presidency to Gingrich in the name of democracy.
Like Chris Rock says, black boxers can’t win on points. They need to knock the white guy out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrjFsOwkJrI
Stevie314
No.
I expect a major bloodletting in the GOP when they lose. Either Romney was “not conservative enough” or “Gingrich was too Tea Party crazy”.
When they lose to an incumbent with 9% unemployment, the base and the establishment will have a duel to the death for the next 2 years.
The Bearded Blogger
@Tractarian: If they have enough of a margin for a Gingrich v. Obama lawsuit before the supreme court, the presidency goes to the Nutty Professor, and democracy goes the way of the Dodo.
Nellcote
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=4071256E-E8D6-4335-BFF5-9F9C677FF14B
Midnight Marauder
@SteveM:
Really? Sustaining a multi-year strategy of denying that the President of the United States is, in fact, an American citizen is not questioning the electoral legitimacy of his victory?
It just seems like you didn’t even take the time to think through your own thought experiment. All of the things have happened already.
And they are already mainstreamed. When Donald Trump can briefly become the frontrunner for one of the two major political parties’ presidential nominee running a campaign solely based on tapping into white resentment, then yes, the issue has hit the mainstream.
This post is just flat out lazy.
Linda Featheringill
@Samara Morgan: #4
Do you think we’ve already reached that point? I realize that the time is coming when the non-European population becomes a majority and the Republican anti-anyone-not-lily-white tirades will alienate most of the electorate. But I’m not sure that we’ve reached that yet.
Edited to clarify my meaning.
Paris
The death throes of the GOP will not be a pleasant sound in any case. I can’t wait for Tea Party 2 after Obama wins his second term.
kth
What SteveM is talking about, Jon Bernstein blogged about 6 weeks ago. Short version: if the election comes down to three states or less, you bet the Republicans will throw the kitchen sink at overturning it.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Islamophobia in America was around long before anyone started voicing those baseless suspicions about Barack Obama’s birthplace.
Gus diZerega
We are going though an American version of what Europe went through after WWI. The Republican Party is in many ways an anti-democratic force rooted in the ideological descendents of the Confederacy, who remain loyal not so much to slavery as to the love of domination that underlay it. They have spent decades referring to liberals the way that Italian, German, and other European fascists did – check the rhetoric with the history books.
There is probably nothing their leadership would not do if they thought they could get away with it.
KG
Generally speaking, incumbent presidents don’t win close re-election contests. They either win big (Nixon 72, Reagan 1984, Clinton 1996, even, comparatively speaking Bush in 2004) or they lose big (Carter 80, Bush 92). So I doubt things play out like this.
Quite frankly, I suspect that Obama is going to win big. In part because I don’t see any states that the GOP nominee can flip and I think there are a few that will flip to Obama’s column. I also have a feeling that the Dems are going to take the House back and possibly get a bigger majority in the Senate.
At that point, whether the GOP doubles (triples?) down on the crazy/stupid or tries to get more in line with the voting public is anyone’s guess.
harlana
don’t have the link right now, but i believe a very recent NBC poll has Obama leading any other republican candidate in approval ratings here in SC! you coulda knocked me over with a feather.
Hungry Joe
An Obama reelection would blow out every fuse, trip every last circuit breaker, and generally fry whatever jerry-built circuitry the lunatic fringe has got in what passes for their brains. Call me an optimist … no, on the other hand, please don’t … but unless it’s a nail-biting squeaker of an election, I can’t see such malarkey going mainstream.
ant
@gaz:
I see it differently, although I do agree that Obama is likely to win.
11 months is an eternity in politics.
We shall see what happens in the meantime.
Benjamin Franklin
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/business/schneiderman-is-said-to-face-pressure-to-back-bank-deal.html?pagewanted=all@amk:
I don’t know who you are referring to, but this is who I mean.
Now, GFY.
The Bearded Blogger
@Linda Featheringill: White suprematists are accutely aware of the demographical facts. They know its now or never, they have to take over democracy soon.
@Paris: second amendment remedies…
Peter Herb
This kind of endless speculation on how batshit this country can get doesn’t really add anything to the discussion except noise of which there is plenty thank you. If the birth certificate “controversy” didn’t de-rail BHO’s ascent to the Oval Office, the “perceived voter fraud controversy” won’t have any more effectiveness.
joeyess
I think it’s been an established fact since the debacle in Iraq began that the WaPo would take a bite of a shit sandwich, don’t you?
Punchy
Vegas says it cant get any tighter. Has identical odds for whether Republicans or Dems get the Presidential nod. BO’s relection odds went from a -150 to -125 to now even odds. Not surprisingly, they have Gringrich with slighly better odds than Romey for the R Nommy.
Those with $$ to risk are showing a Republican pres possibility a lot higher than the polls are currently indicating.
KG
@Linda Featheringill: if you believe the polls, Arizona is going to be in play. Texas is moving slowly but surely into the “in play” column. Meanwhile Florida is moving out of the “in play” column.
I keep playing around on 270towin and keep coming to the same conclusion: it’s nearly impossible for the GOP to get to 270. They have to hold all the states they won and flip Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida just to get to 274.
gaz
@ant: Yeah – 11 months is forever when it comes to an upcoming prez election cycle.
However:
A) The republicans are double, tripling (as another commenter said) down on stupid+crazy. They haven’t realigned for the general, and don’t appear to have any desire to do so. Also, Too: If they did, the base will revolt. This trend is at least a couple of years old. I don’t think it’s likely to change very much.
B) The base hates their selection. By now they should have at least a couple of potential standard-bearers for the GOP. They do not. 11 months is a long time, but is it long enough for another candidate to creep out of the woodwork and build a campaign? I don’t think so.
amk
@Benjamin Franklin: Yeah, aug 2011 piece. As I said, limp dick. GFY indeed.
ericblair
Hey, you want something to chew on? What if a Republican congress just flat-out refused to certify electoral ballots? No reason, just because they don’t like the results. Now what? Luckily, both houses need to vote to reject a state’s ballot, not just one, so we’ve still got the Senate in 2012.
Just because nobody in Congress would even question the Bush/Gore electors for Florida in 2000 doesn’t mean the goopers wouldn’t now.
JGabriel
SteveM:
Wow, that’s a tough one. Could you get a dog to bite steak?
The Kaplan Daily’s business interests in private college scams is supported by the GOP far more than the Obama administration. Ideologically, WaPo already leans right, but they don’t even need an ideological reason to join with the GOP. The bidness would be compelling enough all on their own.
.
ChrisNYC
I think you’re giving them too much credit for organization and coherence and even goal. Are they at all interested in the general public anymore? Can you get two of them to agree on anything and work consistently to a (horror!) shared goal? Pitched Walker and Kasich off the cliff pretty damn quick. As for hearings, remember the OH NOES! BIG BAD ISSA IS COMING AFTER US! phase. Darrell who?
JGabriel
JGabriel:
The bidness reasons would be compelling enough all on their own.
(FYWP. Won’t let me edit my own comment.)
.
Veritas
Give that probably more than half of the “progressives” on this thread think the 2004 election was “stolen”, I call this a classic case of projection.
RealityCheck
Brian R.
OT, but tuned in to Fox News to see how they covered the president’s speech at Ft. Bragg announcing the end of the war in Iraq.
The anchor — not an analyst, the “fair-and-balanced” anchor — led it off with a statement about how “the White House is trying to spin the withdrawal as a promise kept.”
Imagine that. They said they’d get us out of Iraq, and now they got us out of Iraq, and they have the nerve to “spin” that as a “promise kept.”
And now the anchor is back, accusing Obama of flip-flopping because he opposed its prosecution under Bush when he was running for president and then had the nerve to finish the war when he was elected. Flip-flopper!
Amazing. It’s like watching Baghdad Bob during the invasion.
pseudonymous in nc
“Voter fraud” is the Rovian attempt to distract attention from vote suppression.
Voter fraud is carried out at high risk and low reward: it is a felony that alters the total by one. (The bullshit line is that the minuscule levels of fraud, usually inadvertent, prove that it is widespread and undetectable. That ain’t so.) Vote suppression is low risk and high reward: the recent case in MD is one of the few where vote suppression got punished, because it was so blatant. The people who put up posters saying “election day is Wednesday” or “pay your parking fines or you can’t vote” never get caught.
The subtext is that certain people’s votes should still count for less.
The Bearded Blogger
@KG: Honestly, given the state of the economy, I think they could all flip, as well as a couple of southwestern states. Obviously, it’s eleven months out, it’s not what I’m hoping for, and a dem blowout could be a possibility, given the GOPs recent embrace of all out insanity.
gaz
bottom line is, so far as I can tell:
The GOP is too dysfunctional at the moment to mount a decent challenge to Obama. We’re entering a period that I think parallels the Goldwater debacle in many respects.
I don’t think it’s going to change in eleven months. In fact, I think things will just get worse for the GOP.
rlrr
@KG:
All Obama has to do is win the states Kerry won plus one more. He did it 2008 and could do it in 2012.
Brian R.
@Veritas:
Given that you’re a “dumbass” who has no “facts” to back up your “bullshit,” I’d say you should go fuck yourself.
Repeatedly.
I mean, it’s not like anyone else would ever do it, right?
srv
Obama 2012 Motto: Worst President Evah, but still better than Newt
KG
@ericblair: Congress doesn’t certify electoral ballots. Electoral ballots are “signed and certified” by electors and then transmitted “sealed” to the Vice President who counts them before a joint session of Congress. Whoever gets to 270 first is president. Congress’ only roll is to watch the count and then vote if no one gets to 270… At least that’s my reading of the
11th12th Amendmentthe only time I remember the electoral vote count being televised was in 2000/2001, probably on the off chance that one GOP elector abstained or voted for Gore to throw the matter to Congress. But that didn’t happen.
Violet
@ChrisNYC:
I was at the gym yesterday and saw on one of the TVs that CNN was interviewing him. I swear the segment went on for ten minutes. It was interminable. I can’t remember what it was about, but I kept glancing at the TV hoping it CNN would move on to something else. They didn’t. He got plenty of time.
rlrr
@srv:
And Bush I and Bush II.
rlrr
and whoever emerges from the GOP scrum
Republicans a hoping the re-animated corpse of Ronald Reagan will enter the race…
ChrisNYC
@Violet: Yeah, sure, he’s on tv. He’s determined to get Holder. He won’t. Blah blah. Ask people about Fast and Furious. They think it’s a Jackie Chan movie. Scary hearings fail.
KG
@The Bearded Blogger: sure, they all could flip, but again, I’ve been watching the polls a bit and keep seeing Obama leading or within the margin of error without even running a campaign yet. If you can’t beat the incumbent when he’s hasn’t started running – meaning you have the stage to attack him all day with no counter punch – then you’re likely mighty well screwed once he starts to run.
Zifnab25
The 2010 election demonstrated that conservatives still exist and vote in large numbers. The real question is whether they show up.
KG
@rlrr: does a zombie count as the same person? Because then I don’t think Zombie Reagan would be eligible. Though zombie Truman and zombie FDR would be.
Downpuppy
In the states with suppression laws, the Republican will do better than the poliing suggests. In the freer states, not so much.
Hence, they’ll point out “Look! Obama won on voter fraud in the states without Photo ID laws!”
Since refuting this will require High School Math, we’re doomed.
DFH no.6
It’s very much received knowledge (you know, like the Bible) amongst the many conservatives I know (family, co-workers, neighbors) that there is significant voter fraud committed by Democrats, what with ACORN and Mickey Mouse’s signature and black preachers walking around the ghettos on election day with wads of cash, etc..
One of my teabagging brothers-in-law back in the old hometown (Cleveland) gleefully tells me of his election day volunteer work wherein he hangs out at my long-ago inner city elementary school and challenges as many voters as he can (it being a very heavily Democratic neighborhood). To stop the Democratic voter fraud.
In SteveM’s quite likely scenario (very close victory by Obama) I believe the fascists will do anything and everything to de-legitimize the result, including ramping up the Democratic voter fraud claims.
I think they would make a large and loud move to “mainstream” this voter fraud bullshit, which would most certainly be carried and even promoted by the media (very much including the Kaplan rag).
I think it much less likely that this could nullify Obama’s election, mostly because there won’t actually be Democratic voter fraud.
Marc
@65: If you want actually unpopular, try George Bush – with approval ratings in the 20s for *years*.
http://www.clipsandcomment.com/2009/02/08/the-daily-graphic-george-w-bush-approval-rating-over-eight-years/
Obama is all the way down to 49 percent. That would be higher than Bush during his entire second term. What magical world do you live in where this makes him “the worst president ever”?
Brandon
This post is concern trolling at its finest. My hope is that this post is held up in the annals of the intertubes as the concern trolling architype.
ChrisNYC
@Brandon: This. Indeedy.
srv
@rlrr: Aim High!
43 percent of women view Newt favorably?
Me thinks those conservative women may be giving him way more of a pass than the posters think.
The Moar You Know
They’ll do their best to tie up every state legislature for the next four years with allegations of voter fraud. Fox will hit it nonstop.
They’ll be playing with fire by doing this, but they don’t care. If they can’t win it they certainly have no problem burning it down.
JGabriel
@KG:
I think this route to GOP > 270 is more likely: flip Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Colorado, Omaha, 1 of {NV or NM}, and 2 of {Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania}.
We’ve got to assume that Walker, Snyder, Kasich, Scott, and Corbett will be going all out to win their states for the GOP, and that none of them are above election fraud.
.
amk
@Brandon: I would rate this post as an example of blogger’s block.
kay
@Veritas:
Are you as disappointed in Mitt Romney as a candidate as I am? Why can’t he get better at this?
He’s let everyone down. Really underperformed.
JGabriel
@The Moar You Know:
They’re gonna do that anyway.
.
Marc
@JGabriel:
The local republicans are a major liability, not asset, in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida. That’s one reason why I’m optimistic for Obama here in the Buckeye state; it’s difficult to understand how deeply loathed Kasich is here. This has consequences across the board for Republicans, none of them good.
FYI the Secretary of State is a Republican in Ohio, but he’s shown real reluctance to engage in the voter suppression game, and the republican election law is blocked until the 2012 election in any case. I’d expect a relatively clean election despite the efforts of the national party.
ant
dang.
where all these new tard trolls come from?
Violet
@srv:
That’s not what that quote is saying. It says that 53% of women view Obama favorably and 43% of men do. Where did you get Gingrich from that?
From the same article:
amk
@JGabriel: Nope those fuckers burnt those bridges long time back. With their approval ratings in the ditches, they can do jacksquat.
Supernumerary Charioteer
It’s started, at least. My winger we-were-in-the-same-college-club-but-we’re-not-really-friends FB acquaintance put up a post from Pajamas Media calling the laws “Election Integrity Laws”.
Think we might have to do some work in reframing the issue before we run into another ‘death tax’/’illegal alien’/’homeland security’/’patriot ‘/whatever Fucking Winger Optics Shitkicker Meme. ‘Voter ID Law’ is bad enough, since nobody in the center wants to speak out against IDs.
‘Voter Disqualification Laws’?
Violet
@Supernumerary Charioteer:
No, that still sounds like it’s protecting elections so that only eligible voters get to vote. You want something that sounds like it’s messing with the right to vote. Like:
Voter Manipulation Laws
Poll Tax Laws
DMV Tax Laws (because you have to pay the DMV for your ID)
Etc.
AA+ Bonds
If you mean have they been doing this since 1996, the answer is yes, yes they have
SteveM
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): It wasn’t “He is not legitimately president,” without codewords. That makes a difference. I’m asking whether this time a significant selection of GOP front-benchers might say that in so many words, which to me would be the crossing of a line that still hasn’t been crossed.
carpeduum
Yawn…what utter nonsense. Those are a lot of dots you are connecting.
Let’s just pretend for a second that Cole is a mass murdering psychopath….there is absolutely no evidence he is not after all. Now let’s say someone dies within the next year……it’s a possiblility. Is it not too much of a stretch to suggest Cole is the person who did it. Let’s mentally masturbate over that thought for awhile shall we.
Stay ….errum….nutty you BJ typing monkey. Cole really knows how to pick em. Slow day for political gloom porn I guess.
And what perfect timing. Only a day or two after a poll that shows Obama leading Newt Romney in South Carolina for christ sakes! LOL.
ericblair
@KG:
No, reps and Senators can object to state’s vote counts: if at least one of each objects, the House and Senate have to separate, deliberate, and vote on whether to sustain the objection and reject the state’s certificate of votes. Both the House and the Senate have to vote to reject, and if both do then the electors are ignored.
I remember watching this in 2001. A couple of members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected, but couldn’t get a senator (even Gore) to object as well, and that was that. Then we got eight years of peace and prosperity and general good government from Bush the Lesser and the rest is history.
AA+ Bonds
I do not believe that most Republicans have considered any American election legitimate where Democrats won, not since 1976 at the very latest
Honestly, this has been a winning tactic for them and I’m surprised Democrats haven’t adopted it, considering the 2000 presidential decision was not only illegitimate but unconstitutional
SteveM
@Midnight Marauder: Donald Trump sank like a stone the second the long-form birth certificate came out. Even people in the crazy base fled from him.
The only thing “lazy” here is your inability to read what I wrote. i’m talking about an overt, uncoded declaration of illegitimacy by Republican leaders. That would be new.
AA+ Bonds
I am actually gearing up to start howling about 2012’s illegitimacy myself, because racist/Republican suppression of the black and Hispanic vote will probably be the #1 factor in many races across the country.
AA+ Bonds
@SteveM:
If you were born in the year of our Lord 2000 maybe
TimC
I know this in anecdotal, personal and useless in any kind of analysis, thus perfect for a political blog on the internet.
My mother-in-law is 63, white and upper middle class. She voted for Regan, Bush-I, Dole, Bush-II and McCain. Her remarks after watching the GOP Primary debates.
“They are all crazy, I’m voting for Obama. None of the stuff they said about him {Obama} back in 2008 was true. He’s quite nice really.”
AA+ Bonds
President Clinton: he happened?
AA+ Bonds
Pretty much every national election has the Republicans doing this, it happened all over 2008, and where they lost over the President they won in the Senate
Todd Dugdale
The latest PPP weekly poll shows the depth of the Republican delusion.
For the question “Do you think Newt Gingrich would defeat Barack Obama if he was the Republican Presidential candidate next year?”, nationally 31% say “yes” and 50% say “no”. Women break 26/53, and independents are at 27/57. The only demographics showing a majority “yes” are Republicans (54/23), Conservatives (50/25), and Tea Party (66/15).
Three of the four regions of the country (NE, South, Midwest, and West) show a majority answering “no”, and the South shows a plurality (33/45) saying “no”.
The numbers for Romney are a bit better for Republicans: nationally 32 (yes) and 45 (no). But only the Tea Party shows a majority believing that Romney can beat Obama (54/22). Republicans only break 48/25.
Of course, this doesn’t survey who people will vote for. It’s only the public’s perception of who they think will win. But at this point, it looks as if only Republicans would be shocked by Obama winning the general.
CarolDuhart2
@Brandon: It’s not. Why are we seeing all these voter ID, redistricting excesses? It’s about shrinking the size of the vote to where a bit of tossed votes and uncounted provisionals can allow the Republican candidates to squeak through. But they can no longer do so with subtle means in the age of the Internet. It has to be a sledgehammer or they don’t work anymore.
For those of you who poo-poo this, remember the vote purge of 2000 in Florida, the shenanagins in Ohio in 2004. the threats against Jennifer Brunner in 2008. We should have long ago had real voting reform, but white Democrats have either blamed the robbed losers like Gore and Kerry or put their heads in the sand over these issues. I mean, where is the proposal or activist group really pushing a modern reformed voting system that’s fair? Not even the blogs really put effort into securing the vote because many of them have never been turned away from a polling place or feared they may be turned away.
Mike G
If a Dem wins the Repigs automatically KNOW it’s illegitimate. It’s just a matter of firing up their Random Excuse Generator to see which complaint they will push this time.
ACORN? Sunspots? Meteor shower?
Linda Featheringill
@harlana:
I saw that poll. Don’t remember where. But it looks to me like we should not give up on any area. If we have the stamina for a good fight, we might accomplish great things.
[Yes, we can.]
Dork
That’s a phenomenonly ridiculous ratio. Only 15% believe Newt is too damaged goods? And why so much TP support for a guy who is: 1) Not Family Values, 2) Not Washington outsider, and 3) Likes many Big Gubbmint programs?
Raenelle
FSM grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I think the what if scene outlined above falls under the category of WTF can we do about it.
Let me go to another oldie–this time, General Grant. He says he learned early not to worry about what the other guy was going to do, but to make the other guy worry about what he was going to do.
They’ll whinge and use any and every thing that excites the base. That’s their nature. Scorpions sting, dogs bark, right-wingers whine and cheat.
amk
@CarolDuhart2: Be that as it may, in what way this post is about voter ID, redistricting excesses ? It tosses up an hypothetical, which is then supported by other airy hypotheticals without even making an attempt on how to solve all those hypos.
Face
@Dork: Because he’s: 1)a member of the Democrat Party, 2) He’s a ni##er, and 3) See 1) and 2).
Dont overthink the mindset of the Tealiban.
Judas Escargot
@ericblair:
I do wonder if the GOP will end up going so far as to try dissolving the Republic, and if so, how would they do this?
They’ve certainly done so operationally (with yet another gubbmint shutdown showdown looming).
Benjamin Franklin
@CarolDuhart2:
We’ve been to the circus. Seen the puppet show. Gore and Kerry couldn’t comprehend the level of scum they were dealing with. Nice guys don’t finish without an infuriating politeness as though the Republic is stronger when they do so.
Balderdash.
Midnight Marauder
@SteveM:
He sank like a stone because President Obama dropped the fucking hammer on him. Nevertheless, let’s not pretend like there are not a multitude of Republicans in pursuit of public office running the same game that Donald Trump ran. I used Trump as an example to demonstrate that your concerns about such issues being “mainstreamed” are absurd because it is already actively happening. You are prognosticating about something that is already a reality.
An “overt, uncoded declaration of illegitimacy by Republican leaders”? Do you mean things like this?
Tell me, how are you going to claim that Republicans efforts are anything besides “overt” and “uncoded” when the Senate Minority Leader went on record saying the following last year:
Republicans have been entirely explicit since the very beginning that they do not view the Obama presidency as legitimate. They do not view President Obama as a legitimate citizen. They do not view his Christian faith as legitimate. They turned ACORN into a cultural boogeyman because the organization had the audacity to go around helping brown people exercise their right to vote, and you want to come on the scene in December 2011 and write “By which I mean that prominent Republican officeholders and officials may literally not accept the results of the 2012 election”? As though they accepted the results of the 2008 elections?!
The logic demonstrated in this post is a farce. You keep talking about these things as though they are some kind of new phenomenon. They are not new. Not in the slightest.
I find it rather telling that you seem highly resistant to accepting this.
phoebes-in-santa fe
This is completely O/T but I thought it was very interesting. A fellow called “shagspur” posted this about Newt Gingrich over at Taegan Goddard’s POLITICAL WIRE today.
“Here is the absolute truth about Newt Gingrich, written by one who knows, myself, a fellow ERG. Newt Gingrich has Asperger’s Syndrome. He talks at people with pure Aspergian speech. Hypersensitive, he somehow is also emotionally tone deaf to others. He does not play well with other children. He is impulsive, and prone to puzzling mood swings. He is not a good liar, but seems to lie because he makes conflicting remarks constantly. Whatever he is saying at the time is his absolute truth, because at that moment, he believes it. Finally, he relies on scripts in all his social interactions. He taught his scripts (Democrats are “odious, pathetic, malignant, etc) to fellow Republicans and flipped the house in ’94. Now, probably coached by his wife, Callista, a control freak, he is running a script in which he never says an unkind word to a fellow Republican. Bottom line: EGSs are useful, brilliant and often important people. Bill Gates is an ERG, as is Mark Zuckerburg. BUT… you would not want to give the nuclear football to one of us. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
I would not mind at all to see this Asperger’s analysis go viral. “
carpeduum
This has to be a contender for dumbest blog post of the year. Heck of a job SteveM. You should be proud.
Right up there with Anne Laurie’s “the black helicopters are trying to shut down occupy wall street because Micheal Moore read about it on some blog”
Do they have Razzies for blogs and bloggers?
Citizen Alan
@Veritas:
God I love the pie filter.
Davis X. Machina
@ant: I’m not sure, but ‘veritas’ is risking prosecution under the Trades Description Act.
eemom
@Brandon:
@amk:
Thank you. I thought I was alone in my state of bewilderment about what an elaborate exercise in idiocy this is.
A life: that which some folks need to get.
ETA: holy shit, even carpedumdum got it right.
Violet
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
What’s an ERG and an ESG?
rikryah
as someone who had both parents growing up in the Jim Crow South, fuck all these mofos and their bullshyt voter fraud.
DanielX
The very first response to this post makes the point, just about everything else is troll bait (as is the original post, actually). A lot of Republicans don’t regard any President other than a Republican as a legitimate holder of the office? This is not exactly news, and doesn’t constitute a brilliant insight either. So yeah, the first response nails it. Who gives a fiddler’s fuck about the fit the Rs will throw if they lose at this point? I was concerned that Bush/Cheney would put the country under martial law if McCain lost in 2008…didn’t happen, obviously. Anybody can wank all they want about hypotheticals – worry about it when it happens.
Samara Morgan
@japa21: yes. it is really the only tool they have to fight the demographic timer.
The GOP has been spectacularily unsuccessful at appealing to minority voters.
The Other Chuck
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
Because yeah we all know Aspergers cases love to go on speaking tours and Sunday talk shows every waking moment of their existence. Anyone actually qualified to diagnose a mental condition isn’t going to pull said diagnosis out of their ass and post it on the internet, unless of course their name is Bill Frist.
I’m guessing this ESG/ERG jargon is more of that Meyers Briggs personality test codswallop?
RalfW
@japa21: You did see hints of this in Minnesota in the last two tight vote-recount situations.
Both Coleman-Franken and later Emmer-Dayton could have been dragged out much further. But in fact the very high scrutiny of the process turned up a few dozen technically-fraudulent votes out of millions cast.
That doesn’t fit the GOP narrative, so they have to back down before there’s too much overall scrutiny of the process…because the process works really well here, and we can’t see that too clearly or next year’s expected Voter ID constitutional amendment won’t fly.
schrodinger's cat
What is with all this chicken little stuff, O the Republicans are so bad, I am going to hid under my bed. I refuse to fret about something that hasn’t happened yet.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@The Other Chuck: Possibly. I didn’t write it, I merely copied it but I did think it was interesting. I really have no experience with Aspergers, other than reading about it. I’ve always thought Gingrich was strange and without empathy – but that could actually describe most of the GOP field.
I don’t know about going out in public; if that’s a deterrent to the thought he might have Asbergers. Again, I just thought it was interesting…