It’s now eight months before the general election, and I find myself plagued not at all by the obvious question…will it be Trump or Biden? Instead, I find myself asking again and again: will they let Trump win?
The motto of the current Democrat Party is clearly Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi, which may be loosely translated as “Gods may do what cattle may not”. The American people are in this case the cattle, and the Democrat establishment clearly sees itself as above any constraints at all. All you have to do to see this is to consider the extraordinary number of indictments leveled against Trump, the hundreds of serious charges leveled at people who literally did nothing but enter the Capitol on January 6, the lawfare aimed at anyone who offered legal advice to Trump, or the cases brought against electors who supported him. And this does not even run the full gamut of what has been done.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the legal arguments in all these cases and forget that they rest on very shaky grounds. In fact, the majority of charges are based on the definition of a two abstract nouns… insurrection and criminalty. Was January 6 an insurrection? Was Trump’s claim of election fraud criminal?
The majority of sane people would say, well, no. An insurrection is an armed uprising designed to overthrow a government. The protestors were not armed, and their intent was to protest, not overthrow. It was thus at worst a riot. And in what genuinely free country is it a criminal offense to question the results of an election? In what free country is it a crime to protest what you believe were electoral irregularities? In what free country is it a crime to give legal advice to your client?
Surely not America, you’d say. But in this Year of Grace 2024 it is exactly in America that this is playing itself out.
In this context you have to ask yourself: do the Democrats understand the damage that violating all these legal and semantic norms is doing to Americans’ perception of justice? Do they understand the shocked disbelief so many citizens now feel because of this? Do they understand how they are destroying the faith of millions in their country? Do they even care?
I think the only answer to that question is, no, they don’t. They are so filled with rage and hatred of Trump that they cannot help themselves.
I have spoken to so many liberals, some of whom are my friends, and I have come to the conclusion that they genuinely belief Trump is evil and will destroy democracy. They have no proof of this. It’s what psychologists would call projection. But it’s real to them.
But here is an inexplicable part of this tangled web: the near covert cooperation of so many in the Republican Party in this fevered dream. I say near covert, for it’s almost never admitted. But if it were not for their cooperation, the Democrats would be fighting much more adverse public opinion than they are. Those who are helping in this endeavor are apparently just as motivated by hatred – or fear — of Trump as the Democrats are. It’s just that they’re afraid to state it publicly. So they lie. They make statements about how we all need to put the past aside. They say how much they admire Trump, but really… They set up inquiries of Trump’s adversaries that are designed to fail. And when what they have initiated is in danger of making public facts that would help Trump, they sabotage them. Here’s an example.
In the face of intense pressure from rank and file and Trump supporters, and after lengthy resistance, Robin Vos, Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, hired Judge Michael Gableman to investigate claims of electoral fraud. We can be fairly sure that Vos expected Gableman to be incompetent at the job and turn up nothing that would shake the claim that the Wisconsin 2020 election was fair as the driven snow. Unfortunately, Gableman took his job seriously, and, far from finding nothing, discovered widespread irregularities. Vos, of course, hoist with his own petard, fired Gableman, and claimed that hiring him was the worst decision he had ever made.
I’m sure it was.
Such examples are not rare. In Arizona the main opposition to investigation of the 2020 and 2022 elections came from Republicans like Stephen Richer and Bill Gates. When there was a Republican who was a Trump supporter running, there is a strong suspicion that they preferred to see the Democrat win. In Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger fought tooth and nail to stymie any investigation into the election in that state.
And the Republican National Committee? What did it do to ensure election integrity under Ronna McDaniel? This is what she said: “The American people deserve to have faith in our elections. That’s why the RNC is going to pursue this process to the very end.”
And this is what she did: she wanted to force all Republican candidates to sign a loyalty pledge, and did not even bother to ensure the RNC provided accurate canvassing lists.
How useful.
I will go further and state baldly: if it were not for the Republican politicians and Judges aiding the Democrats, none of this would have succeeded. If Trump is destroyed, don’t blame just the Democrats. Point your finger most of all at Republicans, who are the worst kind of partisan of all: betrayers of their own base.
But the bottom line is this: they — Democrats and Republicans — cannot give up now. Consider the consequences a second Trump presidency would have for these people. Consider the immense amount of money, prestige and position they would lose. Worst of all: consider that they might well be personally destroyed if what they have done is made manifest to the people of America by a second Trump administration.
So my belief is that what they did in 2020 and 2022 they must do again. They have no choice. They will pull out all stops to keep Trump out of power, and that includes a fraudulent election. I can’t see how they can do anything else.
The RNC under Lara Trump is no longer the flaccid organization it was under McDaniel. It will fight, even vote-harvest in retaliation. But will this be enough? I doubt it. Some of the fraud comes from vote-harvesting. But most of it comes from inflated voter rolls, and fraudulent ballots made in the name of phantom electors, who exist in large numbers just about everywhere. And the voting infrastructure in all the important states is controlled by Democrats or their Republican allies. There’s not enough time before the November election to clean these rolls, let alone clean out the Democrats and their fellow-travellers. So what is needed for a fraudulent election is already in place.
But will they get away with it?
This is not 2020. By a recent Rasmussen poll, 52% of respondents believe that the 2024 election will be affected by fraud. A further 11% are not sure.
If so many people now lack faith in our elections, what will happen if there is a repeat of 2020? Remember…this is not a time when most people are happy with the country and its leadership. Now we have a senile, probably criminal, incompetent in office, and a ruling party which seems to have lost its mind. And people know it. All the evidence indicates that the Democrats should suffer a defeat in November.
And if they don’t, will people believe it?
And if they don’t believe it, what will they do?
I don’t know. But I do know we’re approaching a boiling point in our polity. God help us.
Author’s credit: Anthony Tye Rodrigues (anthony@aristar.org) is a retired academic living in Texas, and the author of a book set in Britain in the later Roman Empire, called “Gemini”. It is the first published novel of a trilogy.
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