My party is destroying itself on the altar of Trump
Benjamin Ginsberg has been a REPUBLICAN election lawyer for decades.
Biden and his supporters are strictly off topic.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Benjamin L. Ginsberg practiced election law for 38 years. He co-chaired the bipartisan 2013 Presidential Commission on Election Administration.
President Trump has failed the test of leadership. His bid for reelection is foundering. And his only solution has been to launch an all-out, multimillion-dollar effort to disenfranchise voters — first by seeking to block state laws to ease voting during the pandemic, and now, in the final stages of the campaign, by challenging the ballots of individual voters unlikely to support him.
This is as un-American as it gets. It returns the Republican Party to the bad old days of “voter suppression” that landed it under a court order to stop such tactics — an order lifted before this election. It puts the party on the wrong side of demographic changes in this country that threaten to make the GOP a permanent minority .
Nearly every Election Day since 1984 I’ve worked with Republican poll watchers, observers and lawyers to record and litigate any fraud or election irregularities discovered.
The truth is that over all those years Republicans found only isolated incidents of fraud. Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.
Perhaps this was the plan all along. The president’s unsubstantiated talk about “rigged” elections caused by absentee ballot “fraud” and “cheating” has been around since 2016 ; it’s just increased in recent weeks.
Trump has enlisted a compliant Republican Party in this shameful effort. The Trump campaign and Republican entities engaged in more than 40 voting and ballot court cases around the country this year. In exactly none — zero — are they trying to make it easier for citizens to vote. In many, they are seeking to erect barriers .
All of the suits include the mythical fraud claim. Many are efforts to disqualify absentee ballots, which have surged in the pandemic. The grounds range from supposedly inadequate signature matches to burdensome witness requirements. Others concern excluding absentee ballots postmarked on Election Day but received later , as permitted under state deadlines. Voter-convenience devices such as drop boxes and curbside voting have been attacked.
Texas Republicans even thought it was a good idea to challenge 100,000 ballots already cast at a Harris County drive-through voting center that they want retroactively declared illegal. Perhaps they forgot the Republican expressions of outrage in Florida in 2000 when Democrats sought unsuccessfully to exclude 25,000 absentee ballots in GOP counties because of administrative error, not voter fault.
I was there, and I haven’t.
The GOP lawyers managing these lawsuits may have tactical reasons for bringing each. But taken as a whole, they shout the unmistakable message that an expanded electorate means Trump loses.
This attempted disenfranchisement of voters cannot be justified by the unproven Republican dogma about widespread fraud. Challenging voters at the polls or disputing the legitimacy of mail-in ballots isn’t about fraud. Rather than producing conservative policies that appeal to suburban women, young voters or racial minorities, Republicans are trying to exclude their votes.
“We have volunteers, attorneys and staff in place to ensure that election officials are following the law and counting every lawful ballot,” Justin Riemer, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, said Friday.
That’s not precisely true. The Republican challenging effort is focused almost exclusively in heavily Democratic areas. Signature mismatches will go unheeded by Trump forces in friendly precincts. This is not about finding fraud and irregularities. It’s about suppressing the number of votes not cast for Trump.
Maybe the president foreshadowed his real purpose at a Pennsylvania rally Saturday night, predicting “bedlam” if the results aren’t known Nov. 3. In fact, challenged ballots aren’t reviewed until days later. So in a tight race, Trump’s demands for a quick result could cause the very bedlam he rails against. Or allow him to claim a false election night victory based on bad-faith challenges.
How sad it is to recall that just seven years ago the Grand Old Party conducted an “autopsy” that emphasized the urgency of building a big tent to reach communities of color, women and young voters. Now it is erecting voting barriers for those very groups. Instead of enlarging the tent, the party has taken a chain saw to its center pole.
My party is destroying itself on the Altar of Trump. Republican elected officials, party leaders and voters must recognize how harmful this is to the party’s long-term prospects.
My fellow Republicans, look what we’ve become. It is we who must fix this. Trump should not be reelected. Vote, but not for him.
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The Trumpists are going to bitch and complain, and call Ginsberg, a life-long Republican, a RINO. What they will not be able to do is dispute the truth in what Ginsberg says.
When a Trumpist calls someone a RINO that now means Rational, Independent, Normal, Objective... all things Trumpists are not.
I hear this same sentiment from other republicans this year. this election represents a crossroads to me, and which direction I will go, for the rest of my life.
How so Dev? If you can elaborate a bit it would be very informative.
exactly how will this election affect you?
I won't know until the results of the election are known, and how I feel at that time.
OK. Understood.
Let me know if you need bail money.
Allow me. First the current sitch: The first thing that happened to me was Trump’s ‘tax cut’, because I have places in the NJ & NYC, the deletion of the SALT deduction costs me $8,000/year. This is a minor annoyance. Trump’s trade war is not. It costs manufacturing companies like mine a fortune — of course, in his puerile ignorance, ‘trade wars are easy to win’. As we have seen, nope. And even with business severely down because of the pandemic, we’re still paying Trump stupidity tariffs on top.
Then there’s his complete bungling of the coronavirus response. My partner and I gave up a quarter of our income to deal with his trade war. We gave up more income to keep people employed while businesses had to be shut down. We were able to obtain a PPP loan to mitigate that somewhat. We’ve been open for almost 5 months; we distributed the people who had been grouped in one area across the warehouse. Assembly is done at widely separated stations, and people don masks when they have to interact. We’ve had no problems with infection. Masks and social distancing are super simple to use, and they work. Meanwhile, Trump has politicized both of these simple & sane measures. As well as just about everything else.
So to answer your question, here's what I'd like to see this election accomplish: The SALT deduction reinstated, a well thought out reaction to China’s machinations with specific goals, like TPP. But mostly, a president who takes responsibility, who will take the reigns and guide the country out of the mess Trump’s abject ignorance and narcissism has created.
Good for you, but bad for the 30 million on unemployment. If you're paying corporate taxes as a small business owner, then you don't know what you're doing.
Seems to me like the SALT deduction limits just ensured that rich people pay their fair share!
If the limits are the same for all Americans, it is fair to me.
This would be true if federal taxes were returned at the same rate to all states. But they are not, the rich states subsidize the poorer ones. I don't have a problem with this subsidizing, but there should be limits. As I said, this is a minor thing. My main problem with the Trump tax cut is that it will result in the federal government borrowing about $2T. You'd be hard pressed to find even a quarter of that returned to people who actually need it. That leaves a trillion and a half going to the already rich. Money that could be used for improvements to education, infrastructure, nutrition, a cleaner environment, ... Maybe a real solution to homelessness. But no, conservative voters are thrown some crumbs and are thrilled. A selfishness that is so stupid and counterproductive.
I remember that well and the results that showed what they had to do to enlarge the tent.
Seems that they have ignored that the results and are intent on shirking the tent.
That does seem to be the case. It's almost as if they intend to apply Grover Norquist's concept to themselves. To paraphrase Norquist:
"I just want to shrink [the Republican Party] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
That Republican autopsy seemed to draw the conclusion that the Party had to find ways to include the rising demographics. But a very different interpretation of the data was possible.
The Party could survive by preventing those rising demographics from ever sharing power. For example, by preventing them from voting.
Trump is the result. He brought "hatred for 'the other' " into the mainstream... into the spotlight.
The traditional Republican demographic is no longer a majority? No problem!
Just change the rules to exclude "those people".
Is it any wonder that the once Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln is now known merely as the gop?
you mean people are calling it what it is--- the GOP?
Oh, the horrors!
"The GOP" and "horrors" are synonymous. You seem to recognize that.
[deleted]
Truth
not in the real world.
In the real world, yes. [deleted]
I will concede to your obvious expertise in troll world.
but it still ain't true in the real world.
Thank you for pointing out my expertise in spotting trolls.
[deleted]
Since you do not know, gop is a nasty filthy brown stinking vile substance of unknown origins which is most often found at the very bottom of a really nasty ancient abandoned refrigerator under the bottom crisper drawer.
Let me guess...Trump University?
Right on target.
[deleted]
ooh, you appear to be a horrible guesser.
I recommend trying something different
That appears to be a very mature, well-thought-out post.
/s
Voted most of you up.
However I must digress and take issue with Ginsberg's assertion. Supply Side Economics ripped away the GOP's mantra of what ever it portrayed itself to be, reverting the party from small government individualism to a party dependent upon 'big money-concentrated wealth' to sustain itself. Donald Trump is the ultimate symptom of lazy, unaccountable and perhaps fraudulent wealth being 'the determinant' factor for GOP success. The GOP permitted this. The GOP sustained Trump and Trumpism. Question remains as to whether the GOP will pay a price or continue to skate on the fetus, bible and the gun.
Hey, I really like that expression.