Voting Republican this term may end up changing the US Constitution to help the Far Right ideas

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A “born and raised Republican,” Perry always supported abortion rights in theory—she just never expected to need (or want) an abortion. “You can be a Republican Christian and still be pro-choice, because it’s compassion and empathy and giving the benefit of the doubt to the human that is going through this, that they have prayed and done the best thing that they knew to do for their child or for themselves,” Perry told Jezebel.

Unexpectedly, the abortion issue became urgently personal for Perry. She described in an interview with me her harrowing journey to terminate her pregnancy in a state that bans abortion after receiving a devastating diagnosis. She was forced carry her unviable fetus, a girl they named Ivy Grace, for 49 days while waiting for an abortion. It didn’t have to be like this. “This has to stay between a patient and the doctor and her relationship with whatever—if she’s religious or not religious—this is between her and what she believes in,” Perry said.

A month after the initial anatomy scan, at 22 weeks, a second echocardiogram (a kind of heart scan) confirmed the severity of HLHS and added aortic atresia to the growing list of diagnoses. The couple, who both grew up ardently Christian, had both agreed it was best to terminate. But at least 43 abortion clinics have closed since Roe was overturned. Between the dwindling number of clinics and her increasing gestation date, the number of places legally allowed to take Perry’s case was shrinking by the week. At the very end of August an appointment opens up—two weeks from then. “I have to live and work for two more weeks because of the backlog. [We’re] being forced to wait because [we’re] having to leave the state that won’t protect them to go to one that will,” she said.

Perry had to send a mass text to clients explaining that a fetal diagnosis meant she didn’t want to talk about her pregnancy or for them to comment on it. She’s a small business owner; if she doesn’t work, she doesn’t make money. “To be forced to carry to full term, knowing your child isn’t going to make it, is so cruel. I know what that was like, because I did it for two weeks, and I couldn’t imagine doing it for another few months,” she said.

Perry would have to continue to carry a wanted pregnancy that had little to no chance of thriving outside her body. It had already been nearly five weeks since she learned about the HLHS diagnosis. The overall cost would be $10,000 to $12,000 out of pocket, and the clinic directed them to abortion funds and practical support resources to help. “I swear they’re angels on earth. I felt guilty even taking funding,” she told me. “We make a good living together, but we had just bought our house, you know, thinking we’re bringing a baby home. The timing of it was horrible. I kept telling them, ‘I promise you, we’re going to give you all this money back one day because I want other people to be helped.’”

The procedure went smoothly. “I knew I was just giving my daughter the gift of peace and freedom and no pain whatsoever,” she told Jezebel.

That was less than two months ago. Now, Perry sees her harrowing story as a way to make a difference. Despite being a registered Republican, Perry has been working to get Democrat Joe Cunningham, the gubernatorial candidate, elected. Cunningham is challenging Gov. Henry McMasters—the current Republican governor who is itching to ban same-sex marriage again—who signed the six-week gestation ban that made it impossible for Perry to receive care in her home state.

Before she would make the multi-state trek to her abortion appointment, Perry wrote letters to “every statehouse representative” asking them to “understand the nuance and just give women the choice.” And she started the Ivy Grace Project to bring awareness to fetal anomaly diagnoses within abortion care. Talking about Ivy’s diagnosis “is giving her death meaning,” Perry said. “This is helping other women not feeling alienated and alone that they made the best decision for themselves and their children.”

(full article online)

South Carolina Woman Was Forced to Carry Unviable Fetus for 49 Days

Jill Perry Hartle, a Republican, told Jezebel her story ahead of the midterms in hope of making conservatives understand what's at stake.

jezebel.com

 

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Anywho! Crenshaw’s reasoning, which is either naively or disingenuously wrong-headed, is that all of these Republican officials and candidates know that the Big Lie is a lie: “It was always a lie. The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up.” Crenshaw claims he is frustrated with his fellow Republicans because he says that the “the promises you’re making that you’re gonna challenge the Electoral College and overturn the election, there’s not even a process for you to do that. It doesn’t even exist.” It is also the reason he believes our democracy is safe, because in his estimation, there isn’t a way for Republicans who are already wildly disproportionately represented in two of our three branches of government to do it. “It cannot be done.”

Crenshaw also chalks up the continuing disinformation campaign to partisan lies and rhetoric simply becoming “more extreme.” He tells Toiano that he has had conversations with fellow Republicans and “they’re like, ‘Yeah, we know that, but we just, you know, people just need their last hurrah. Like, they just need to feel like we fought one last time. Trust me, it’ll be fine.’ And I was like, ‘No, it won’t. That’s not what people believe and that’s not what you’re telling them. And maybe you’re smart enough to know that but …’ So we have a lot of people in the political world that are just willing to say things they know aren’t true, they know aren’t true and it’s a huge manipulation.”

His twisted reasoning sounds a little bit like a child saying that the tooth fairy cannot be fake because every time Danny put his tooth under the pillow, the tooth fairy replaced it with money by the time he woke up. On the one hand, Crenshaw admits that there are a lot of people that believe these lies and are voting based on believing the lies being cynically pushed. However, Crenshaw wants to also believe that while this secondary part is true—lots of people believe the lies being told to them because these people running for office’s job is supposed to be about things like leadership and truth and integrity—the fact that the liars don’t actually believe the lie makes this just a messier version of politics, and not an actual threat to our democracy.

The root of Crenshaw’s ambivalence on the matter is easy to understand. If you remember, it was very similar and undemocratic behind-the-scenes machinations that helped get Crenshaw into power in the first place. You need go no further than looking at how rigged his district was by the Republican majority in 2010, to see that Dan Crenshaw owes his job to right-wing think tanks’ active overthrow of our democracy. You need look no further than Dan Crenshaw’s shady storytelling about fellow veterans to understand his true character.

(full article online)

Republican Dan Crenshaw’s attempt to debate immigration thwarted by interviewer’s facts

Rep. Dan Crenshaw is best known for trying to put a more reasonable face on Republican corruption. Not unlike the rest of his party, Crenshaw is low on ideas and the ones he does have are bad ones reheated inside of a broken toaster oven. Last...

www.dailykos.com

 

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[ Why does Tucker do this? Why not just tell voters to go vote? ]




The upshot of Carlson’s narrative is two-pronged: first, that Democrats can only win by enlisting the media and the Establishment to foist fraudulent candidates on the public by insisting that “the official story” is the only legitimate one while threatening “dissenters” with imprisonment; second, that Republicans are certain to “crush” Democrats in this fall’s elections. In MAGA logic, it naturally follows that if Democrats do declare victory next week, it will be illegitimate.

Creating these kinds of expectations is, in fact, a recipe for violence in any election where Democrats actually win—not just insurrectionist violence like Jan. 6, which we already know was inspired by Trump’s election denialism, but also the very real stochastic terrorism that we saw unfold this week in San Francisco, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was brutally assaulted by a man ginned up on far-right conspiracist hate speech.

Carlson in fact insisted during his diatribes this week that there’s no such thing as stochastic terrorism—unsurprising, given his track record for inspiring it himself. He also insisted that there’s no such as hate speech.

He voiced his clear affinity for election denialism in his Oct. 26 episode, while attacking Fetterman and Warnock as supposedly fraudulent candidates who can’t possibly win. It was classic Tucker: sneering condescension laden with random lies and smears, riddled with the right-wing persecution complex, tacked onto a framework of Carlson’s trademark projection, accusing Democrats of the very behavior that Republicans (and he himself) are engaging in:

(full article online)

Tucker sneers at Democrats as illegitimate, nudges viewers toward violence with election denialism

If one were inclined to give Tucker Carlson the benefit of the doubt, it might be possible to see his record over the past year as just a matter of coincidence: His embrace of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban. His ardent defense of Vladimir Putin. His...

www.dailykos.com

 

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Meet the Press – November 6, 2022

CHUCK TODD:

Let me ask you, you've been asked a million different ways about Social Security, you know the Democrats want to bring this issue up. Sunsetting the program every five years for renewal, why do that? Why put Social Security into, sort of, the political arena every five years? Why put seniors through that? Why do you think that's a good idea?

SEN. RICK SCOTT:

I have no interest in changing the Medicare program. I want to make sure we preserve the benefits of Medicare and Social Security, and I don't know one Republican that wants to change that. In my plan, I said we have got to start being honest with the public that, “What's our plan?” Medicare is going bankrupt, Social Security is going bankrupt. Here's what the Democrats did: they just cut $280 billion, every Democrat that's running right now in the Senate, okay? And those in the House. They all voted to cut $280 billion out of Medicare, which is going to cut life-saving drugs. They did this. Joe Biden proposed doing this in the Senate, and –

CHUCK TODD:

You know, you're playing a math game.

SEN. RICK SCOTT:

And, on top of that, he didn’t pay his taxes. Say it again?

CHUCK TODD:

You are playing a math game there, Senator. Senator, you're playing a math game here. You're playing a math game. They didn't cut anything on Medicare. It's cost savings having to do with the prescription drug benefit. Look, I understand that you want to call it something else. But they didn’t cut Medicare.

SEN. RICK SCOTT:

Chuck, if you cut spending in Medicare, it's probably going to impact the ability for somebody to provide things. When you cut out $280 billion –

CHUCK TODD:

I will remember that, when you guys argue that a Medicare cut –

SEN. RICK SCOTT:

–there's a lifesaving drug that your mom will not get. That’s what’s going to happen.

CHUCK TODD:

All right. I will remember this when you guys claim a Medicare cut isn’t a cut.

Chuck Todd nails Rick Scott on GOP plan to slash Social Security: "Why put seniors through that?"

Meet the Press – November 6, 2022 CHUCK TODD: Let me ask you, you've been asked a million different ways about Social Security, you know the Democrats want to bring this issue up. Sunsetting the program every five years for renewal, why do that? Why...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Here’s a measure of how seriously this report should be taken: The House Judiciary Republicans are promoting it as a “1,000 Page Report.”



That’s 470 pages of the same letter out of the 1,000 pages that Republicans are bragging about to make this sound like a detailed, meaty report.

They got their headline from Axios, which ran with “Scoop: House GOP to release 1,000-page road map for Biden FBI probe,” although they also got an Axios “reality check” noting that “Trump himself sought to exert pressure on his own Justice Department throughout his presidency, beginning with his demands for ‘loyalty’ from former FBI director James Comey and culminating in his attempts to use the agency to remain in power after the 2020 election” and quoting former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman: “Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney, Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”

But to House Republicans like Jordan, it’s justified and righteous if a Republican fires an FBI director for refusing to offer loyalty and politicized and corrupt if the FBI executes a search based on a court warrant on a Republican. Their position is really that simple.

Even given all the repetition, the document still contains a large number of falsehoods. Check this out:






(full article online)

House Judiciary Republicans release lie-packed, inflated 'report.' Will the media bite?

With four days to go before Election Day, the Republicans of the House Judiciary Committee have released a very serious report that is in no way a stunt. Now we get to see how much the media bites. The report is supposedly about “FBI & DOJ...

www.dailykos.com

 

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Cruz isn't just getting booed because he's a Republican, it's because he's trying to impose his own religious edicts onto the rest of the country, force women to carry unwanted and dangerous pregnancies to term, strip healthcare from millions of Americans, stand idly by while climate change-induced catastrophes wreak further havoc on the planet, shield the wealthy from paying anything close to their fair share in taxes, and so much more.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Blake Masters, the Peter Thiel-funded GOP Senate candidate in Arizona, gave a masterclass last month in sowing doubt about the results of the midterms — before a single ballot was cast.

During a campaign stop reported by The Daily Beast, Masters recalled his dad worrying that, even if Masters won by 30,000 votes over incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), “they’ll just find 40,000 for Mark Kelly.”

“He invited me to prove him wrong,” Masters said. “I said, ‘Dad, I can’t prove you wrong. All I know is, if those are the numbers, I’ve got to win by 80,000.’” The crowd reportedly burst into applause.

By now, this tactic is familiar: Republican candidates who’ve pushed Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud and stolen elections are using the former president’s playbook themselves to preemptively claim that their elections may be fraudulent.


Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (right) and Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters raise their arms at a campaign rally on Nov. 5 in Queen Creek, Arizona. (Photo: Justin Sullivan via Getty Images)

‘There’s Always Cheating’​

It’s a simple enough fallacy: If you lose, you’ve already blamed voter fraud! If you win, that means your victory was so substantial that your supporters were able to beat the rigged system!

The October campaign stop wasn’t Masters’ first time using the strategy.

“There’s always cheating, probably, in every election,” the candidate said in July, The New York Times reported. “The question is, what’s the cheating capacity?”

Other Republicans are taking the “wait and see” approach, reserving their right to flip the chessboard once they realize they’re losing.

A spokesperson for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who’s facing a tough reelection bid against Democrat Mandela Barnes, told the Wisconsin State Journal last month that “it is certainly his hope that he can” accept the election results. Then, he blamed Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for Republicans having a reason to be worried.

“He would feel much better about the 2022 election had Gov. Evers signed bills the Legislature passed to restore confidence in our election system,” spokesperson Alec Zimmerman said of Johnson. “That said, we are doing everything we can to ensure guidances and election procedures comply with state law. We will be monitoring everything closely.”

Tim Michels, the Republican running against Evers, will accept the results “provided the election is conducted fairly and securely,” a spokesperson told the State Journal. Michels’ campaign didn’t respond to a HuffPost email asking what he meant by that.

Jim Marchant, the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Nevada who has said that a “deep state cabal” has dictated election results for years, has gone back and forth on the same question, at one point telling the Las Vegas Sun he would accept the election results regardless of outcome.

But he wouldn’t commit to accepting the results outright when Reno news channel KRNV asked him the same question last month. He responded that he could trust the results “if we get an audit, if we get a forensic audit.”

The term “forensic audit,” popularized by election deniers in the wake of Trump’s loss, doesn’t actually have an accepted definition with regard to elections. Asked if he would accept the results without such an audit, Marchant — who could be elected to the role that directly oversees elections — said “we’ll see” and that if elected he would ensure “everybody agrees on what was counted.”

Marchant notably did not make any proclamationsabout meddling from a “deep state cabal”when he won the GOP primary over the summer.

Kim Crockett, the GOP secretary of state candidate in Minnesota, has said she’ll accept the results unless the margin of victory is close enough for a recount. However, she added in a press release, “As for my confidence in the administration of the 2022 election, that is a different question which I will answer after the election is held.”

As for my confidence in the administration of the 2022 election, that is a different question which I will answer after the election is held.Kim Crockett, Republican nominee for Minnesota secretary of state

‘We’re Already Detecting Some Stealing’ ​

The candidates preemptively claiming fraud are drawing from a yearsold well dug by Trump.

“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged,” Trump said in August 2020 — a proclamation that resulted in his supporters, motivated by the same lie, attacking the U.S. Capitol five months later.

Trump has never acknowledged legitimate defeat, and his popularity among Republican voters hasn’t suffered as a result. GOP candidates appear to have taken note.

Kari Lake, who is now the Republican nominee for governor in Arizona, said ahead of the GOP primary over the summer that “we’re already detecting some stealing going on,” refusing to elaborate further on the crimes she’d vaguely alleged. “If we don’t win, there’s some cheating going on,” she said on Election Day. Then, after she won the nomination by a margin of tens of thousands of votes, she swiftly moved on: “We out-voted the fraud,” she said.

Lake is pulling from the same playbook ahead of the general election. “I don’t have faith” in Arizona’s electoral system, she said last month — except, maybe, if she wins.

“You have to get out and vote, and I believe that we can out-vote some of the problems if we just show up,” Lake said.

She has also said, according to Axios, that it was “really smart” for Trump not to concede in 2020, “because that was the most dirty, filthy, rotten election I’ve ever seen.”

Mark Finchem, an election denier running for Arizona secretary of state, said ahead of the Republican primary that he wasn’t preparing for a concession speech: “I’m going to demand a 100% hand count if there’s the slightest hint that there’s an impropriety,” he said.

And in Virginia in 2021, Republican state Sen. Amanda Chase claimed during the governor’s race that “I know how Democrats are cheating” and that she had referred the information to then-GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin’s campaign.

When Virginia’s attorney general, Mark Herring, requested that Chase share information about the apparent crime she’d described, a spokesperson for the state senator said, “We don’t owe Herring a thing.”


(full article online)

Republicans Are Laying The Groundwork (Again) To Reject Elections They Lose

Republican candidates who've pushed Trump's lies about voter fraud and stolen elections are using a strategy right out of his playbook.

news.yahoo.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Aides to former President Donald Trump persuaded him not to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on Monday, fearing it could upend the midterm elections, The Washington Post reported.

According to three sources who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity, Trump had touted the idea of formally announcing his bid for the 2024 presidency at a rally for GOP Senate candidate JD Vance in Ohio on Monday night.

The suggestion prompted a scramble by top Republicans and Trump some aides to stop any announcement, two of the sources told the publication. Other aides, it reported, wanted Trump to go ahead.

Top Republicans have long been concerned that if Trump announced before the midterm election, it could distract from their attempts to make the election a referendum on President Joe Biden's performance, and issues including inflation and education.

(full article online)

Trump aides scrambled to stop him from announcing his presidential candidacy on the eve of the midterms and upending the elections, report says

The former president has long been stoking rumors of another bid for office but has restricted himself to increasingly obvious hints.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[Here is some history of saying that elections have been stolen. It goes way back ]

Claims of voter fraud, old as the republic, still work as weapons for Trump

The prevalence or importance of voter fraud seems less a matter of fact than of faith. Those who accept Trump's claims are exercising their beliefs to push back against experts, courts and academics.

www.npr.org