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Drowning Republicans flip-flop on mail-in voting and Disney - but cling to their MAGA anchor [1]
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Date: 2022-12-02
The GOP is the party of “if it feels good, don’t think it through — just do it, and damn the consequences.” Take voting. Mail-in and early voting favor Democrats. So Republicans bayed that these promiscuous election policies led to fraud and were the tools of a liberal Satan. What did their supporters hear? Wait until Election Day to vote.
However, the dismal results of this rush to failure have caused some on the right to pause. And take a moment to question how beneficial their impetuosity and ill-considered rhetoric was.
In Pennsylvania, after the Republicans lost a Senate seat and their gubernatorial candidate totaled his candidacy, the PA State GOP took stock and realized that the party that voted for a month had an advantage over the party that voted for a day.
As Andy Reilly, a Pennsylvanian Republican National Committee member observed,
“There’s no question in my mind that Republicans have to have a different mail-in strategy. When one party votes for 30 days and one party votes for one, you’re definitely going to lose.”
Reilly is an intelligent guy. I am sure the Democrats hope there are not too many more of his like in the right-wing asylum.
Charlie Gerow, the Pennsylvania-based vice chair of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, compared the Republican opposition to mail-in voting to a basketball player who refuses to shoot three-pointers because he does not like the rule.
“You could play a game that way, and more times than not, you would lose. Or you can say, ‘Hey, I don’t like the three-point line but, by gosh, I’m going to be the best three-point shooter you can find,' and that’s what I think the Republicans have to be now.”
It is rare to hear such commonsense from a right-winger.
It may be spreading. With the noisy and notable exceptions of loonies like failed AZ gubernatorial candidate, and aspiring Trump 2024 running mate Kari Lake, the GOP has spent little time claiming that shadowy forces rigged the 2022 election. The base will always believe it, but the MAGA morons are not numerous enough to win elections in purple states.
However, the base still dominates primaries so while the GOP might not support election-fixing fantasies, they will remain reluctant to take an active stand and call bullshit on rigged election claims.
Even in the poster child for crazy states, Florida, local politicos are carefully inching toward a brave new world — sanity. Earlier this year, Ron DeSantis browbeat the legislature into revoking the Disney World Reddy Creek special tax zone after Disney called the Governor and his homophobic opportunists a bunch of wankers (those were not Disney’s exact words, but you got the point).
Thin-skinned Ron’s petulance potentially landed the property owners in the Orlando area on the hook for a billion-dollar debt — with concomitant increases in their property taxes.
Now the office clingers in the Florida legislature are looking for a way out . The Financial Times reports Florida lawmakers are working on plans to reverse the Governor’s rash and fiscally disastrous crusade against the Mouse. This has left DeSantis torn between obstinately going it alone — and taking a political beating. Or reversing himself — and looking like an impetuous moron.
In an attempt to stave off claims that DeSantis is a spineless flip-flopper, a spokesperson explained on Fox News that,
“the governor “does not make 'U-turns.' The governor was right to champion removing the extraordinary benefit given to one company through the Reedy Creek Improvement District. We will have an even playing field for businesses in Florida, and the state certainly owes no special favors to one company. Disney's debts will not fall on the taxpayers of Florida. A plan is in the works and will be released soon."
The plan to be released soon will, of course, be a U-turn. And the idea that the State of Florida does not play favorites is laughable. If this mouthpiece wants to prove it does not, let them also announce that Florida politicians will no longer accept political donations from businesses. Do not hold your breath.
However, given his options, DeSantis has done well to minimize the downside. And soon enough, some new scandal/stupidity/outrageous behavior will distract the audience.
Kevin McCarthy should learn a lesson. He, along with many Republican politicians, has not yet reached his moment of epiphany. In a desperate attempt to keep his dream of House speakership alive, he has taken the appeaser's route of spineless groveling.
To keep in good with the MAGA string-puller, he truckled down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. And he has tried to secure the votes of the rabid right by promising investigations of everything Democratic in the new Congress. The result will be the GOP's embarrassing Benghazi failure magnified a hundred-fold.
McCarthy might claim that the interminable waste of money failing to prove Hillary was guilty of any malfeasance in Libya was worth it because it kept her out of the White House. But sober minds will counter that Clinton's loss was due to her lack of electioneering skills, an unwarranted antipathy, and the Comey bombshell. And that it had nothing to do with the Benghazi Inquisition.
On the contrary, Hillary’s masterful performance during the hearings, contrasted with the GOP’s petulant, fact-free badgering, enhanced her reputation and made the GOP look like vindictive nose-pickers. McCarthy’s strategy of 24/7 hearings will remind people of the vacuity of the Republican policies.
The course changes the GOP should make and has so far, and probably always will resist, are to disavow MAGA, QAnon, racism, antisemitism, bigotry, white supremacy, and Christian nationalism.
Should they start on the path to redemption, they will likely lose the 2024 presidential race and the House, which may not be such a brutal blow as the GOP may lose them even if they do not change. However, if Republicans reject nihilism, they might restore their reputation and gain a shot at long-term viability.
The good news is they neither have to change their traditional pro-business tax and regulation policies nor drop their voter suppression. They can even keep beating Democrats over the head with immigration and crime. They will have to change their tone, stop their capitulation to the base, and drop their anti-abortion absolutism.
They will not. Far too many of their incumbents are in safe seats — which means their only concern is getting primaried from the right. And as long as they let Trump pick candidates, the new blue, purple states, such as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, will keep voting Democratic.
I am not saying that doing the noble thing guarantees a win. But when doing the ignoble thing keeps you out of power, what do you have to lose? At the very least, you will go to your grave a better person. And, if you believe in that sort of thing, in the process gain some bargaining chips for use on the Day of Judgement.
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