It's not just Kanye -- the GOP is propping up the Green Party too

[turbinetree]

By Emily Singer -September 15, 2020 4:49 PM
GOP operatives across the country are trying to help third-party nominees get on the ballot.

Third-party candidates played a major role in Donald Trump's election in 2016, siphoning off voters from Hillary Clinton and helping Trump eke out wins by the narrowest of margins in enough swing states to hand him a victory — even as he lost the popular vote by 3 million ballots.

Four years later, with Trump down in the polls and facing the possibility of defeat, Republican operatives are making a last-ditch effort to try to recreate that same third-party effect, and are playing a behind-the-scenes role in numerous states to get Kanye West and Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins onto state ballots.

Report after report shows that Republicans are helping West and Hawkins navigate the process of getting on the ballot. And they're fighting legal battles to make sure they stay on the ballot.

A report on Monday from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said a lawyer helping Hawkins fight to get on the ballot has done work for Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

https://americanindependent.com/donald-trump-kanye-west-green-party-candidate-republican-operatives/


-snip-

And NBC News reported that "people connected to Republican politics" have tried to help West get on the ballot in Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois — though West was ultimately booted from the ballot in Illinois and failed to collect enough signatures to make the Missouri ballot.

But even if third-party candidates like West and Hawkins make the ballot in swing states, it's unclear their presence will help Trump this time around, like they did in 2016.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from August found that people who voted third party in 2016 overwhelmingly back Biden. According to the poll, 47% of third-party voters from 2016 back Biden, while 20% back Trump.

[kimbutgar]

1. The real polls must be so bad they are desperate.

[Thekaspervote]

2. So, wasting time, money, resources and possibly votes for an effort that is failing spectacularly

That’s the repukes for ya!!

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. What a confused man.

So much money and can't figure how to leverage it. Sad.

[Captain Zero]

4. Can't hack Biden's votes and throw it to them if

they aren't on the ballot.

Scenario: Biden is winning in a two man race by a margin of 54 % to 45.
Russian hackers take 9% of Bidens votes and give the Greens 4, Kanye 3, and Trump 2.

Ending vote Trump 47, Biden 45.

I think that's how they do it and they only have to do it in 4-7 States.

Man, people were really not satisfied with Biden as an alternative !!! Blare the Propaganda Trumpets.

[live love laugh]

5. Surprise surprise!

[TheBlackAdder]

6. He's at the buy gold tablets, hide them in the desert, dig holes, find them and be a prophet stage!

[Gothmog]

7. Nader was funded by Rove

I will never forgive nader Rove funded Nader in 2000 and 2004 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/ralph-nader-was-indispens_b_4235065.html

Furthermore, Karl Rove and the Republican Party knew this, and so they nurtured and crucially assisted Nader’s campaigns, both in 2000 and in 2004. On 27 October 2000, the AP’s Laura Meckler headlined “GOP Group To Air Pro-Nader TV Ads.” She opened: “Hoping to boost Ralph Nader in states where he is threatening to hurt Al Gore, a Republican group is launching TV ads featuring Nader attacking the vice president [Mr. Gore]. ... ‘Al Gore is suffering from election year delusion if he thinks his record on the environment is anything to be proud of,’ Nader says [in the commercial]. An announcer interjects: ‘What’s Al Gore’s real record?’ Nader says: ‘Eight years of principles betrayed and promises broken.’” Meckler’s report continued: “A spokeswoman for the Green Party nominee said that his campaign had no control over what other organizations do with Nader’s speeches.” Bush’s people - the group sponsoring this particular ad happened to be the Republican Leadership Council - knew exactly what they were doing, even though the liberal suckers who voted so carelessly for Ralph Nader obviously did not. Anyone who drives a car the way those liberal fools voted, faces charges of criminal negligence, at the very least. But this time, the entire nation crashed as a result; not merely a single car.....

On July 9th, the San Francisco Chronicle headlined “GOP Doners Funding Nader: Bush Supporters Give Independent’s Bid a Financial Lift,” and reported that the Nader campaign “has received a recent windfall of contributions from deep-pocketed Republicans with a history of big contributions to the party,” according to “an analysis of federal records.” Perhaps these contributors were Ambassador Egan’s other friends. Mr. Egan’s wife was now listed among the Nader contributors. Another listed was “Nijad Fares, a Houston businessman, who donated $200,000 to the Bush inaugural committee and who donated $2,000 each to the Nader effort and the Bush campaign this year.” Furthermore, Ari Berman reported 7 October 2004 at the Nation, under “Swift Boat Veterans for Nader,” that some major right-wing funders of a Republican smear campaign against Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam service contributed also $13,500 to the Nader campaign, and that “the Republican Party of Michigan gathered ninety percent of Nader’s signatures in their state” (90%!) to place Nader on the ballot so Bush could win that swing state’s 17 electoral votes. Clearly, the word had gone out to Bush’s big contributors: Help Ralphie boy! In fact, on 15 September 2005, John DiStaso of the Manchester Union-Leader, reported that, “A year ago, as the Presidential general election campaign raged in battleground state New Hampshire, consumer advocate Ralph Nader found his way onto the ballot, with the help of veteran Republican strategist David Carney and the Carney-owned Norway Hill Associates consulting firm.”

It was obvious, based upon the 2000 election results, that a dollar contributed to Nader in the 2004 contest would probably be a more effective way to achieve a Bush win against Kerry in the U.S. Presidential election than were perhaps even ten dollars contributed to Bush. This was a way of peeling crucial votes off from Bush’s real opponent - votes that otherwise would have gone to the Democrat. That’s why the smartest Republican money in the 2004 Presidential election was actually going to Nader, even more so than to Bush himself: these indirect Bush contributions provided by far the biggest bang for the right-wing buck.