The Republicans' goal is to undermine confidence in elections.

[raccoon]




Opinion: Stop saying Republicans are ‘cowards’ who fear Trump. The truth is far worse.



Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, deserves great credit for demanding that his party fully repudiate Donald Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election and acknowledge its role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. But Kinzinger is getting one big thing wrong.
In a Sunday appearance on CBS, Kinzinger repeatedly said fellow Republicans are fundamentally driven by fear of Trump. They don’t want to “confront” Trump’s lies, Kinzinger lamented, adding that they’re “scared to death” of him. As a broad description of our current moment, this is profoundly insufficient. It risks misleading people about the true nature of the threat posed by the GOP’s ongoing radicalization...the idea that Republicans are primarily driven by “cowardice” is everywhere....Democrats are pounding McCarthy for “cowardice.”



Take the shenanigans in Arizona, where GOP state legislators have commissioned a recount of ballots in Maricopa County. It is being conducted by a firm whose chief executive has promoted nonsense about fraud in the 2020 election. What’s more, the GOP-controlled county board of election supervisors has blasted the recount while vouching for the election’s integrity. Even one Republican supporter of the recount has now denounced it as “ridiculous” and “embarrassing.”
Given all this, it’s impossible to chalk this effort up to “cowardice” or “fear of Trump.” It is a deliberate action plainly undertaken to manufacture fake evidence for the affirmative purpose of further undermining faith in our electoral system going forward.


The goal is to undermine confidence in elections. 
 Underscoring the point, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), the chair of the Republican Study Committee, made an extraordinarily disingenuous appearance on “Fox News Sunday.” Banks had endorsed the Texas lawsuit, which would have invalidated millions of votes in four states based on fictions, and voted to overturn President Biden’s electors in Congress. 

Pressed by Fox’s Chris Wallace to admit Biden won “fair and square,” Banks kinda sorta acknowledged it, but immediately pivoted to claiming those actions were entirely justified, by insisting that his “serious concerns” about the election were still valid.

This is not the act of a “coward” who “fears Trump,” and would vouch for the integrity of the election if only he could do so without consequences. Rather, it is the act of someone who is fully devoted to the project of continuing to undermine confidence in our elections going forward.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/10/republicans-cowards-fear-trump-mccarthy/

[FalloutShelter]

1. The Republican's goal is to STEAL elections.

Fixed it.

[raccoon]

3. Well, yeah, and undermining confidence in elections makes it so much easier. Nt

[Pobeka]

5. Undermining faith first allows whitewashing the voter suppression laws.

Of course the whitewashing only works for right wingers, but there is a significant percentage of them that need this whitewashing to still feel good about the GOP.

[Fullduplexxx]

2. Hopefully it will discourage their Klan from voting

[Lovie777]

6. 10 points . . .

and boost sane people into voting for their best interest.

[lark]

4. Repugs are devoted fascists and want to take everything from poor and working class & give to rich.

That is what they are devoted to and the only thing they are devoted to. Yes, they are racists and misogynists but that's part of their disdain and hate for anyone other than themselves.

[NanceGreggs]

7. Yes, they are trying to undermine ...

... confidence in elections - the problem being that it's only Republican voters who are swallowing their shit.

That means fewer Republicans voting, because they've been convinced that their vote won't count. Why get up off the couch to stand in line to vote, when you've been told over and over that Democrats can 'rig' elections - just like they did in 2020?

In addition, a lot of the vote suppression measures the GOP are crafting are going to affect Republican voters as well as Democratic voters - and the (R) voters won't be very happy about that.

[PortTack]

8. Absolutely!! And with a much smaller # of qgop than Dems, they can not afford to lose voters

[uponit7771]

9. K&R, especially since they keep losing them nationally

[SandWalker]

10. Putin is winning..

Putin is winning. Massive ongoing social media blitz by foreign trolls and bots , "stolen election", over and over. Qanon on YouTube with "pop up" media generated from outside the US. Assaults on our infrastructure through hacking control systems. So many people are being programmed to distrust our government. We gotta figure this out. Huge implications for our future.

[uppityperson]

11. Welcome to DU, Dave

[gratuitous]

12. Undermine confidence in elections that Democrats win

Their own victories, of course, are simply affirmation of the Almighty's divine favor.

[panfluteman]

13. If The Republicans Can No Longer Win Elections Fair and Square,

And their old dirty tricks of voter ID laws, voter suppression, vote purging and gerrymandering are no longer working as well for them a well as they used to - then attack the very validity of the elections themselves.

[Crunchy Frog]

14. The goal is to undermine actual elections.