The Morning Dispatch: Desperate President, Divided GOP

A growing chorus of congressional Republicans speaks out against Trump's attempted election theft.

By The Dispatch Staff

Jan 4, 2021

Happy Monday! Any team can make it to the playoffs by “winning games,” but it takes a truly special squad to fail their way into the postseason. Go Bears!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

The Washington Post on Sunday published a full recording and transcript of an hour-long phone call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump implored Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” for him. “We won the election,” Trump falsely said, “and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this. And it’s going to be very costly in many ways.”
Eleven additional Republican senators—including Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, and James Lankford—announced over the weekend they plan to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win on January 6. “We intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified,’” the group said.
The Senate voted 81-13 to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, a sweeping $740.5 billion defense bill passed by both the House and the Senate. The vote represents Congress’ first veto override of Trump’s presidency, which comes to an end in just over two weeks.

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Steven Ronson 2 years ago

I no longer distinguish between left and right but rather ‘liberal’ and ‘illiberal’

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Adam Bridge 2 years ago

I love this quote by George Pyle, Editorial Editor of the Salt Lake Tribune:

"But the only clouds hanging over Biden’s election and his legitimacy as president were hung there by the outgoing administration, its bald-faced lies and the support it has won from the Jar Jar Binks Caucus in Congress."

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Brian M. 2 years ago

I would have missed Andrew McCarthy's piece without you curating what was worth my time. And it was definitely worth my time. Thanks again crew.

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Philbnichols 2 years ago

what is the best way to think of this rift in the party?

Not so much between the Hatfield & McCoys as between Larry and his other-brothers Darryl & Darryl.

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rob 2 years ago

I think its globalists vs nationalists.

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Beth 2 years ago

Define those terms (as they exist in your mind).

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Narwhal 2 years ago

Is Sen. Perdue a globalist or a nationalist?

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Narwhal 2 years ago

It’s pronounced glooobaalists.

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Narwhal 2 years ago

Sen. Romney may be on to something about elected members of the Republican Party, it’s ambition vs principles.

As for conservatives, I think a handy dichotomy is performative conservatism vs principled conservatism.

The two frames of reference may overlap in some cases.

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Teresa 2 years ago

Definitely performative but it’s not in any way conservative. Trump is corrupting our very vocabulary.

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Narwhal 2 years ago

Trump is a Republican, but I agree he isn’t a conservative. He is far, far closer to being a radical driven by ambition than a principled conservative.

The two frames of reference don’t always overlap. Just in some cases.

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Sonofasailor35 2 years ago

The Detroit Lions did exactly the same thing about 20 years ago - failed their way into the playoffs, lost their last few games to end with an 8-8 record. Predictably, they went nowhere in the playoffs, and have gone nowhere since. I wish the Browns more luck than they had.

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Theirn Scott 2 years ago

So, I'm happy with those Republicans who have bought into the cult of personality and their representatives (including the elected who pandering to that cult) continue to use the Republican moniker. The rest should start a new party, let's call it the Whig Party for symmetry. As someone currently a card carrying Libertarian, I will join that party.

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Narwhal 2 years ago

The Libertarian should forget about the presidential election and stop wasting money and resources on it. They should identify a half dozen or so Congressional districts where they have the best chance of winning and focus all their efforts in those places.

In the next Congress the Democrats will have a slim majority. And that reality may occur again, with either major party. If it does then five or six Libertarians who work together can have a big impact.

Also in terms of getting greater visibility on a regular basis, five or six House members will receive far more attention on a regular basis than a failed presidential bid every four years. Look at AOC and the squad for example.

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Jen 2 years ago

I was looking back to 2016 to see what elected Republicans were saying then (comparing it to now) and wow I totally forgot that in mid-2016 Ben Sasse was pushing for a 3rd party candidate. Mitt Romney was trying to get him to run as a 3rd party candidate. Sasse really was the most outspoken anti-Trumper (amongst elected GOPers). He didn’t attend the GOP convention saying he was going to take his kids to a dumpster fire instead. Around the time of the Access Hollywood tape he was one of the first GOPers to call on Trump to step down and let Mike Pence be the nominee (Sasse voted for Pence in ‘16 and ‘20). He was also the first one to publicly say he wouldn’t support challenging the electoral college vote.

Comparing that to the obsequiousness of so many other elected Republicans now is amazing. It will be fascinating to see how the next four years play out. Do the Trump bootlickers win out? Or are people like Sasse able to wrestle the party away from the cult of Trump (and his mini-me’s)? I hope it’s the latter but I fear it will be the former.

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O.M.G. calling from Vaudeville, AZ 2 years ago

The best way to think of the rift of our Grand Old Party is...making like M.S.N.B.C. assumptionist analyst...The Deplorable’s vs the N.A.T.’s (NEVER AGAIN TRUMPERS). Kinda like progressives defending the surreal 2020 million moron man marchers, protesting on behalf of the involuntary slaughtered drug addled , combative felon unmasked to death...by a provoked red neck who brings meaning to the three letter pejorative for cop...caught on candid cell phone camera...live and on memorex....from a hood that, like Da Ali G would say.....99.99999999.....9..9. 9 percent of the Zoo York mob couldn’t place on a map...for all of Mayor Bloombergs monster money...packed in like a sardine can...all the while being anti anti social distancing on any other day....while making like they are on M.A.G.A., I mean M.D.N.A....or whatever that drug is that makes wonders out of sentient men. But that’s okay, their progressive. Gotta run on. Happy New Year Dispatch lovers!

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Jen 2 years ago

Trump says he hopes the VP “will come through for us” and if he doesn’t he “won’t like him as much”. https://twitter.com/edokeefe/status/1346280421802319874?s=21

What does he mean by “come through for us”? Steal the election? I’m utterly baffled as to what Trump supporters are expecting on Wednesday. The election isn’t going to be overturned. Mike Pence can’t make Trump President again. Trump supporters really are that delusional?

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Pat Riot 2 years ago

I like the theory floating around now: Pence will resign so he doesn't have to do it.

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rob 2 years ago

im praying that the congress will have a change of heart and only accept the ballots from the undisputed states and send it to the house.

the founders vision was that the house would decide the presidency whenever the election was not decisive. This enormous jump from in-person to 'mail-in' voting is the most radical in our history that was in the span of a few months during a pandemic.

If this isn't a moment when we need the house to step up I don't know what would be.

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Peter 2 years ago

The election was clearly decisive. You are just being bitter and partisan.

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Boring Oatmeal 2 years ago

Too bad that darn evidence is just not materializing. Perhaps it's in the binder with the health care plan.

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John Kramer 2 years ago

The problem with that is that the election was both disputed AND decisive. Tantrums are not a reason to treat certified returns as illegitimate, and disenfranchising voters is not "stepping up".

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Jen 2 years ago

According to The NY Times Trump pressed Pence on finding an alternative so Biden wouldn’t get to 270 EV and then it would be thrown to the House. All these commentators/pundits like Noah Rothman who were calling all of this just Twitter hysteria and going on about how institutions held etc. look pretty silly now. It is absolutely clear there are Republicans who would overturn the election if they could and have been trying to find ways to do so. If that happened we’d have George Floyd like riots all over the country.

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rob 2 years ago

Every illegal vote is a cancelling out and 'disenfranchising' a legal vote.

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Tkulage 2 years ago

Rob,

Can you please explain from start to finish how the democrats, or anybody, coordinated fraudulent mail-in votes on a widespread or massive scale resulting in tens of thousands of illegal votes for Joe Biden (but not down ballot Democrats)?

Start with the list of registered voters and go from there.

You’ll win a lot of people over if you can lay out how a coordinated, mass mail-in vote fraud occurs.

I’m not even looking for you to say how it specifically happened in Georgia or Pennsylvania, rather just theoretically, how would it go down?

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rob 2 years ago

more replies

Basically it all starts when you go from in-person to mail-in.

In-person voting can have some fraud. For instance in many locations you do not have to show your ID to vote. So someone can pretend to be someone else. Certainly In-person voting needs to be clean up. But at least you physically have to be there on Election Day which makes this much more difficult. Also in-person voting radiates all different types of data to the community. Such as how busy the polls are. Voters simply by being their are proving they cognizant and able to choose. You have poll watchers from both parties overseeing the voting keeping things fair.

We need automated poll clean up and Photo ID checked for ALL federal elections but certainly in-person voting has a lot of advantages.

When you go from in-person to mail-in the flood gates open. This is where you get the level of fraud that you simply can not trust the results of the election.

There are a few major reasons why this is.

First when you submit a ballot it is to a non-secure mail box or drop box. There is no Photo ID check or anything. The same physical person can submit as many ballots as he wants. Under his name or someone else.

There is no chain of custody on these ballots. Who controlled the ballots when? With mail-in ballots this is lost.

Mail in balloting is subject to vote harvesting. This is where people drive around and pick up ballots. Once again no chain of custody. Who are these people? No one knows. Are they throwing out ballots or changing them? No one knows.

The only 'security' that mail-in balloting has is signature matching. The signature matching was turned all the way down to 40%. Meaning 60% of the signatures were considered matched even if the signature was very different than the source.

Finally, mail-in rests on good voter rolls. Voter rolls that are still very dirty and include people that have died or moved. But also they decreased the requirements in this past election. You were allowed to register using mail or even the internet. No one checked your Photo Id even in registration.

Certainly this past election was illegitimate. I know a lot of people on this site don't mind an in illegitimate election as long as they got rid of trump.

But this looks like something that will be with us going forward.

We could never see a fair election again.

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Tkulage 2 years ago

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Rob - thanks for responding...let me attempt to respond to your points:

In-person voting and voter cognizance - to my knowledge, there is no mental test required for voting. Yes, there is potential for one-off fraud. Even with a voter ID, I could pretend to be my brother and vote for him too. But this is not something that could be coordinated on a mass scale AND would require me to ensure my brother not otherwise vote, otherwise he would raise alarms to authorities when he's blocked from voting because he'd already be checked off the voter registration when I voted for him.

So could it happen as a one-off, yes. Same goes for mail-in.
While I submit that there is *potential* for mail-in voting fraud, I contend it is no more widespread than in-person voter fraud and you have not at all described how it could effectively be coordinated on a widespread or massive scale. Let's look at what you've stated:

Cannot Trust Mail-in Votes:
I'm not an expert, but my understanding is mailed ballots are secured in their own sealed envelope within a bar-coded envelope that is tied to the registered voter. Upon opening, that registered voter is then marked as having voted. The ballots are separated and the vote is then unidentifiable to the voter (secret ballot), as intended.

In order to receive one of these ballots, one must be a registered voter and then apply, which requires various forms of identification.
For someone to "submit as many mail-in ballots as they wanted", they'd for one, have to steal or fraudulently apply for other *registered* voters ballots, and then hope those same registered voters don't try to vote in person or vote by mail themselves. If they did, they'd find someone else had voted in their place and raise alarms (see in-person vote fraud above)

There is simply no way this could be coordinated on a massive scale. One would have to know in advance which registered voters would not otherwise vote, and then convince other people to apply or otherwise coordinate the theft of those ballots and vote in their place. If one were to go to these lengths, why wouldn’t they ensure the Democrats take the Senate too?

Chain of custody seems like a valid point on the surface, but is it upon closer inspection? What are the risks? The risk is that a properly mailed ballot doesn’t reach its destination as intended with the intended vote. The risk is that someone opened the outer envelope, checked the ballot, saw it was Trump and then threw it out or changed it. Let's immediately dismiss that someone changed the vote to Biden, because once the outer envelope is opened, the ballot is voided.

Since we know most mail-in voters are democrats anyway, someone employing this tactic would be risking accidentally opening an envelope with a Biden ballot, therefore invalidating that mail-in ballot. The only people allowed to open mail-in ballots are the poll workers under supervision of bi-partisan voting authorities per my understanding.

Ballot Harvesting – again, what is the risk? You mention changing votes. Ballot harvesting, when it happens, per my understanding, happens in heavily democrat districts as allowed by law. Why would anyone need to change these people’s votes? They’re not voting for Trump anyway, at least not significantly. And further, see my points above regarding invalidation of the ballot upon opening the outer envelope.

Lastly, voter rolls. Could rolls be cleaned up? Yes. Is it resulting in massive amounts of illegal votes for one candidate in particular? No.

Let’s assume Georgia had 20,000 dead people on its rolls. Once again, how would this fraud occur? How do you get all or even many, of the 20,000 dead people to cast votes for Biden (but not down ballot Democrats)? Someone would have to identify each dead person, fraudulently apply for a ballot, vote for Biden (and GOP senators) and mail it in. Could someone vote for their dead mother, yes, in fact 2 Republicans were caught doing that. But could this be coordinated on a massive scale to tilt the election in one candidates favor? It is just not logical to come to that conclusion.

What you’re describing *sounds* scary, but when you take each one to their logical conclusion and play it out, in no way can any of your claims be massively re-produced to steer votes to one candidate (or remove or change votes for one candidate). Not only that, but even if we make a unlikely assumption that a ballot harvester *could* actually change or throw out your vote, your logic breaks down because harvesting primarily occurs in Democratic districts, so there is little to no risk that Trump votes were changed or thrown out.

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Jen 2 years ago

There is no credible evidence of illegal voting. Certainly not in sufficient numbers as to overturn the election.

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Ken Harper 2 years ago

Here's my breakdown of the Republican Cival War: the Constitutional Conservatives vs. the Loons & Goons.

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