MAGA Republicans Are A Threat To Our Democracy

[Joe Elliott]

Nearly 1 in 3 Republican candidates for statewide office support false election claims
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/nearly-1-in-3-republican-candidates-for-statewide-office-support-false-election-claims

I hope that these 1-in-3 Republicans will lose in November. And I expect the majority of them will, or I am really misreading the signs since December 2020.

The 2-in-3 Republican candidates? I don't care so much about. Although I would like to see the Democrats retain the majority on the House and Senate. Given the number of extreme Republican candidates, I don't think this is impossible.

[Rick Plant]

How election deniers could sway the 2024 election

GOP candidates in states including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are laying the groundwork to challenge an unfavorable result.



Republican officials in key states stood in the way of former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

But this year, according to recent Washington Post reporting, 54 of 87 GOP candidates running for positions with power over the way elections are certified in presidential battlegrounds have falsely claimed that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and say they would have done things differently. The next time a presidential candidate seeks out help overturning an election, they could find willing accomplices in these candidates.

Though there are candidates who have peddled Trump’s election lies in every projected 2024 battleground, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona present three scenarios for how bad actors — as secretaries of state or state attorneys general, in governors’ mansions or in state legislatures — could abuse their power over certifying elections to subvert a result they personally disagree with. Here’s how they could do it:


Wisconsin: A campaign to seize power from a bipartisan elections commission

How Wisconsin’s election system works:

The success of an effort to put Wisconsin’s elections in partisan hands would require cooperation from officials up and down the ballot there. Because of the checks and balances the state has put in place, overturning an election would mean getting sign-off from the winners of the secretary of state and gubernatorial races, as well as continued GOP dominance in state legislature contests.

What the GOP is doing:

Trump allies are targeting the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which administers elections and has the authority to investigate and prosecute violations of election laws. It was established in 2015 by the Republican-controlled state legislature and was intended to function similarly to the Federal Elections Commission, with three Republican and three Democratic appointees.

The commission has significant discretion over how elections are conducted, and plays a role in certifying election results. In 2020, after Republicans sought recounts in the large, heavily Democratic counties of Milwaukee and Dane based on false claims of fraud, the commission determined that President Joe Biden had won.

State Republicans have since called for the dissolution of the commission, whose policies, they falsely argue, led to fraudulent votes that cost Trump reelection.

“The problem for Republicans is that the Wisconsin Elections Commission was pretty scrupulous. It did not tilt elections towards Republicans like they thought it would,” said Jay Heck, executive director of the democracy group Common Cause Wisconsin.

State Rep. Amy Loudenbeck, the Republican nominee for Wisconsin secretary of state, is one of those Republicans seeking to dismantle the commission and to re-empower the secretary of state’s office to preside over the state’s elections for the first time since the 1970s. (Before the commission, there was the Government Accountability Board, which also ran elections.)

If a Republican secretary of state presided over elections, they could tighten up rules around voting, from identification requirements to who could cast an absentee ballot and where they could drop it off — policies that, individually, might not cause a huge drop-off in voting, but together, amount to “death by a thousand cuts,” Heck said. And, if the secretary of state did assume the commission’s current power to certify the election results, they could try to disrupt that process as well.

Republican legislators introduced a bill expanding the secretary of state’s powers earlier this year, but it didn’t go up for debate before the end of the legislative session. State Republicans also fast-tracked a package of bills earlier this year aiming to strip the Wisconsin Elections Commission of its power and resources and force it to answer to the state legislature. So long as Republicans maintain their big majorities in both chambers, as they’re expected to, voting rights groups warn that these measures are likely to pass.

The legislature isn’t expected to have a veto-proof majority, however, and that makes who becomes governor important.

Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who has supported the Wisconsin Elections Commission, is one of the most vulnerable incumbent governors across the country this year. His GOP opponent, construction magnate Tim Michels, has repeatedly echoed Trump’s election lies and has said that he’s open to decertifying Biden’s 2020 win in the state, even though there is no legal means to do so. The Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up.

How bad it could get:

Essentially, Heck said, “Republicans are trying to weaken the Wisconsin Elections Commission for 2024 so that, when Trump runs again and Wisconsin will again be a very closely divided state, the election apparatus would be able to make decisions that would be very favorable for a Republican presidential candidate.”


Pennsylvania: Where the governor can unilaterally shape elections

How Pennsylvania’s election system works:

The biggest threat to the 2024 election in Pennsylvania is state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for governor.

Mastriano’s an ardent MAGA Republican who bused hundreds of people to Washington, DC, and was outside the US Capitol on the day of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. He was also a key figure in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Mastriano organized a state Senate hearing featuring Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, an unauthorized audit of voting machines that ultimately cost him a committee chair position, and a scheme to send fake electors who were favorable to Trump to Congress.

If elected, he would have the power to appoint Pennsylvania’s top election official, the “Secretary of the Commonwealth.” He hasn’t named who he intends to appoint if elected, but he’s indicated that it would be an individual who shares his philosophy on elections.

“As governor, I get to appoint the secretary of state. And I have a voting reform-minded individual who’s been traveling the nation and knows voting reform extremely well,” Mastriano told Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for Trump, in an April interview. “That individual has agreed to be my secretary of state.”

Elections in Pennsylvania are decentralized, with county officials holding most of the power over how elections are conducted. But the secretary of state still plays a key role, largely by issuing guidance; in 2020, for example, they gave county election boards direction on how to interpret a new law that allowed vote-by-mail statewide.

How bad it could get:

Mastriano has indicated he’s interested in a secretary of state who would use that power to restrict access to voting. He notably proposed making everyone re-register in an effort to purge voter rolls of dead voters and those registered to nonexistent addresses — an action that he claims the secretary of state could take unilaterally.

Secretaries of state in Pennsylvania can also choose to participate in defending challenges to election law. And they have to certify the voting machines selected by each of Pennsylvania’s counties. (Mastriano has suggested that he would decertify all of the state’s voting machines “with the stroke of a pen” via his secretary of state.)

Finally, they gather the election results from the counties and certify them. No one has ever refused to certify them, but that’s what watchdogs worry Mastriano’s pick for secretary of state would do.

“If you refuse to do that, you’d run into a situation where there would be litigation, but it would certainly throw a wrench into the process,” Jessica Marsden, counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit focused on preserving fair and free elections, said.

Also worrying to pro-democracy experts are the ways Mastriano’s shown that he can activate supporters; his involvement in January 6 in particular has put voting rights groups on high alert for political violence.

"He has an ability to galvanize people to turn out in person and [do] harm,” said Salewa Ogunmefun, executive director of the voting rights group Pennsylvania Voice.


Arizona: A state that could be completely led by election deniers

All of the Republican nominees for the top three statewide offices in Arizona — state attorney general nominee Abraham Hamadeh, secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem and gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake — have made Trump’s 2020 election lies central to their campaigns.

None of them say they would have certified the results, suggesting that they might challenge an unfavorable result in 2024 if given the chance. Lake even preempted her own primary win by saying that she would challenge the results if she lost because it would have indicated “there’s some cheating going on.”

How Arizona’s election system works:

Each would have a role to play in the election certification process in 2024. Every county in Arizona has to separately certify their election results via the county board of supervisors; those results then get transmitted to the secretary of state. On the fourth Monday following a general election, the secretary of state canvasses the certified results from the counties in the presence of the governor and the state attorney general.

It’s not clear what the legal implications might be if the governor or attorney general didn’t show up for that step, and that could present a potential opportunity for Lake or Hamadeh to delay or undermine the certification, Marsden said.

The secretary of state is then supposed to formally certify the result, and the governor has an additional responsibility to sign the certificate of ascertainment that names the slate of electors, and send it to Congress. The governor could theoretically refuse to sign the certificate or sign a certificate with a slate of electors that didn’t match up with the popular vote.

How bad it could get:

If elected, Finchem would also have some control over the basic rules of how the election is conducted. Among other proposals, he wants to eliminate early voting entirely.

“That would certainly disenfranchise lots of voters and also potentially cause a lot of chaos in an election system that has for years relied on a substantial number of people voting earlier,” Marsden said. And Finchem has, as a state lawmaker, backed legislation that would allow the GOP-controlled state legislature to overturn the results of a future presidential election, allowing it to instead award delegates to its chosen candidate.

Should Hamadeh, Finchem, and Lake try to exploit their offices to overturn the election results, Marsden said, “There would certainly be litigation that would follow … But I think it would certainly increase the chance of a major election crisis.”

Even if they aren’t successful in materially impacting the results, they could still do significant damage to voter confidence. State officials “have really crucial megaphones to either bolster or cast doubt on election results,” Marsden said.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/9/2/23331716/election-denier-2024-mastriano-lake-finchem

[Rick Plant]

MAGA Republicans aren't committed to Americans—they've shown us that.

[Rick Plant]

CAP Action @CAPAction

Extreme MAGA Republican gun laws and inflammatory language have led to a spike in violent crime. When #MAGAIncitesGunViolence, we all pay the price.

Watch: https://twitter.com/i/status/1573009427107819521

https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1573009427107819521

[Rick Plant]

'The worst is yet to come': Experts warn MAGA violence is spreading -- and law enforcement should prepare



According to two different experts on the rising tide of domestic terrorists since the election of Donald Trump, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better as long as the former president remains free to incite violence in much the way he did on Jan 6, 2020.

Speaking with the New York Times' Blake Hounshell, authors Luke Mogelson and Andy Campbell, both of whom have new books on right-wing extremists, waved the red flag about what they see coming as Trump continues to egg his followers on -- which is setting the stage for more violence.

As Hounshell summed up their warning: "The worst is yet to come."

Getting right to the point, Campbell, who has a new book out on the Proud Boys, told the Times, "I really do believe that, going forward, it’s not just going to be MAGA rallies. It’s not just going to be political violence at Proud Boys rallies or leftist rallies or B.L.M. events. It’s going to be political violence at any civic event that happens to fall in the cross hairs of Donald Trump and company.”

According to Hounshell, "In the United States, it is not illegal to be a part of a domestic extremist group. To go after specific threats, the government has limited tools, meaning that federal officials often must find links to groups overseas in order to crack down on homegrown extremists or prosecute them under other provisions of law," adding, "Complicating matters, Republican politicians like Trump — who instructed the Proud Boys to 'stand back and stand by' during a presidential debate in 2020 — often provide rhetorical cover."

Mogelson claims the violence he saw on Jan 6, when supporters of the former president stormed the Capitol, reminded him of covering armed conflicts around the world for the past decade.

"He witnessed a mob killing of someone in Iraq, which gave him an understanding of what he called the 'intoxicating' feeling that can whip a crowd of seemingly ordinary people into a frenzy," the Times reports before noting, "he began reporting on anti-lockdown groups that mobilized against the pandemic measures put in place by governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, he immediately saw that the story was much larger."

He told the Times, "I soon realized that these groups and this movement was rapidly mutating.”

Campbell chimed in to add the Republican Party appears unable -- or unwilling -- to rein the far-right extremists in.

“The Republican Party seems to not know what to do,” he claimed before warning, “It seems like their inability to rebut the Proud Boys and other extremists is pushing this machine forward so much faster and really making it hard for law enforcement to keep up.”

Read More Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/us/politics/domestic-extremism-warnings.html

[Rick Plant]

MAGA political violence

Electrocuted, beaten, abused: Capitol Police recall their own 'vulnerability' on Jan. 6

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Rick Wilson pours cold water on Lauren Boebert's desire to turn America into a 'Christian nation'



Appearing on MSNBC early Sunday morning, former GOP campaign strategist Rick Wilson dropped the hammer on Republicans such as Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) who are campaigning on a promise to turn the US into a "Christian nation."

Reacting to a Politico report on the rise of Christian nationalism among the far-right, Wilson said the Republican Party and far-right evangelicals will rue the day they made this their rallying cry.

According to Politico, "Prominent Republican politicians have made the themes critical to their message to voters in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, has argued that America is a Christian nation and that the separation of church and state is a 'myth.' Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia hard-liner, declared: “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian Nationalists.” Amid a backlash, she doubled down and announced she would start selling 'Christian Nationalist' shirts. Now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to be flirting with Christian nationalist rhetoric, as well."

"First off, I need them to stop talking about the founders at this point," he began. "If you stretch back to the Mayflower, this is a country that was founded on fleeing from the religious persecution of an official state religion. And when the constitution was being framed, we had states and we had leaders who all understood that this country was going to have a pluralistic approach to religion, which was to say, the government would neither condone nor suppress any religion."

"This is a fundamental part of American history," he lectured. "This emergence of the desire to be a explicitly Christian nation is something that really thrusts itself into the center in the last 50 years, approximately, but it's blossoming in the last couple years."

"My recommendation to these folks, if they want to live in a country that is governed by the church, that is governed by a religious body, I would recommend that they move to Iran -- that is exactly the kind of government they want," he added.

After citing Boebert, he warned, "I don't like all the Handmaid's Tale clichés, but there are people in that movement, there are people in that subculture who really believe that's how America should be. They have completely divorced themselves from individual liberty. They're completely divorced from religious liberty."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Republicans want fascism in America!


Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene among US Republicans celebrating fascist victory in Italy



As much of the world watched with alarm as the fascist Fratelli d'Italia party led a far-right coalition to victory in Italy on Sunday, Republican lawmakers in the United States had a much different reaction: Open glee.

Pointing happily to the far-right's recent electoral surge in Sweden, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) tweeted that "the entire world is beginning to understand that the Woke Left does nothing but destroy."

"Nov. 8 is coming soon and the USA will fix our House and Senate!" added Boebert, a loyalist to former U.S. President Donald Trump. "Let freedom reign!"

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a far-right ally of Boebert's in the U.S. House, also applauded Sunday's results, which position Fratelli d'Italia leader Giorgia Meloni to become Italy's next prime minister even though her party won just around 25% of the vote in a low-turnout contest.

"Congratulations to Giorgio Meloni and to the people of Italy," Greene wrote on Twitter, misspelling the right-wing leader's first name.

In her post, Greene linked to a 2019 speech in which Meloni—who was a youth member of the fascist Italian Social Movement—railed against supposed attacks on "national identity" and "religious identity" and vowed to "defend God, country, and family."

Watch:

Rank-and-file House Republicans were hardly alone in applauding what's likely to be the most right-wing government in Italy since the death of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House minority whip, said in a Fox News appearance Sunday that "it's interesting to see that Europe is leading the way by throwing out socialists with conservatives—and great bold conservative women like Meloni and [U.K. Prime Minister Liz] Truss."

"We need to bring that kind of conservatism to the United States," Scalise added.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas.), for his part, hailed as "spectacular" Meloni's 2019 address to the World Congress of Families, a far-right Christian fundamentalist organization that campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights globally.

Meloni is well-known to the right wing in the U.S., having spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference and met with former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, a far-right provocateur who has correctly described Meloni's party—also known as Brothers of Italy—as "one of the old fascist parties."

"You put a reasonable face on right-wing populism, you get elected," Bannon said of Meloni in an interview in 2018, a year in which Brothers of Italy garnered just 4% of the vote.

Watch:

Italy's election of Meloni, who is also president of the European Conservatives and Reformists party, marks a continuation of the worrying trend of rising far-right, xenophobic, and anti-democratic parties across Europe. In Hungary and Poland, far-right parties are already in power, a situation that has proven to be a nightmare for migrants and other vulnerable populations that have seen basic rights stripped away.

Meloni has voiced admiration for the U.S. GOP and right-wing parties in the United Kingdom and Israel, noting in a recent speech that she "shares values and experiences" with them.

"Hungary has a fascist leader. Sweden's far-right party just won. And Italy has now elected a fascist leader," Qasim Rashid, a human rights attorney, wrote on social media late Sunday. "Eighty years after WW2, fascism is rising across Europe. And if Americans aren't careful, the MAGA GOP will usher in that same fascism here. We cannot let that happen."

Read More Here: https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/hungary