Election-Denying Republicans Will Keep Losing Elections While We Point And Laugh

It's simple math!

Republicans promoting the "Big Lie" of rigged elections have maintained a solid grift. Kari Lake spent the past six months insisting she won the Arizona governor's race that she lost to actual Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. However, she's raised millions from the gullible that she can redirect toward purchasing more soft-focus cameras or running for Senate next year.

There is a downside, though. Undermining your supporters’ faith in elections can suppress turnout. It could cost her the Senate race. Heck, it might've actually cost her the governor's race.

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 BREAKING: Kari Lake Still Not Governor 

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 FBI Vampire Slayer Herschel Walker Ready To Own Raphael Warnock At Debates, If He Shows Up 

According to a new study from States United Action, it seems that feeding Donald Trump's ego starved Republicans in statewide elections somewhere between 2.3 and 3.7 percentage points in last year's midterms. That's not insignificant. In almost every key race that Democrats won, anything within that range would've flipped the result.

In the US Senate election in Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt tried to "walk the tightrope" of claiming the 2020 election was "rigged" while reassuring his supporters that "your votes are going to count." He narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto by 48 to 48.9 percent. What's interesting is that theReal Clear Politics polling average had him ahead 3.4 percentage points. Polls are hardly perfect but this does fall neatly into the "election denial" deficit.

Living brain donor Herschel Walker lost the Senate race in Georgia for many good reasons, but when he wasn't declaring war on trees, he was also promoting Trump's "Big Lie." He once claimed that the state officials who certified Joe Biden's presidential victory should go to jail.

From Mother Jones:  

In the days and weeks after the November 2020 presidential election, Walker called on the Supreme Court to step in to change the election results; advocated for seven states to throw out their election results and hold new elections; argued that there was “country wide election fraud” ; and pleaded for Trump to figure out who “stole this election.”
 
On December 27, 2020, Walker also took aim at state officials for not doing more to keep Trump in the White House, tweeting that “any person that certified Votes for their state when their state may have had voter fraud but they turned a blind eye and did no research and certified anyway, they need to go to JAIL ASAP. Our Country was built on LAW AND ORDER.”

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are hardly saints but they acknowledged electoral reality. This earned them Trump's wrath, but they each handily won re-election. True, Walker was a scandal-plagued buffoon whose serial lies seem quaint now that we've met George Santos, but he was also the lone election denier of the three.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes beat Republican Abraham Hamadeh by just 280 votes, the smallest margin of any statewide election in 2022. Hamadeh tweeted in April 2022, “My message to those who worked to rob President Trump in the rigged 2020 election: Your day of reckoning is coming when I take office January 2023.” He reinforced his unhinged point with a subtle photo of someone's cuffed hands. He also vowed to prosecute abortion providers. Those were 280 very important votes.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes defeated Republican election denier Mark Finchem by a far more decisive 120,000 votes.   Finchem was well ahead of Fontes in polling prior to the election.

Lake, of course, wouldn't shut up about election fraud. She claimed "they" were stealing the Republican primary that she actually won and told CNN's Dana Bash in October that people "don't trust our elections." She was probably the best possible surrogate for Hobbs's campaign.

Election denial isn't just immoral, it's also bad politics. Who'd have guessed? However, that won't stop the former malignant narcissist in chief. Trump kept pushing the "Big Lie" during his CNN sponge-bath town hall. As long as he controls the party, Republican candidates can't move on from 2020 and retain his favor. That means the extremist loons face off against normal Democrats. Fine by me! We'll take that 2.3 to 3.7 percentage handicap in 2024.

[ New York Times / States United ]

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