Open Letter to Election Affirmers/Fake News Subscribers

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This forum was created by Dave Leach R-IA Bible Lover-musician-grandpa (talk) 19:28, 12 February 2023 (UTC) to help prolifers discuss the most effective evidence and legal arguments to include in legislation designed to force courts to address the overwhelming consensus of court-recognized fact finders that babies are people, which requires all states to outlaw abortion, according to the 14th Amendment, as Roe pointed, which Dobbs did not challenge. The original post of this article was condensed from "How States Can Outlaw Abortion in a Way that Survives Courts", by Dave Leach. Available as a paperback, Kindle, or as a free PDF.

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Fake News techniques, Republicans tired of rigged election concerns, Offering the wrong evidence that elections are honest, Interviewing a reporter

Saturday, Kari Lake came to Ankeny, Iowa. She is not running for President, or for any Iowa office, nor is she campaigning for any candidate for president or for any Iowa office, yet an email Saturday morning, inviting us to a 5pm rally, was enough to fill an auditorium with 300 or so chairs with a few dozen standing. What drew such a crowd? Could that many Iowans actually care about her court case over her election "loss" for Arizona governor, rife with election irregularities?

Republican "Election Affirmers" really do exist

Can that many Iowans believe she is right - the election was incredibly rigged - even though Republican Party Chair Jeff Kaufman said “election integrity” is “not a burning issue for Iowans” and people only showed up "because they are excited when new faces come to town"? (At least that's what Kaufman said, according to Washington Post reporter Meryl Kornfield.)

Kornfield couldn't seem to find a single Republican to quote who agreed with Lake, other than the hundreds at the Ankeny rally, who apparently weren't quotable in her mind, including yours truly, who she interviewed a few minutes. She got "She's a rabble-rouser" out of Craig Robinson, a Republican political consultant, and quoted former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele: “The party needs to get serious about its future. If it thinks it is going to be competitive, it cannot entertain stupidity and denialism. If it doesn’t want to be competitive, wallow in the mud with Kari Lake.” Ouch! I wonder if Steel, Robinson, and Kaufman really said those things?

Fake News Methods

Even 20 years ago when I was a favorite target of reporters, I learned that putting quote marks around a statement is no guarantee that anyone said it. How much more now when reporters, without embarrassment, begin an article, "She falsely claimed.... She baselessly insisted... And she warned without evidence....

When I began reporting in 1989, it was unthinkable for a reporter to openly acknowledge their bias. That was the privilege of editorial writers. Not that reporters were unbiased, but back then they had to lie and say they were unbiased. Impartial. It was "unethical" to put their bias right out in the middle of the room where everyone could see it.

So to make sure readers came away with the correct opinion, the reporter would have to find enemies of her target, and quote them saying her target "falsely claimed/baselessly insisted...warned without evidence" or whatever. Ah, the good 'ol days!

When did this change? I started becoming aware of it when Trumps campaign got serious traction in 2015. By Covid time it was apparently "unethical" to write a story without some version of "the [world renowned doctor] false claimed..." (which was always corroborated by a "fact checker" whose medical expertise consisted of a first aid merit badge when he was a cub scout, for all we can tell.)

I asked Kornfield how long she has been a reporter. She said she began in 2015. Although her LinkedIn profile indicates that must have been on a student newspaper. She graduated with a Journalism degree apparently in January 2019. Anyway, since reporters were loudly stating their bias since her first year as a reporter, that is the only kind of reporting she has known, unless she can remember what it was like when she was in junior high.

How do we "Move On" past rigged elections?

Kornfield asked me what I thought of Lake running for Senate. I noted that Lake said nothing about that at the rally. I had heard rumors, but I answered that running for Senate will not fix the election fraud. Being installed as governor, perhaps after a new election, will. I didn't tell her something I think about: what sense does it make for run for anything, before elections are made honest again? How can any honest person win anything while dishonest election officials are not stopped from rigging elections by the hundreds of thousands of votes, openly?

MoveOn.org is an ultra liberal Soros-funded organization.

The Wrong Evidence

Whether or not Kaufman, Steele, and Robinson really said what Kornfield alleges, I've heard other leading Republicans say stuff like that. When I wrote to Senator Grassley about his refusal to object to election certification on January 6, 2021, his form letter answer said there had been something like 80 court cases about it and Trump's lawyers never once alleged the evidence showed he won. (That answer earned Grassley a primary challenger, who complained about that failure to act in his campaign speeches. I was surprised when Trump endorsed Grassley nonetheless, aborting his challenger's campaign.) Unfortunately Grassley didn't share a link to where I might review for myself what those judges saw and the basis for their rulings. I tried to find such a place and could not.

Grassley's evidence misses the point. No, of course, we can't prove who would have won had the election been honest. That is the point. The fraud was significant enough that no one can prove Biden won, either. Isn't that reason enough to require a new election? Can I get an "election affirmer" to address that?

Among my vivid memories are Gulliani's press conference where several election judges testified how they were excluded from being able to observe the ballot counting. Or workers installing styrofoam sheets over windows so that election monitors driven from the counting room, where they were supposed to be, couldn't even look through the hallway windows. That was 2020. I never heard anyone try to explain how that didn't actually happen. Or how about the testimony of forensics experts proving the Dominion voting machines were going online? In Arizona in 2022 it is apparently undisputed that ballots in Republican-heavy precincts were printed in a way that voting machines wouldn't count them, causing hours-long lines and many walking away without voting. Just one of a long list of irregularities.

There was enough fraud to make videos showing it go "viral". I never found them refuted. but only censored. Does any young person understand the difference? Fellow oldies, do you remember the difference? "Refuting" is where you honestly and accurately acknowledge the evidence and reasoning against you, and then you explain its flaws, and/or disprove it with other evidence.

Censoring evidence of fraud is NOT the way to "prove" it never occurred. Yet "election affirmers" seem to think that is the way to prove it.

I would like to hear these "election affirmers" refute our impression from two years of daily emails about election fraud that blatant election fraud is significant enough to justify reasonable doubt that Kari Lake or Donald Trump actually lost.

The Washington Post article

Here is the actual article that got me going today:

Defiant Kari Lake carries election denier banner across Iowa amid divided GOP As she weighs a Senate run, Lake is traveling the country as one of the most vocal standard-bearers of an animated if wounded movement By Meryl Kornfield February 12, 2023 at 12:58 p.m. EST Kari Lake, former Republican candidate for Arizona governor, speaks at a town hall in Ankeny, Iowa, on Saturday. (Rachel Mummey for The Washington Post) Listen 9 min Comment 126 Gift Article Share

BETTENDORF, Iowa — For two days, Kari Lake traversed this state with a clear message. She falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. She baselessly insisted that votes were rigged against her in her run for Arizona governor last year. And she warned without evidence that future races will be compromised.

“If you lose, lose with dignity. You shake the other person’s hand and walk away,” she told a crowd of approximately 200 at a reception hall on Friday, describing advice from her father on how to gracefully accept defeat. “I didn’t lose, so I’m not doing that.”

Lake, who lost in November by more than 17,000 votes to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), is waging a new campaign without conceding the last one. The former television news anchor is traveling the country as one of the most vocal standard-bearers of an animated if wounded election denialism movement as she weighs a run for U.S. Senate and hears encouragement from some to set her sights on national office.

Judge rules against Kari Lake in bid to overturn Arizona election results

That movement has persisted in some quarters of the Republican Party despite candidates such as Lake experiencing pivotal losses in last year’s midterms after running openly on denying the results of the 2020 election. During a pair of stops Friday and Saturday in Iowa, Lake drew enthusiastic crowds here and in Ankeny. She walked onstage to Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman.” She shook hands with supporters. She signed autographs. When an audience member here shouted, “Trump VP!,” Lake giggled at the outburst and repeated it. Advertisement

“Trump VP,” Lake said, speaking of the former president, who in his third run for the White House has continued to make false claims about his 2020 election defeat. “I love President Trump. I will do everything in my power to get that man elected.”

Yet not everyone who came to see Lake was keen to hear her rehash past elections, and others in the party have been sharply critical of her rhetoric, seeing her as a part of a Trump-era scourge at the ballot box that cost the GOP winnable races last fall and could doom its chances in 2024. Her trip to this early presidential nominating state underlined tensions in the party between those who want to move away from the cause and others determined to keep it alive.

Dwain Swanson, 88, said he has watched Lake’s interviews on Fox News and Newsmax with interest, drawn by her charisma and his belief in her claim — included in a lawsuit rejected by a judge — that hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots did not follow the chain of custody. While he felt she is too inexperienced for the White House, Swanson said he felt she deserved to be Arizona’s governor. “She wasn’t defeated,” he said. Advertisement

In an interview with The Washington Post, Lake said everyone she met in Iowa agreed with her election claims. When pointed to some people who had raised doubts about election denialism, she called a reporter “brainwashed.”

“Everyone who talked with me in that line said keep fighting,” she said, referring to the hordes of people who queued for selfies with Lake, “because they are stealing elections in Arizona and other states. And because of that, what we want as Americans isn’t happening.”

When Rick and Kate Ramza lined up to enter the reception hall where Lake spoke on Friday, they were more interested in hearing what she thought about race and gender issues being taught in schools than they were about past elections. The former Trump voters now looking for a fresh face worried about crime and drugs infiltrating their quiet Iowa town. Advertisement

“What happened happened,” Rick Ramza said. “Just move on.”

Polling has shown that many Republicans still express doubts about the validity of the 2020 election. Fifty-five percent of Republican-leaning voters said they felt President Biden’s win was due only to voter fraud, while 28 percent said he won fair and square, according to a Monmouth University poll released in mid-December. The same survey showed that 55 percent of Republican voters said someone who accepted Biden as legitimately elected could be considered a good Republican, while 35 percent said such a person could not. A November Marquette Law School poll found that half of Republicans said they were confident that votes were accurately cast and counted in the 2022 election.

Iowa is poised to play an influential role in 2024 as the first-in-the-nation caucus state on the Republican side. Boldfaced names are set to descend on the state in the coming weeks, including former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who plans to announce Wednesday that she is running for president. Other potential candidates such as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and former vice president Mike Pence have also scheduled visits.

Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, said that “election integrity” is “not a burning issue for Iowans,” yet he heard people asking Lake about it at her stop Friday at a historic confectionery store in eastern Iowa. Kaufmann and other Iowa GOP leaders said their caucus-goers will turn out to events like Lake’s meet-and-greets because they are excited when new faces come to town. Advertisement

“She’s a rabble-rouser,” said Craig Robinson, a Republican political consultant in Des Moines. “I don’t think anyone expects Kari Lake to come in and give a thoughtful speech on foreign policy. She’s going to provide a lot of red meat and get people talking.”

Lake instructed her audiences to ask major Republicans who plan to visit the state in the near future about election security. Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said Lake’s visit is a distraction that Haley, Scott and others will have to respond to, detracting from their discussions about policy.

“The party needs to get serious about its future,” Steele said. “If it thinks it is going to be competitive, it cannot entertain stupidity and denialism. If it doesn’t want to be competitive, wallow in the mud with Kari Lake.” Advertisement

Yet Lake remains an intriguing political figure to many Republicans. Many of those who turned out to her events chanted Trump’s name and cheered when she echoed his rhetoric. As a candidate last year, Lake ran on Trump’s false claims about 2020 and won his support in the GOP primary. Some said they attended her events because they were curious to hear if she might hint at her next political steps.

Lake has affirmed that she will take a court case accusing election officials of malfeasance as far as it will go after it was rejected by an Arizona judge. Meanwhile, she has been appearing at GOP events across the country and was selected to be a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s Ronald Reagan Dinner next month.

Lake said she is supporting Trump for president in 2024. As for the possibility of running for the Senate next year, she has said she would consider mounting a campaign, although she remains focused for now on the court challenge she has filed to dispute her defeat in Arizona last year. Advertisement

During her events in Iowa, Lake criticized the news media, which she said had not fairly covered her “perfect campaign.” And she mocked strategists who had warned her to stay away from topics such as covid-19, masking and the 2020 election.

“Whatever you do, don’t talk about stolen elections,” she echoed from her conversations with “political types.” “And I said: ‘Well, those are important issues right now. Those are things we’ve got to talk about.’ And so I just took all of those rules, and I threw them in the circular file.”

Lake nodded to her local ties during the trip. She attended high school in Eldridge — near Bettendorf — and went to the University of Iowa, where she studied journalism. At Friday’s event here, some attendees knew her father, a coach and teacher at an area high school. Lake greets supporters at the town hall in Ankeny. (Rachel Mummey for The Washington Post)

Austin Bayliss drove from nearby Washington County to Friday’s event to get a live look at the candidate he had watched in YouTube videos Lake’s campaign posted of her feuding with the press. Advertisement

“I like a fighter,” said Bayliss, a Trump supporter. But he said he didn’t understand Republicans’ doubts about mail-in voting. He had volunteered with Trump’s campaign in 2016 to register Republicans for mail-in ballots, and had hoped to hear Lake speak about how the party could improve absentee voting. She did not touch on that.

“We’ll need to get used to losing if that’s what we’re doing,” Bayliss said, lamenting GOP efforts to cast doubts about mailed ballots.

Bryon Schneider, a 50-year-old electrician, said he had followed Lake when she announced her run for governor and that he admired her for speaking about closing the U.S.-Mexico border, because he disliked that some undocumented immigrants get construction jobs. If her court case didn’t prevail, he hoped she might run for Senate so his party could take control of Congress.

“What she’s looking for is what we’re looking for,” he said.

Emily Guskin in Washington contributed to this report. Image without a caption By Meryl Kornfield