The conservatives – such as former Senator John Danforth (R-MO) and former judge J. Michael Luttig, famous for his stop in at the televised January 6th House hearings – are striking back against the far right, issuing a report on the 2022 Presidential Election entitled:
LOST, NOT STOLEN:
The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden
Won the 2020 Presidential Election
Claiming to be an exhaustive analysis of the Trumpian court actions, its conclusions are:
Donald Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. We do not claim that election administration is perfect. Election fraud is a real thing; there are prosecutions in almost every election year, and no doubt some election fraud goes undetected. Nor do we disparage attempts to reduce fraud. States should continue to do what they can do to eliminate opportunities for election fraud and to punish it when it occurs. But there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole. In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct. It is wrong, and bad for our country, for people to propagate baseless claims that President Biden’s election was not legitimate.
and
We conclude that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case. …
In our system of government, these cases provided the forums in which Trump and his supporters could and should have proven their claims. This Report shows that those efforts failed because of a lack of evidence and not because of erroneous rulings or unfair judges. Judges, legislators, and other election officers, often including members of his own party, gave Trump ample time and every opportunity to present evidence to make his case. Post-election audits or reviews in each state also failed to show any irregularities or fraud that would overturn the electoral results. In many cases, after making extravagant claims of wrongdoing, Trump’s legal representatives showed up in court or state proceedings empty-handed, and then returned to their rallies and media campaigns to repeat the same unsupported claims.
They are risking splitting the Republican Party into two, then three, four, etc., pieces. Why? Because they’re threatening the social standing and power bases of many candidates, and many Trump-allied elected officials, who now must face the question of whether they love power or truth more. The former will win in many cases because of the backing of religious-allied forces, most infamously the evangelical movement, which has, in a time-worn tradition, convinced itself that the Divine is on their side – uniformly through the assertions of self-proclaimed spokespeople for the Divine; the latter remains mute, but no one notices, amidst the clamor of false prophets. Then comes the back-biting and election-cheating claims and and competing claims of being backed by the Divine and all the destructive behaviors endemic to the fourth-raters forming the Republican Party right now.
But there’s also the chance that everyone will ignore it. After all, it’s an exhaustive compendium of unpleasant truths. If the Trumpians refuse to seriously engage with it, it may sink into the dust of the world, little more than a curiosity and cry for help, while the power-mad sweat and cry and bleed for their momentary prominence, whether it be in a governor’s seat, a legislator’s office, or a Justice’s robes.
It’ll be fascinating to see how this important document holds up over the next few weeks. This could be the beginning of the end for Trumpian allies up for election this year – or it could be a nothingburger. As ever, the independents hold power in their hands.
I hear they spend all their free time at the bowling alley or on Tik-Tok.
