Skullduggery in Maine
If you haven’t really been paying attention to the allegations of vote fraud in Maine, you really need to watch this whole thing. (HT2 LRC) It starts out a bit slow in the beginning but then it gets pretty good.
For rank-and-file Republicans, I have a question for you: Isn’t it weird how your side has such a strong bench–firebreathing true conservatives as defined by Rush Limbaugh and so forth–and yet, for some inexplicable reason, your party keeps putting up duds like John McCain and Mitt Romney? Isn’t that weird, how that keeps happening?
At some point, do you think you should seriously look into the nature of our political process, and stop blaming everything on Nancy Pelosi? What if the problem is much deeper than that, and the Republican establishment uses your hatred of Pelosi to distract you from the bipartisan pickpocketing?
With all due respect Bob, I doubt many “rank and file Republicans” read your blog (though it would be great if they did!).
I must say this new revelation isn’t exactly surprising but really shoves a stick in the eye of those who claim “if libertarianism is so freaking great, why doesn’t a candidate run and get elected?” Well damn, it looks to me like one candidate is running and is popular but has been marginalized and screwed over at every turn (even going back to the Ames Straw poll). It’s almost like the system is stacked against him….
As a rank and file Republican, I do wonder how moderate to liberal republicans keep getting the nomination. You left out the duds Bob Dole and George W. Bush. Certainly they were not conservative republicans. Bush senior was also a moderate, but it is less of a mystery why he was nominated since he was also the Vice President at the time.
Is there a conspiracy within the republican establishment to nominate only moderates and keep the conservative candidates from getting the nomination? I would actually like to believe this to be true because it would mean that the more conservative and libertarian candidates are losing not on the merits but because the fix is in. As much as I would like to believe the conspiracy theory, there will definitely need to be more proof than voter fraud/irregularities in one state. What is more likely is that the conservative candidates are losing for various other reasons, such as running a poor campaign or bad luck.
I will say that video was a nice piece of investigative journalism. If you find more videos like that keep posting them.
You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to think that Ron Paul has not many supporters within the leadership of the Republican party. And it also is everything but naive to think that people in those positions, when so much power and money is at stake give a damn about fairness. The only question is how far will they go? Of course only as far as it is not likely to be caught… Don’t involve to many people etc.. So this is where implausible conspiracy theories fail, because they necessarily need to assume that nearly the whole party and voting organization needs to be involved in a giant conspiracy which really is ridiculous. But there is always room for rigging the system to a certain extent.
Anyway I guess a lot could be avoided if Ron Paul supporters would generally make their vote public. Is that even possible generally in all states (in Caucasus and Primaries)? So that if you whished you could look up and see how they counted your vote, and that you also could see all others who voted publicly.
I just think that nowadays the secret vote has more downside than upside to it, especially in the US where it is common to show your political opinion publicly anyway. It’s not that I want to abolish the secret vote completely, but it should be possible to make it public, which would avoid a lot of potential for vote fraud right from the start and makes it easier to reveal it as such afterwards (Just as shown in the video).
“So this is where implausible conspiracy theories fail, because they necessarily need to assume that nearly the whole party and voting organization needs to be involved in a giant conspiracy which really is ridiculous”
Set aside, for a moment, the tone of Bob’s comment about the Republican establishment, which I can see as being construed as some widely-held conspiracy. I’ll let Bob refine and/or defend his views if he wants to.
The issue at stake here (Maine) isn’t a case of a wide-spread and giant conspiracy. This would be a case of cheating on the margin, as it were. The Maine Republican Party head and a few key vote counters trimming away at the right places can turn a slight Paul lead into a slight Romney lead.
Just because this story is consistent with reality does not make it true, but the rigging that is being alleged in Maine doesn’t need a huge conspiracy to explain it.
Right, I don’t want to assert anything here. But I am not naive as well. I just have too less information and knowledge about the whole process to get an idea if this is only the result of coincidence and misunderstandings, or a bit cheating on the margin or even significant fraud on a larger scale. And you should not forget even a bit cheating on the margin can have huge effects on the dynamics and momentum of the election if done at the right spots in the right moment.Therefore my suggestion: Vote publicly and check your vote.
Want to know how Russians vote? I would have never believed that this was possible it if I hadn’t seen this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzGt_E5SIoA
😉
And for those who say now “Oh that only is possible in Russia”
Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3LOmyadLcI
“Just because this story is consistent with reality does not make it true”
I always thought being consistent with reality was the definition of trueness.
You are correct I think, though the problem in this case is that we do not actually have all of the facts (i.e., we do not completely understand what reality is in this case). Having just some subset of the facts, for now, we can find a couple of stories that are consistent with what we know (though there are certainly more!):
1. The Maine Republican party is a bunch of bumbling idiots who made a series of mistakes counting/processing the votes.
2. The story I laid out above (the party chair + some key people were cheating for Romney)
3. Widespread conspiracy for Romney.
Yet none of these stories is inconsistent with what we know (or knew at the time, I haven’t been following this story very closely since it came out).
Hope this helps to clarify what I meant there.
“As much as I would like to believe the conspiracy theory, there will definitely need to be more proof than voter fraud/irregularities in one state.”
As it happens, this is the 2nd state where there have been shenanigans. The first was Iowa, in which the state party chair declared a Romney victory by an 8 vote margin then later reversed himself on it and said Santorum won. And all of this eventually lead to the disgraceful resignation of the Iowa party chair, Matt Strawn.
The mainstream media, as always, is so derelict in its duty to report truth that you don’t hear about these things. Not that any of the Iowa nonsense does anything to demonstrate an anti-Paul conspiracy. A pro-Romney conspiracy would be the implication here, if anything.
There’s some skullduggery, there’s massive media bias, dishonesty and incompetence and the mass of GOP primary voters are dingbats.
And the leftists are insane and unmoored from reality. The perfect storm.