There’s a scene in the 1987 Brian de Palma movie The Untouchables in which Chicago street cop Jim Malone (Sean Connery) asks Treasury agent Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) if Ness is really willing to do what is necessary to take down Al Capone and clean up corruption-ridden Chicago. The same question could be asked of the GOP.
Responding to a judge squashing her challenge to the legality of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, Kari Lake announced a few weeks ago “If they’re going to play dirty, we’re going to play dirty!” Her version of “playing dirty”? Ballot chasing and “they’ll have to go through us…and we have 70 million members of the NRA”.
There are several things dooming these strategies to failure:
- “Ballot chasing” connotes a kitten chasing a laser light around the living room. Comparing GOP fighting dirty to the DNC is like comparing Don Knotts to Mike Tyson. None of the GOP upper crust has ever been in a physical altercation in their lives much less combat. They don’t know how to fight at all much less fight dirty. That goes for 99.999% “conservative” talk show hosts as well.
- Ballot chasing sounds too much like ballot stuffing. This similarity in terminology is confusing to a lot of the emotionally-manipulated MAGA base upon which Lake relies. The time-honored practice of ballot stuffing by (both Parties historically) the DNC is illegal. Chasing down recalcitrant GOP voters and inducing them to submit their ballots is not. Ergo chasing ballots is not “playing dirty.” The DNC is using “loaded” boxing gloves. The GOP is using white lace, dress gloves.
- Chasing ballots is a finite effort. There are only so many legally registered GOP voters. That is not a boundary the DNC observes with ballot stuffing. All the DNC insurgents working within the polling system have to do is what they’ve been doing for the last several decades: wait until they see the margin of victory for the GOP then stuff the boxes with enough illegal ballots to overcome the deficit and the legal majority. If anyone should notice the monumental disparity between the number of legal voters in Arizona versus the total number of ballots cast the legal challenge would be taken up in our infamously biased and glacial judicial system guaranteeing another illegitimate DNC victory. The “chasing” strategy will simply be what the somnambulistic GOP elite should have been doing in the first place – getting out the vote. If they hadn’t been squabbling and maneuvering to get their “boy” winning primaries, they wouldn’t have to chase down the disaffected at this late stage of the insurgency.
- Kari Lake said around 500,000 Arizona Republicans did not send in their ballots during the last election. She believes targeting them will (again) “beat the cheat.” It won’t. It didn’t last time and it won’t in 2024. First, the same ballot counters are still in place to pervert the process in favor of the DNC. Second, Lake assumes those voters just decided not to vote. Why? It’s because of Kari Lake’s background. Many did not vote at all because they didn’t trust Lake’s recent “conservative” conversion as a former member of the main stream media. They are either ignorant or forgetful of Ronald Reagan’s conversion from Roosevelt Democrat to Hoover Republican (although most of Reagan’s rhetoric was straight from FDR: “are you better off now than you were…?”).
- So, ultimately, ballot chasing will result in more of your money in GOP coffers but with the same DNC candidates elected to office.
- Kari Lake’s grandiose warning “they’ll have to go through us…and we have 70 million members of the NRA” falls flat in the face of reality.
- First, that has been the case for decades and it has never yet altered the outcome of fraudulent elections – even when the NRA decided relatively late in its’ history to join in the political fray.
- Second, Lake is assuming the NRA membership is one united force. That’s far from true in many ways. The NRA has had their share of internal squabbles over policies and leadership. The NRA has never publicly, financially, or physically sided with those who have actually stood against the “jack-booted thugs” abusing prosecutorial discretion and assaulting law-abiding citizens – until after the fact. The NRA is not going to jeopardize its existence by issuing a Call to Arms! to its’ membership to oppose the federal government during a critical incident. It would be interesting to see the response if it did.
- Despite all the bravado, the majority of NRA members carrying weapons exposed on their hips would wet or soil their pants if confronted by a “tact’d out” federal law enforcement agency.
- This flatulent hyperbole was never more in evidence than during the 1992 Ruby Ridge stand-off. Randy Weaver and his family were well-known and well-liked by the equally conservative members of their community. One would think the strong presence of several white supremist groups would have been a potent force of resistance to the FBI and ATF besieging the Weaver cabin. When FBI SAIC Eugene Glenn announced to the local protestors outside the perimeter that one of his snipers had blown the back of Vicki Weaver’s head off while she was holding her baby in her arms, the crowd went (pardon the term) ballistic. Many shouted “This means war!” But when it came time to actually “Let it begin here”….crickets. And the terrain at Ruby Ridge was perfect for armed resistance. It could very well have been a repeat of the Brits retreat if the same level of testicular fortitude had been shown.
- The only significant example of any armed citizen actively resisting rampant abuses of prosecutorial discretion by a weaponized federal agency was in 1993 by David Koresh at Waco, Texas – and that didn’t end well for him or his followers: 76 killed including 28 children (almost all burned to death) and 11 wounded. Only nine Koresh disciples survived. Four ATF agents were killed and 16 wounded.
In neither case did Weaver’s or Koresh’s neighbors rise up to support their resistance to weaponized government.
Americans in general and the NRA specifically are a long way – if ever- from conducting another Lexington and Concord – even if there are “70 million.”
And that answers the question: “Are you willing to do what’s necessary?”
Remember:
“The only way to stop usurpation of power is to copy it.” – Sergei Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda.1940; p. 255
“It doesn’t matter how many votes are counted. What matters is who counts the votes.” – Stalin
(See also: Vigilance Committees: What the Media Won’t Tell You, this blog site dated 12/28/2021)
