Jim Hightower recently asked his readers to give a different name to the Republican Party. My favorite was Republicants.
This evening I'm at my daughter's watching more TV in an evening than I watch in a couple of months. She and her husband like watching all the Friday night public TV news programs. One segment included the Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate, Tom Emmer, claiming that the Democratic Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, said that there were 20,000 more ballots cast than there were voters. I'm not sure of the exact figure, but it was large.
OK, don't take anybody's, and I really mean anybody's, assertion as fact. I looked for "mark ritchie" and "more ballots than voters". I couldn't find any source other than Republican or "conservative" sites asserting this. This doesn't mean that Ritchie didn't say it, but it certainly does make one wonder if he did say it.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a conservative strategy to make assertions without proof, repeat them often enough, and hope few challenge the assertions. If anyone does, disparage their credentials or just ignore them. We see this with climate change, we see it with the military, we see it with taxes, we see it with …
I am really saddened by these tactics. First, it is no way to run a democracy or a republic. Second, I used to be a Republican Party active member. When Ronald Reagan was nominated for president, I saw that it was no longer my Republican Party. About the only thing I did after that is support Arne Carlson for governor when the nominated Republican candidate self-destructed in the light of sexual improprieties involving teen-agers.
See also:
Government of whom, for whom, and by whom?
Republicans do not have "people's" support or a "mandate"
A couple examples of how some "discourse"
