There's hopefully going to be a lot of analysis, spending time in the woodshed, and then a lot of work put in by Republicans to turn this around - if it can even be done given the structural disadvantages that just got baked into our State's Constitution.
1. While the MI GOP were playing checkers, the Democrats have been playing chess, if not using a different board entirely.
Some major structural issues mailed the Republicans this election:
A. With the Dem-led "Voters not Politicians" redrawing the electoral map to make it "competitive" it gave a significant advantage to the Dems. Failure to effectively stop this referendum campaign, or battle the new gerrymandered map that resulted has given the Dems a massive advantage.
B. Absentee for no reason, Mail in / dropbox voting which kills off the chain of custody of the ballots and opens the way to lots and lots of opportunities for fraud.
2. The MI GOP then left these issues unfixed and then compounded these structural errors and decided to fight the battle on the terms set by the Democrats - on Abortion and Trump.
Great decision making there, well done.
They fell right into that trap rather than on solid issues they would win on - Whitmer's actions during the lockdowns, the economy, and how the Democrats on the national level have been making a mess of the country this state.
Does the GOP and its candidates not have any polling done before deciding on their strategy? At all?
Had Tudor Dixon not chosen to make Abortion her number one issue by making a hardline statement that was even beyond what the 1931 law held - that she was for no exceptions for abortion including even for the life of the mother, she could have separated voting for her from voting for Proposal 3.
Instead she lost and Proposal Three passed.
Yes, Proposal Three just made Michigan a more than Roe state and just enshrined it in the constitution and given the language of the amendment just got rid of most, if not all prior legal restrictions on abortion. And it got the Dems out in droves.
She didn't separate herself and instead nicely tied herself to it in a way to make independents say no to voting for her. Talking to independents and Dems that I know, the only thing they heard was Tudor's extreme anti-abortion stance and that was enough for them to vote no on her no matter how much they had issues with Whitmer. Had she toned it down her message might of been heard but her broadcast hardliner statements that were even more extreme than not just Roe but the 1931 law doomed that. It also didn't help that Whitmer was outfunding and outspending Dixon by 10 to 1 or m ore, but at least have a viable message that can get more than just a portion of your base to vote for you.
That the GOP didn't think ahead, plan, and refine her message so they were not fighting on the exact ground chosen by Democrats is inexplicable.
3. The MI GOP ran some truly horrendous candidates, again choosing the ground picked by Democrats. How many Democrats crossed over in the primary to help pick the worst possible candidates is uncertain, but that likely helped as well.
DePerno had to come off as a raving lunatic of a candidate.
Look, while Whitmer should be investigated and prosecuted for lots of good reasons, you do not announce you're going to do it until after you're elected, not before to energize your opponents. See our Current AG Nessel and her prosecution of former Governor Snyder for how to play this political game. You also do not put up someone running for AG who is being currently investigated for potentially violating Michigan law for messing with voting machines. But the GOP did and Nasty Nessel got easily reelected as a result in what should have been an easy win. 2020 election denial without court-admissible proof, not theories, goes nowhere folks.
People, election fraud is hard to prove. But either prove it, or instead work to stop it happening in the future. Going off with unprovable theories does not cut it at all.
If DePerno was instead running to ensure Nessel was re-elected Attorney General it is hard to see what he would do differently.
Karamo the Republican Secretary of State candidate decided to put Trump front and center in her campaign and even filed a lawsuit seeking an extraordinary remedy of injunctive relief for absentee voting in Detroit on the very eve of the election without any admissible evidence to win. Good job rilling up Detroit and every possible Democrat with that right before the election, and completely tainting claims of actual fraud by this absolute incompetence in filing a frivolous lawsuit. Really nicely done. Again, Benson was beatable on the issues, but Karamo chose Trump and unprovable theories that made her unelectable.
If Karamo was running to ensure a Benson was elected Secretary of State it is hard to see what she would do differently.
Chief Craig, who would have been very hard to beat in the run for governor, got "ratfucked" as they say, by a corrupt Democrat and felon-led signature collecting fraud drive. Unsurprisingly, our Democrat AG is not investigating. That the opportunity for this even happened at all is inexplicable. It belies a complete lack of competence by his campaign and the other 5 candidates to whom this occurred, and a clear lack of infrastructure for signature collecting and for guidance by the state party.
In short, the Democrats outmaneuvered the Republicans at every damn turn and the Republican candidates happily obliged and decided to fight according to the exact terms set by the Democrats and lost handily.
As a result we got Proposal 3 passed, if you didn't like abortion in Michigan before, you're really gonna hate how unrestricted it is now.
Even worse we got Proposal 2 passed which makes it:
- Even easier for elections to be "fortified", and it certainly is written on a manner that can be interpreted that even felons in prison (a nice Democrat voting block) have a right to vote in elections.
- ensures the straight-party ticket beloved by the Democrats is now a constitutional lock.
- allows out-of-state and corporate money to "help" fund elections (remember when Democrats used to want corporate money out of politics? - good times, those),
- removes any chance at independent audits of an election allowing only the Secretary of State to do an audit and it is written in a manner to keep political parties from inspecting or having any role in the conducting of the audit.
-Makes certification of the vote a ministerial duty and doesn't allow the Certification Board to meaningfully investigate nor contest election results.
Basically this is a Democrat wish-list for handling elections and to prevent fraud investigations or election accountability so long as they control the Secretary of State slot, that just got enshrined into our State Constitution - and they sold it under the false claim of requiring people to have to have ID to vote.
Proposal 2 is a disaster for this state.
That there were no Republican led proposals on the ballot to strengthen elections, and for many other areas that things could be improved structurally is unfathomable and a missed opportunity.
The MIGOP needs to sit down and reassess their message and tactics, and it looks like they're starting to do so, but not soon enough. Republicans in this state are now way, way behind the 8-ball in this state and the Democrat machinations to date unless effectively challenged are going to keep Democrats in power and Republicans out for a long time to come.
6 comments:
I'd look at the big contributors to the GOP. If the lion's share of their funding came from an old hard-line reactionary, that could explain a lot of this.
I actually investigated the proposals and found the same thing, and voted against all 3 of them. I knew what was going to happen, if they passed, especially the 2nd of them. I am not too impressed with #1 either.
One thing that is forgotten is that people were angry with Whitmer, and attempted to impeach her, which failed. So she was able to raise money in order to defend herself from that attempted impeachment. Any money that was left over, I remember reading that she was allowed to keep for another run at the governorship. So she started out with a campaign fund already in place.
With control of all of the legislature, look for some very liberal attacks on our freedoms in the coming years. I am thinking especially of our firearm freedoms, the governor's power during a declared state of emergency, and the power of the Secretary of State to make and enforce rules in that same time frame.
I am not certain just how the various rules and laws are passed in the state, in conjunction with the constitution, but no doubt the Republicans will be attempting to hold the line. It seems like the entire Republican party has gotten some kind of infection where they don't know how to run a political party anymore. Time will tell.
Time for y'all to look at moving to America...
Michigan R's have been inept and fielding bad candidates for decades, so none of this is surprising. So now Michigan is a Blue State, and is set up to be the California of the midwest, with no actual non-progressives in government at any level.
To Old NFO's statement - where is America? Right now, the obvious choice is Florida. But if DeSantis runs for/is elected President in '24, who takes over for him? And does FL slide back into the abyss? Texas is increasingly purple from all the Commiefornia expats, and Gov. Abbott is a bit of a squish who often has to have his political spine reinforced to do the right thing. Kentucky keeps sending Mitch McConnell back to congress. Where does one go where they can reliably expect to not be overwhelmed by progressives? I'm 60 years old so my timelines are shorter than a 25 year old conservative. I hate to think of what my kids will be facing when they are my age!
Where ever there will be mail in voting, will be victories for Democrats.
They have systematically normalized election fraud over the past 30 years.
Chuck Pergiel: I think a lot of the hard-core base came out for those claiming to be hard-core Trump candidates and it backfired badly. Tudor Dixon not having the acumen to realize going to war over abortion was playing right into the Dems' hand's didn't help much.
pigpen51: Each of the proposals were represented in a rather deceitful way by their proponents, and prop 1 conflates two separate issues which is scuzzy as heck. Yep, Whitmer had very full coffers which only got bigger with outside money. I'm not looking forward to the trainwreck the Dems are about to make of this state and our rights.
MatthewW: Yep, the Dems have "fortifying elections" down to a science now, and it's past time the GOP got in the game.
Old NFO: Its being considered but as Scott says, kinda hard to tell where to go, and may just have to dig in here and try to help turn this around.
Scott: Sadly it's not surprising at all, and the Dems just locked in some electoral advantages for them into the state constitution itself. Going to be hard to coem back from this and the worst part is it was caused by a blunder of epic proportions by the MiGOP.
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