The Republican Party is no longer facing a fight between moderate-liberal (McCain, Romney) and Conservative (Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo), but a fight between Talking Conservative (Trump) and Walking Conservative (DeSantis). And growing numbers of pro-DeSantis Republicans are emerging.
Sure, the polling shows Trump with a runaway lead. However, Republicans had runaway leads in 2022, and we all saw how that turned out. Furthermore, the 2024 primary will be decided by voters in specific states, not national polling or national sentiment.
Slow and steady wins the race. Another reason I prefer DeSantis to Trump at this point: he is focused on the real mechanics and political engineering of elections. The Left does not measure success on how many people attend a rally, or how many people follow a candidate on social media. The focus is always on getting votes, or in more recent times how many ballots they can stuff in the ballot box, how many illegal aliens they can register to vote, how many dead voters they can list as casting ballots.
Not just ballot-harvesting, but ballot-chasing is the name of the game, and DeSantis has announced he will use every legal maneuver to win. I live in California, where cheating is rampant, yet in 2022, Republicans gained back Congressional seats for the second cycle in a row. We have not had that kind of restoration in nearly forty years. If committed partisans are willing to make the effort, we can win.
And this issue of ballots, votes, election results, and voter fraud rears its necessary head again when discussing the fraught, contentious Trump v. DeSantis primary.
One of the biggest challenges for DeSantis supporters when dealing with ongoing Trump supporters, and even some conservatives sitting on the fence, has been “But they stole the election from Trump!” Newt Gingrich rightly argued that the 2020 Election was rigged against Trump. Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnaney exposed numerous examples of voter fraud, too.
I have good friends who in principled fashion are standing by Trump because he was unfairly denied a second term. “I can’t vote for anyone else, because it has to be Trump.” Another friend is choosing Trump first, but he will vote for DeSantis if he is the nominee.
And you know what? They are right, and Trump is right: they stole the election from him.
Mass mail-in balloting all over the country, along with rampant harvesting, election results in which more ballots came in than had been distributed, plus the fact that state supreme courts and executive officials violated the United States Constitution and changed the process for electing electors: all of this undermined the integrity and accuracy of our elections. A casual glance at the United States Constitution clearly informs which body determines how electors are chosen:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
The legislatures determine how electors are appointed: not courts, not governors, not secretaries of state. And yet, throughout Election 2020, we witnessed every agency but the legislatures expand ballot access, change the rules, and allow for ballot counting beyond deadlines.
All of this was unacceptable. Sadly, voter fraud remains all too American as apple pie, going all the way back to the days of machine politics and Boss Tweed, who declared “It’s not the votes, but who counts them,” and “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?”
Trump has not been the only victim of frustrated voter outcomes or voter fraud, though. I shared previously how Andrew Jackson was denied the Presidency in 1824, when the election went to the House of Representatives. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s political career took off because of voter fraud. Let’s not forget that there were credible allegations of voter fraud against Kennedy and Johnson during the 1960 Presidential election, all indicating that Richard Nixon should have been declared the winner.
I want to focus specifically on Richard Nixon, however. Unlike Trump, Nixon didn’t pout and grouse on the sidelines when the 1960 election results were disputed then turned against him. He kept running. To make matters worse, though, he lost his bid for California governor in 1962. “He was a loser,” Pat Buchanan shared with CBS Sunday morning.
But Nixon helped Republicans in 1964, and he helped Republicans win in 1966. Nixon then won in 1968. In stark contrast, Trump has helped Republicans lose. He lost the House in 2018. He supervised the loss of four key US Senate seats in 2020. He witnessed Republicans lose yet another US Senate seat and barely gain back the House in 2022.
Life is unfair, and there is cheating. The answer is not to double down on bitterness. The answer is to make things better.
And why did unreliable mail-in balloting become normal in 2020? Why did unprecedented election measures sweep the country to begin with? Trump ordered lockdowns following the COVID-19 outbreak. He leased out his authority as President to Fauci. He went along with shutting down businesses, churches, and everything else. He even criticized governors like Georgia’s Brian Kemp who defied the federal authority and advised them to re-open their states. On top of that, Trump would tweet complaints about universal mail-in balloting. He had executive power to direct the US Postal Service to clamp down on voter fraud and election abuses. Yet he did nothing.
Yes, the leftist powers-that-be stole the election. Trump saw them organizing the steal, but did nothing about it. You can’t see a problem, and not doing something about it—especially when you do have the power to do something. DeSantis has a long record of clamping down on voter fraud. Trump didn’t do anything about it. DeSantis did, and DeSantis will.