Republicans have set a record in 2022 for running their campaigns on flat-out lies and frauds.
Their lies about election integrity — past, present, and future – are simply over the top. Republicans offer these lies without a hint of evidence to back them up. They do not even acknowledge that multiple court cases and bi-partisan investigations have found their lies utterly false.
Yet Republican candidates repeat those lies – not because they believe them, but because they know the lies will generate anger, campaign cash, and votes from their base.
Another example: Republicans are running against high gasoline prices. They have no plan for lowering those prices, of course. But they have plenty of lies about gasoline prices.
They pretend not to notice that gasoline prices have dropped dramatically in the last several weeks and dropped faster this summer than at any time in the previous ten years.
They blame President Biden for high prices, even though Biden’s action helped bring prices down. The President tapped into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to get more oil into the US market – a 180-million-barrel draw down since Spring – to make up for the disruption caused by the war in Ukraine, Putin’s price hikes, and cuts in production by producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Is anyone surprised that Republicans don’t mention Russia’s role in driving gasoline prices up? Or are you surprised when Republicans fail to say that the prices have come down primarily because of President Biden’s actions?
I’m not.
The Republican strategy on gasoline prices is to lie by ignoring relevant facts, cast blame where it does not belong, drive anger up, and count on that anger to carry the day for them.
Not surprisingly, the Republican narrative also leaves out any mention that Republicans have no plan for bringing gasoline prices down. Beyond their old stand-bys, “dig and drill forever,” and more tax cuts for Big Oil, they have nothing.
Those tax cuts they want to give to Big Oil? That would be the same Big Oil reporting quarterly profits, tens of billions of dollars, from price gouging at the pump. This price gouging at the pump is another big reason prices went up, though Republicans manage to pole vault over that part of the story too.
With Republicans putting so many lies and frauds out there, it’s hard to say which is the biggest.
But here’s another one that certainly ought to be on the shortlist:
Republicans are running in 2022 as the party of “law and order.” This! is the same party whose leader launched a violent coup against our democracy on January 6, 2021, seriously injuring and even killing more than 100 US Capitol Police and District of Columbia police officers.
This! is the party whose leader stole hundreds of government documents when he left the White House, including Top Secret documents that, if they fell into the wrong hands, would put the lives of US intelligence agents and their sources in immediate lethal danger.
Trump stole the docs and deliberately stored them in his high-traffic resort/home Mar-a-Lago basement. His double-talk is impressive:
- First, Trump, the Republican Party leader, claims – without evidence – that the FBI planted those Top-Secret documents in his home.
- Second, Trump claims at the same time that he lawfully took them with him when he left the White House because he “owns” them.
It can’t be both. Like most crooks, Trump is a lousy liar who can’t keep his story straight. But his fellow Republicans believe both mutually exclusive versions of his account without the flick of an eyelash/
Does this sound like a man or a party that stands against crime? NO!
If they gave out “frequent flyer miles” for crimes, Trump and his partisan cronies could fly to the moon and back for free every Tuesday.
Today’s Republican Party willingly follows a man who, for most of his life – including his four years in the White House – has been a one-man, walking crime wave. Yet, we’re supposed to trust them to solve the problem of crime? Surely NOT!
Trump claims he has nothing to hide but provides little to nothing to those investigating his crimes, and when he does, it only happens after a long, drawn-out court fight that he lost. Trump meets the definition of non-cooperation, i.e., non-cooperation with lawful investigations designed to protect our citizens and our country. That’s hardly an anti-crime agenda, so add this to your list of Republican “promises” they have no plans to accomplish.
I loved the old half-hour Superman TV show when I was a kid. It aired as black and white re-runs on Saturday mornings when I watched it.
Superman, you might recall, stood for “TRUTH, JUSTICE, and the AMERICAN WAY.”
TRUTH, JUSTICE, and the AMERICAN WAY all seemed like good things to me. It never occurred to me that someday they might be controversial.
Today, I don’t think any one of them – TRUTH, JUSTICE, or THE AMERICAN WAY – could win a majority vote in either the US House or Senate Republican Caucus. NOT based on the campaigns they are running in 2022! NOT based on their recent record!
There are hundreds of reasons to reject Republicans in 2022:
- The Republican attack on democracy.
- The Republican attack on truth.
- The Republican attack on a woman’s constitutional right to make her own health care decisions.
- The Republican attack on voting rights.
- The open and unembarrassed Republican appeal to racism, sexism, and bigotry.
- The routine Republican use of flat-out demagoguery.
- The Republican refusal to even try to solve problems confronting the nation, preferring to create them or make them worse for political gain. Republicans did NOT! even bother to write a party platform of promises for the 2020 campaign. And they have NO PLAN for 2022.
Democracy itself is on the ballot in 2022
Republicans have put it in grave danger, and Democrats are fighting to protect and save it.
Every patriotic American who believes in a democracy needs to be part of trying to save it. It is hard to overstate the gravity of what we face.
But there is something else on the ballot Tuesday just as grave: the very character of who we are as a nation.
- Will our government policies be shaped and guided by honest debate or lies?
- Will our elections be decided by ballots or by violence and corruption?
- Will our future be as a nation where the majority rules or where dictators do?
The answers are in your hands.
Our democracy is in trouble. Never has more depended upon the outcome of an election.
VOTE WISELY.