Politics again…

Well, here goes some political ponderings…

This morning I turned off the ringer on my landline phone after 4 “get out and vote” phone calls in a row. Yesterday started with a recorded message from Donald Trump, Jr, ended with a recorded President Trump message last night and was filled with recorded calls with messages from Newt Gingrich and many other Republican calls.

I am not voting in this GA Senate run-off election, because of the craven way Loeffler and Perdue caved to all of Trump’s corrupt pressure and vicious attacks on Governor Kemp and the GA secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. I certainly can’t bring myself to vote for far-left candidates like Ossoff or Warnock, so I’m sitting this one out.

In November my principles took a backseat to “binary choices” and fear. I voted for Trump, in hopes it would help prevent Democrats from controlling Congress and the White House, which I feared would be very bad for the country at this time. The regrets came very quickly for allowing political calculations to take precedence over my principles. Even more upsetting about my vote is I knew Trump was a fraud, a liar, totally untrustworthy and yet, I still listened to arguments that voting for Trump would also help Republicans maintain control of the Senate.

It was so stupid, to ever lose sight of the fact that a lying, corrupt fraud can’t be trusted – ever. Trump has deliberately turned the GA Senate run-off into chaos and he has deliberately fomented disunity in the GA GOP and pushed Loeffler and Perdue to turn on the GA governor and secretary of state. Trump, the political saboteur, has been trying to wreak havoc on their Senate races – deliberately.

Trump lost the 2020 election and his legal team produced no tangible proof of widespread election fraud or some massive sinister Democrat plot that robbed Trump of victory. After over 60 failed Trump legal challenges, many of which were heard by Trump-appointed judges, the Trump lawyers seemed to spend more time engaged in their news media appearances and Twitter efforts, to appease Trump, than they did on putting together strong legal challenges.

Watching as Trump’s corrupt public smear and disturbing pressure campaigns against Republicans keep expanding, where Trump loyalists, like Senator Tom Cotton and Vice President, Mike Pence, are now being singled out by Trump in public attacks makes me wonder, who is next on Trump’s hit list. It’s been totally disgusting, to watch him flip the truth on its head, repeat and retweet any crazy conspiracy theory that crosses his radar and pretend he is the victim of a “stolen election,” when he lost. Most of all it’s been infuriating to watch Trump followers rush to join in Trump’s smear campaigns and vicious attacks on elected Republican officials, who won’t go along with Trump’s “stolen election” effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trump followers have been outraged by these same smear tactics being used against Trump for 4 years, but they rush to jump on-board Trump ringleading the same reprehensible smear attacks against Republicans.

Over the weekend Trump tweeted out about a phone conversation he had with the Sec. of State of GA. Quickly, Raffensperger tweeted refuting Trump’s framing of that phone call and then a recording of that phone call was leaked to the Washington Post. Trump-friendly Twitter erupted in outrage over Raffensperger leaking that recording, but it is Trump who made this phone call public and Trump who lied about what Raffensperger said. That Trump phone call was nothing less than the POTUS pressuring the GA secretary of state to change the election results in GA. If a Dem POTUS had said those things, trying to overturn the results of a state’s election, Republicans would have been rushing to pen articles of impeachment and demanding an immediate resignation. This is the new Trump GOP, where none of the rules ever apply to Trump, because “Trump’s not a politician” (ignorant of the law, which doesn’t stand up in any court in America) and/or “Democrats have treated Trump so unfairly and tried to destroy his presidency” (true, but still no justification to act as corruptly as Dems).

Last night Trump showed up at a rally in north GA, ostensibly to campaign for Loeffler and Perdue, yet he spent most of the time whining about how he won the election in November and was being robbed. He attacked Governor Kemp and Sec. of State Raffensperger. Even more disturbing was he publicly pressured Mike Pence to reject the certified election results tomorrow, as if the vice president has the power to overturn states certified elections. This effort will most likely fail, but make no mistake about it, Trump is trying to corruptly alter election results. If Democrats attempted this action, Republicans would be howling in outrage.

After 4 years of corrupt Dem and mainstream media scorched earth spin attacks to destroy Trump, many Trump supporters perceive Trump as a victim of corrupt liberal spin attacks and as a strong fighter against the liberal spin mob. These people are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt over anything Dems or the mainstream media say. One can only wonder how far Trump will go in inciting his followers to “fight for Trump” after the Congress counts the electoral votes tomorrow and Biden is officially the winner, but it seems a given that Trump will stick to his “stolen election spin effort and refuse to admit he lost and Biden won.

Truly, I dread a Biden presidency, that will assuredly clash with my conservative views, but going against my principles in November, by voting for Trump out of fear of Democrats controlling the WH and Congress, left a bitter taste in my mouth and made me feel in some small way culpable for this Trump post-election chaos. I want to stick to my principles and vote for candidates whom I really do support, not vote out of fear or make some binary choice, choosing “the lesser of two evils.”

My hope remains that at some point Americans will find some ways to find some common ground and common aspirations for our country rather than splintering into more and more hostile factions. At this point this seems like wishful thinking, but all things are possible, if we each decide to make the commitment to pulling our country together rather than tearing it apart.