Maybe someday Florida will learn how to run an election—but I wouldn’t sit on a hot stove till it does
Then again, maybe the Florida powers-that-be are running it exactly the way they want to.
You may have noticed I’ve not run many posts about this, even though it’s a big story. Here’s what I’ve written so far. And for a sampler of recent articles by others, please see this, this,and this.
Last night I watched a little cable TV for a few minutes, something I rarely do these days. I saw an interview with Marco Rubio (on Hannity? I can’t recall) about Florida. Rubio’s been on this since the moment it happened, tweeting up a storm and raising the alarm before most people were paying attention.
Last night in the few minutes of his interview he was completely articulate and even quite eloquent about it, which reminded me that Rubio is very good a great deal of the time, although every now and then he’s really not. It seems like a long time ago that we were evaluating candidates in the lead-up to election 2016, and I remember thinking that Rubio would have good crossover appeal.
I still think that’s true, although there is no doubt in my mind that had he been elected, he would have made more compromises about conservatism than Trump has so far. There’s also no doubt in my mind that the MSM would have attacked Rubio (or any other Republican who might have won) vigorously on all fronts. But would the attacks have stuck to him as much as they do to Trump, in the minds of more moderate voters such as the ones who handed Democrats their victories earlier this month?
Yes, I know that Rubio’s much softer on immigration than Trump. And yes, I know that some on the right detest him for that. I’m not arguing otherwise; I’m saying something different, something that’s not primarily meant to be about Rubio. During 2016 I happen to have thought—and I still think—that many of the GOP candidates had a chance to beat Hillary handily, and that Rubio might have scored a bigger victory over her than Trump did. Many, if not most of you, probably disagree.
But my next point is that although the MSM would go after any of those people—including Rubio—mercilessly, I don’t think the charges would have gotten the same sort of traction among a certain type of in-between voter as the charges against Trump have. Trump has a core of very intense supporters, but like it or not, fairly or not, his style turns a lot of people off and makes them susceptible to MSM propaganda about him and about Republicans who support him. Staunch conservatives may be able to hold their noses and vote for him, or overlook his personal style to vote for him, but people with a shakier interest in what he has to offer politically (such as the appointment of very conservative judges, or putting up a good hard fight) are far more likely to hold their noses and vote for someone else.
I don’t have any polls that prove it. I don’t even know if what I say is factually true. But it’s something that occurred to me last night (and at other times as well), as I watched a politician explain a problem in a simple yet forceful and clear way.
It didn’t have to be Rubio doing this. This post isn’t really meant to be about Rubio at all, it’s about styles of communication and how they affect people. Reagan, for example, was a good blend of conservatism and the ability to talk about it clearly and agreeably and yet forcefully, without being too pugnacious. Reagan hit the sweet spot of pugnaciousness; he was just pugnacious enough and plenty charming enough. And people vote for candidates because of personalities as much as anything else.
None of this kept Reagan from vicious attacks from the press and others, including the repeated charge that he was a dunce. But he also was called the “teflon president” because his personality and style were such that the charges couldn’t gain much traction.
What will happen in Florida next? I’m not totally reassured by those who say not to worry. I’ve been plenty worried, because I’ve seen votes dwindle down before, and I’ve seen election results suddenly switch, nearly always to the Democratic side. I have zero trust in the integrity of the Broward County officials who are in charge of this, but I do have faith in their political creativity.
Rubio, like most politicians except Corker and a few others, is dependent on donors and far more susceptible to pressure from them, such as on trade, He is also, I’m pretty sure, very dependent on “Big Sugar, just as many Midwest pols are dependent on ethanol subsidies.
Sugar and ethanol are the two big public policy scandals that affect Republicans. Trump’s biggest attraction, to a lot of us, is that he is immune to that sort of influence. McCain was against ethanol subsidies and that was one of his few virtues.
MikeK:
I’m well aware of Trump’s attractions, which are many. And some are unique to him.
But he has negatives that are also unique to him. And those may end up being politically fatal, although I don’t know if they will.
Brenda Snipes, at best incompetent and at worst thoroughly partisan and corrupt, has been making for many years more than $150,000 per annum for performing her task very badly indeed!
I agree Rubio and some of the othe primary candidates had a good chance to defeat hrc in the general election. My guy was and remains Cruz. But now I want to see Cruz on SCOTUS where for decades he would be a brilliant conservative justice.
We all remember the hanging, dangling, indented chads. This current travesty is another iteration of leftist county election officials trying to steal elections. I have great faith in their partisan corruption. Not only are they opposed to the concept of a republic, they also are opposed to democratic election results when they lose.
Well, Florida…
http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/14/florida-school-district-gags-p-e-teachers-telling-parents-girl-watching-naked-sons/
je
“I’m shocked” gambling in Casablanca (or fraud in Broward Co.).
I guess I should say that I don’t care about Rubio at this moment. Broward has the testimony from the elections worker that they were illicitly filling out hundreds of ballots in 2016. Hello — some significant number in these boxes are not legitimate, legal votes. Has there ever been an election won by a Democrat which did NOT include voting fraud? In Broward, in Florida, or anywhere in these United States? IMO, the insanity here would lie in imagining that any of the elections are free of Democratic fraud. No wonder Schumer says Nelson will be senator once all the votes are counted. They are probably still writing them up as we sit and debate.
My weird point/counterpoint is consider Rubio and Bernie Sanders.
I agree Rubio is speaks very well and the camera likes him. He’s smart and stands up, just as Neo has pointed out. He also doesn’t go out of his way to inflame his opponents, except in one area. He really hates communism. (Here here!) He’s already a marked man by the left, but one Senate vote doesn’t amount to much power, so there’s no reason to get excited.
I probably said it before, but Sanders spent time in the 60’s in a kibbutz that explicitly supported Leninism and Stalinism. Sanders has stated more recently that he doesn’t want to be bothered with discussing his distant past, but how hard is it to say that you repudiate Stalin? He won’t.
Sanders doesn’t run the Democrat party, but he might as well be it’s leader given the nature of the group. During Reagan’s time, lots of Dems hated communism, not so now.
You can make all the rational arguments about a temperate Teflon Rubio. But everyone on the left will tear him to shreds if he were elected President, or maybe even Senate Majority Leader.
That’s not a reason to discount Rubio, just don’t think the media will give him a break, or that the electorate will somehow be unaffected by the media.
What is the federalist position here? Can’t we do the obvious and have an FBI investigation into voter fraud in various states? The Milwaukee results have been criticized, the “emergency” voting stations in Georgia were strictly one-sided, Arizona is somewhat odd, and Florida is beyond belief. I am just befuddled that there are never any charges for any of the many illegalities we’ve been seeing since the Hillary shenanigans. You can’t have consequences if you’re too whatever-it-is to even investigate and bring charges. Let’s get the law moving before it is deader than the Whig Party.
One more point. The Florida election problems or fraud isn’t just the important issue du jour for Rubio. It’s exactly the type of corruption that the tin-pot dictators that Rubio hates, use to great advantage.
I see I missed Neo’s admonition. I focused on Rubio and she focused on Rubio’s style. I do wish Trump would start pivoting towards a more tactful style. If some other Republican were President? Hmmm. Look at Scott Walker. A milquetoast guy that seriously damaged the left’s union cash cow. They were never going to rest in their efforts to destroy him.
Kai,
From memory, we have the Texas AG getting 88 or 98 convictions on vote fraud after the 2016 (or 2014?) election. After that they caught two sisters in TX that voted something like a dozen fraudulent votes. Project Veritas even got video of a campaign chairman of a House member providing detailed instructions for faking utility bills for the purpose of registration fraud.
It doesn’t move the needle. I think we’re goin to need proof of a big fish organizing thousands of fraudulent votes, at a minimum.
I’m one of those who detests Rubio’s betrayal of his promises. I agree that he’d engender less hatred than Trump. I’m doubtful that he would have done better than Trump, in fact I think he might well have pulled a ‘McCain/Romney’ i. e. too gentlemenly to get down into the mud and thus have lost to Hillary.
Trump won because someone finally and bluntly stated exactly what the dems have become… and clearly identified the threats we face.
The problem is that Democrats in Congress and in the media tend to tear “nice guys” to shreds. I like Rubio a lot. I thought he’d get played by Chuck Schumer.
Barry,
Your Federalist article is a must-read!, even though it made me want to throw up. Thank you very much.
The first round of comments, which currently begins with the thread headed up by “silencedogood20” and submitted “2 days ago” as of this moment, and which consists of the statement “This is insane,” is well worth reading. There’s some back-and-forth, but there’s a lot about helping kids to learn effectively and in a healthy environment that’s downright uplifting. They discuss innovative educational methods, including but not limited to home-schooling, also cyberschooling (I’m not automatically a fan, but some of the results reported are astounding), part-time private teaching for which the parents band together to hire a teacher and provide a part-time “class” learning environment, leaving the kids to work alone on homework and projects at home….
One thing is that a parent withdrew his/her third-grader from school because he/she learned that the kid was helping some of the slower kids with their work. All else being equal, I understand the theory that if your kid is far enough ahead of the others that he/she can help them, then your kid isn’t getting enough of his/her own education. (In time gone by, at least, exceptional children were allowed to skip a grade or grades so as to be placed with children working at the higher level. It wasn’t all that uncommon.)
But I spent my first three years of schooling in a one-room school, grades 1-6, and I am here to praise the system where the older kids or more advanced kids help the younger or less advanced. The older ones’ understanding of the material they know is deepened for sure (“you do not really know a subject until you’ve taught it”), and they also derive a certain sociability and mostly (I imagine) increased self-esteem from the experience. (I don’t mean “pseudo-self-esteem,” based on a sense of superiority to others, but real self-respect that comes from knowing there are areas in which you can cope — at whatever level — and cope well.)
I really recommend reading that first page of comments.
It doesn’t move the needle. I think we’re goin to need proof of a big fish organizing thousands of fraudulent votes, at a minimum. –TommyJay
You’re right, it sure doesn’t move the needle. I must confess I have no memory of the Texas convictions. I am sure there are thousands of fraudulent votes — sounds like there could have been a thousand or three in 2016 Broward, from that deposition. Aren’t there violations when a district reports 99% counted and then says oh, look, here are 50,000 more?
When I step back, I know that some of these absurd developments of the past few years reflect the extreme of a social cycle. And when that cycle changes — which may have started with Trump’s election, but is certainly underway now in the stock market — many of the absurdities will be blown away like the chaff they are. The failures to apply the rule of law, however, will remain with us, I believe.
P.S. Tommy, hope you saw my reply on the Dvorak thread — the Bartok String Quartet #4 was definitely the inspiration for Bernard Herrman’s score for Psycho.
A commenter on the LI post made a correct, if cynical, observation.
LI: Florida rejected 7,871 votes for “voter error,” including “mismatched signatures on the ballots compared to what’s on file with the state.” Out of those ballots:
35% Republicans
36% Democrats
29% independents
txvet2 | November 15, 2018 at 6:35 pm
They’ll enforce the law – against every Republican vote.
Barry Meislin on November 15, 2018 at 4:39 pm at 4:39 pm said:
Well, Florida…
http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/14/florida-school-district-gags-p-e-teachers-telling-parents-girl-watching-naked-sons/
* * *
And we thought California was crazy, but it was a Dem-majority state. Florida is supposed to be more conservative, put the Red voters are most likely elderly people without kids in school.
All of this is unfathomably insane, but we started on this road when “we” allowed schools to send girl children (the kind with vaginas) to get abortions without parental permission or notification — but they needed 15 forms signed in triplicate to give one of them an aspirin.
“He noted that it’s standard for public schools to pass transgender policies without informing parents, voters, or taxpayers first. That means the public only hears about it after children have been affected, withholding all opportunities for parents to prevent their child’s exposure to this kind of sexual indoctrination, confusion, and exploitation.
…
It appears Pasco schools adopted their transgender policies with no notice to their elected school board, parents, or voters. Instead, they were implemented after the district hired Jackie Jackson-Dean, a school psychologist, as a LGBT liason. ”
* *
How can you adopt a school policy that the school board doesn’t approve first???
“A Florida school district allowed a self-described transgender female student regular access to the boys’ locker room, with no advance warning to the boys or their parents. The first time she walked in, she caught “boys (literally) with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl,” says a complaint letter to Pasco County School District from Liberty Counsel, a pro-bono constitutional law firm.
With a “gag order,” school administrators forbade teachers from talking about the change, and ordered a male P.E. teacher to supervise the potentially undressed girl in the Chasco Middle School locker room, the letter says. When he refused to “knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress,” administrators told him “he will be transferred to another school as discipline for ‘not doing your job in the locker room.’”
In an email, an administrator initially threatened to put the male coach on administrative leave, telling him that refusing to supervise a potentially naked female student would “not be tolerated,”said Liberty Counsel attorney Richard Mast. The school’s other P.E. teacher, who is female, also objected and was ignored.”
* * *
The biggest problem I see with the male teacher refusing to supervise a girl (not a boy until the plumbing changes, sorry; identifying as the other sex doesn’t make it so) in the boys’ locker room is that she would be left alone with real boys; to say that is an unfortunate event is terrific understatement — what happened to the Left’s concern about toxic masculinity and the “every male is a rapist” meme?
If he leaves and she’s harassed, it’s his fault.
If he stays, he’ll eventually be fired and possibly jailed for looking at her while she’s undressed, because there are laws against child pornography that don’t take account of the idiotic policies of unelected school administrators.
This is a lose-lose situation for every single person involved, including the trans kid.
School Administrators set the ‘standard’s. A fish rots from the head down.
“Trans kids”
No such thingee. Use the term sad, in need of help confused puppy instead. Stop playing their twisted game.
Remember John Sirica? We can only hope. Point is, it is taking a judge to ask Hillary Clinton the most basic questions about her illegal server. My linking isn’t working, but Judicial Watch has a press release about the lawsuit they brought and their frustration that the DOJ is FIGHTING their inquiries into the nature of Hillary’s illegal servers and the extent of her violations of the Espionage Act. Jeff Sessions avoided all the tough ones.
Again, the Republicans have held the governorship and the legislature for 20 years straight in Floriduh. What have they done to repair and improve elections administration in the state? And I mean improve. Noodling around with things is not improving them. We all go out and elect Republicans, and they prove to be otiose and ineffectual.
“We all go out and elect Republicans, and they prove to be otiose and ineffectual.”
And then they wonder why people vote for Trump the Destroyer….
Things have improved in Florida.
I have told this story elsewhere. But back in WWII, my grandpa was part of a flight school in Ocala, Florida, teaching Army Air Force guys to fly. So he moved down there from rural Ohio with Grandma and my aunt and dad (little kids back then), and he was the first trainer to get there. So among other tasks, he and Grandma went to register to vote at the Marion County courthouse.
Later that day, yet another friendly neighbor knocked on the door. He introduced himself as the local Democratic Party chairman.
“Nice to meet you, but we’re Republicans.”
“I know. I just wanted to see what a Republican looks like.”
So yeah, Grandpa and Grandma were inadvertently party organizers down there… Obviously the Republican population kept increasing as the school got bigger, just by having normal percentages of the wider population!