RUTHFULLY YOURS

In March, Georgia Republicans amended their state’s election laws in a weak attempt to assuage voters disgusted with their enabling of the 2020 election circus. To punish their political opponents for requiring voter ID and creating an election season of a month long or more Democrats called up their character assassination squads.

Democrats have been throwing every bit of pressure they can at Georgia elected officials to get their way without winning power legitimately through elections. This has included pressure from Democrats’ current and last U.S. presidents, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Biden called on companies to push his political goals outside of the legitimate political system by boycotting Georgia. He is the first president to openly push private companies to boycott a U.S. state over fully legal political outcomes he dislikes.

Biden also explicitly voiced support for Major League Baseball economically punishing Americans represented by members of his political opposition by withdrawing MLB’s All-Star game from Atlanta. MLB quickly complied.

Biden called Georgia’s election law “Jim Crow on steroids, what they’re doing in Georgia and 40 other states.” Obama also publicly supported MLB’s use of its private economic power in service of his political party.

Minnesota U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who openly labels herself a socialist, noted on CNN that boycotts helped end South African apartheid. She also wildly insinuated that Georgia’s law, which makes no distinctions whatsoever related to race, is comparable to a system that explicitly accorded rights and privileges by ethnicity and included state-enabled murder, rape, and theft of property based on race.

Stacey Abrams, whose claims to have been deprived of Georgia’s governorship through voter fraud have been treated seriously by the same Democrats and corporate media that have banned Republicans from even mentioning those topics, claimed in USA Today, citing no evidence, that the “targets of SB 202” were “young people, people of color and minimum wage workers.” She called it a “racist, classist bill.” Abrams also encouraged corporations to attempt to skew politics her way with pressure campaigns and political spending.

Georgia’s ‘Restrictions’ Were Mostly Expansions

So, what exactly comprises this “racist” vehicle for “apartheid” and the second coming of “Jim Crow”? An extremely expansive voting regime that enshrines numerous loopholes that can assist in election manipulation and general insecurity.

“One of the biggest changes in the bill would expand early voting access for most counties,” summarizes a local NPR affiliate. “…If you live in a larger metropolitan county, you might not notice a change. For most other counties, you will have an extra weekend day, and your weekday early voting hours will likely be longer.”

Also according to Georgia Public Broadcasting, the law allows people to vote for at least up to a month by various means, including early voting and mail-in absentee ballots. The law tightens restrictions for voting by those expanded means, most notably by requiring identification on mail-in ballots such as a driver’s license number or the last four of your Social Security number, but it massively expands the election period to several weeks.

This, of course, materially changes elections. It allows political teams to “beat the bushes” for votes and makes elections more weighted towards people who cannot or will not plan ahead or prioritize voting on a specific day. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have elections decided by fellow Americans who tend to plan ahead and prioritize civic engagement over people rolled into the polls over several weeks by, say, campaigns that trade financial “prizes” for votes.

The law also is relatively loose with mail-in balloting, by far one of the largest sources of election uncertainty. “Compared to 2020, 134 of 159 counties will offer more early voting hours in future elections under the new law,” says the conservative group Heritage Action. “It codifies election drop boxes, which did not exist prior to 2020. Voters can continue to vote absentee with no excuse (unlike states like Delaware, New York, and Connecticut, which require an excuse to vote absentee).”

Under this law, Georgia voting is far more accessible than in Democrat-bastion states including New York and California. It is far more expansive than in left-governed countries such as Canada and numerous members of the European Union.

Quite simply, contrary to the hysterical and race-tinged claims of Democrats and their ignorant corporate lapdogs, Georgia’s election laws are not “restrictive.” They are liberal and expansive.

Oh, and nothing about this law has anything to do with race. Nothing. Democrats just lie about that constantly because enough voters reward them for lying and Republicans don’t exact a political price for it.

Stop Pretending Democrats Are Anything But Liars

It is thus clear that Democrats’ stated complaints cannot be their real reasons for raising Cain over Georgia’s new law. Instead, they are virulently opposing a modest effort to reduce voter fraud and election uncertainty. They are lobbing rhetorical nukes over Georgia enacting a more permissive voting regime than those in states Democrats have controlled for decades.

Even MLB has acted to oppose requiring people show ID to vote while MLB makes people show ID to pick up baseball tickets. Why would they do these things?

As Jesse Kelly writes, everyone knows why Democrats don’t want voters to show ID. It has nothing to do with racism or any of their other fake justifications, and everyone knows it.

So why are we playing this stupid game? Why are Georgia’s Republicans play-acting about the reasonability of their law in response to people who very obviously don’t care about facts or reason? Why would Republicans have enacted a lax voting regime in the obviously doomed hope of demonstrating their reasonability to people who categorically oppose reason itself?

It is a scandal that Republican politicians care one whit about getting brutalized in the press for meeting Democrats halfway to insanity. Corporate media don’t vote for them. People who believe Democrat lies about “systemic racism” don’t vote for them. If Republicans were going to be brutalized over passing a relatively loose election law, they should instead have passed a law that provides rigorous and uncontestable election security.

If you’re going to get called a racist no matter what you do, don’t let the lies pay off politically for your opponents. Give them absolutely nothing. When Democrats decide they want to come to the table because they’re getting nothing from lying on TV, make them trade things they actually want for things you actually want. That’s what any political party worthy of earning votes would do.

Until legitimate negotiation can be restored after the shameless name-calling stops, Republican politicians should leave these dogs to their own vomit. Stop wasting energy on bad-faith actors who lie as a tactic to get their hands on increased government force.

Republican politicians will occasionally flirt with better strategies, usually when they don’t have political power and want to woo their disenchanted voters back with a few empty promises. That’s a scandal, and it needs to end, or the party deserves to collapse under its failures to generate a return on their voters’ political investments.

Things like this are glances in the right direction, but until those glances are followed by a decisive and concerted forward march, Democrats will keep lying until Republicans stop allowing that to be an effective political strategy. To do that, Republicans have to refuse to dignify lies with a point-by-point refutation. That kind of dialogue is a privilege reserved for people who come to an encounter in good faith, with something to exchange.

That’s not what Democrats are as a party today. They want truth to be defined as whatever serves their private interests. They are not interested in mutual benefit and accommodation, only in the complete domination of those they consider the enemies of their desired regime.

For cynical factions like that, the only response is the prudent application of opposing power. Political nihilists cannot be won over in public combat. They can only be beaten. So put on your boxing gloves and swing as hard and as long as you can, until you make them see their only path to getting something they want is to stop fighting dirty and mutually seek the common good again.

For starters, they can prove that’s where they are by no longer smearing people as racists for not actually being racists. Until then, don’t treat liars as honest men. It only makes you an Elmer Fudd-level fool.