“Well, they did it in Hawaii in 1960. They had an alternative slate,” Watters countered. “It’s fine. It’s been done before. And the other thing is, like, why can’t you just ask Mike Pence to do that? Mike Pence said no.”
I hadn’t heard of that, so I looked it up:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidential_election_in_Hawaii
That was Kennedy vs Nixon, and there were important differences vs the shitshow that happened in 2020/2021:
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after the first full count, Nixon was ahead by just 147 votes, but there were legit math errors in the count
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nobody invoked fraud claims to justify the recount, but they just wanted the count to be accurate.
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the full retabulation couldn’t finish by the safe harbor deadline, so everyone agreed to certify both slates of electors. One slate wasn’t done on the sly.
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just before Congress counted the votes, they affirmed that Kennedy actually won, and the Republican governor air-mailed his certification to Congress.
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Both slates were presented to the Vice President, and he got unanimous consent from the Senate to accept Kennedy’s slate and ignore Nixon’s.
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That VP was Nixon himself!
Richard Millhous Nixon himself, with more integrity than Donald Trump…
It is all about having a thin veneer of reasoning, no matter how wrong, it always is. So now they can advance to the next wrong thing with this new justification in their toolbox.
I’ll say it again, but you can have a look at basically any position held by modern conservatives, anything, and it always end up being very wrong, based on paper-thin arguments. This is how they ended up with their own alternative reality, one very wrong conclusion at a time, wrapped in a thin argument. Conservative don’t care to look pas the conclusion, some are in it for themselves, but I think most are just morons.
Exactly, and all you have to do is look to this thing in Hawaii, and compare it with what is going on now.
While I’m sure that there were some in Hawaii who wanted to StOp ThE cOuNt while their candidate was leading, there seemed to be a genuine desire to find the true outcome, and a recognition that the problems were due to error and not fraud. (This was their first Presidential election since becoming a state in 1959). Then, when the outcome became apparent, all sides acknowledged it, even the side that lost. (But it should be noted that Hawaii’s 3 EC votes would not have made a difference to the outcome, and maybe Tricky Dick would have done something different if it had.)
The modern Conservative movement is rudderless, it has no direction other than amassing power and subjugating people who dont agree with them. (And that’s more than my opinion; they never bothered to make a platform in 2020 other than shouting “America First!”). Anyone who acts with the same integrity as the Republicans in Hawaii back then would be immediately called “RINOs” and have a ton of fundraising aimed toward a primary opponent. They would be accused of “helping the enemy”, even though we’re all Americans here, whether we’re model Conservatives or not.
So Hawaii was a TOTALLY different case for a few different reasons:
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By the time the electors needed to be submitted, they legitimately DID NOT KNOW who won the election. So they submitted two slates of electors, one for Kennedy, one for Nixon, with the proviso that only the slate for the winner should be counted when the tabulation happened in early January.
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BOTH slates formed in the Hawaii '60 election were official slates chosen by the state. They weren’t just a made up slate selected by god knows who.
Why is it ok for Fox News to continue to lie to its viewers?
This is one weakness of free soecieties. Even in good-natured reporting and arguments, it is very difficult to differentiate between a lie or a statement simply being wrong or different than yours. If you give an institution the power to decide what can be reported, what constitutes lies and such, this could get abused to silence all opposing voice.
This leave us extremely vulnerable to propaganda, since bad actors have access to the same immunity journalists earned over time. It really is hard to differentiate the two legally.
This leave only one way of getting rid of propaganda, and it is to prove intent. Have them admit that they’re lying on purpose. I guess 1 strike for fox wasnt enough.
So, let me get this straight: Fox news, the republicans, Trumpers, ect. are arguing that “Sleepy” Joe Biden is allowed to submit fake electors to congress, no matter the votes for Trump, and KAMALA HARRIS gets to declare herself and Biden the winners of the next election? The Republicans are okay with this very legal series of events?
Of course not. They’re saying it’s okay when they do it.
This is not a snarky reply. This is a fact we need to stop treating as obscure or questionable. Stop pretending their bullshit exists in any worldview where fairness applies. Don’t even do it rhetorically. It is an obstacle to internalizing how conservatives think.
It’s simple and it’s nonsense and it’s terrifying.
No see, they’re Democrats. In/out-group behavior explains this perfectly. A member of the in-group can do no wrong, while a member of the out-group is never right. Instead of logic, the GOP functions mostly on tribalism and feelings, with classism and racism being two forms they use to appeal to the base. Religion being another. It’s not about a consistent philosophy. It’s about how it feels in the moment and does it help with the feeling of fear.
Sounds like Jesse Waters is a liar and a seditionist.
This is how they always do it. Vehemently deny that he did it until the evidence is incontrovertible. Then do a complete 180 and say of course he did it but there’s nothing wrong with that.
Standard Republican obstruction.
Global warming is not happening!
OK, maybe it’s happening, but there’s no evidence it’s human caused!
OK, maybe it’s happening, and maybe it’s human caused, but doing something about it would be too large an economic burden! <- You are here.
OK, maybe it’s happening, maybe it’s human caused, and maybe the costs to fix it were less than the costs of doing nothing… but now it’s too late anyway…
yup, and somehow they found out that it does not matter if you’re always wrong publicly while being recorded. All you need to do is to never admit to it, and double down on the next wrong step really hard with extreme confidance. Throw in a few accusations that your oponents did worse, even if this is without merits, and voila. Using this simple trick you could become the most influential person in the world.
