Vote for Republicans and Against Fake News

By Frank Miele for RealClearPolitics

Tomorrow is Election Day, and what I would like to write today is a column about the irrationality of voting for a Democrat, any Democrat, in a country their party has run into the ground in less than two years.

That would be such an easy column to write. I could literally just plagiarize any Republican candidate’s campaign ad for House or Senate or governor. Start with inflation. Real people can’t just give up the equivalent of one month’s salary a year to bankroll reckless spending on electric vehicles, unconstitutional student loan forgiveness, and a war in Ukraine.

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Then we could turn to interest rates, which are rising so fast that millions of Americans suddenly can’t afford to buy a house.

Move from the economy to crime. Then immigration. COVID lockdowns. Sexualizing elementary schools. Only an idiot would vote for a Democrat.

Yet somewhere close to half the people will vote for Democrats – as if the future of the country doesn’t mean anything to them. How could they be so out of touch?

The answer is simple. These voters are not to blame. They are the victims of a conspiracy so broad that it blends into the background, comforting and as comfortable as a well-worn shoe. Namely, the partnership between the news media and the Democratic Party to vilify all things Republican.

Of course, Joe Biden is doing his best to imitate “Uncle Joe” Stalin, with his speeches excoriating free elections and free thought, but he couldn’t do it alone. He can barely pull 100 people off the streets to listen to one of his out-of-the-basement speeches, but he doesn’t need to do it alone. Just like Stalin had Pravda, Biden has the media to celebrate his edicts and denunciations and to cover up his compulsion to sniff young girls’ hair.

As a longtime Montana newspaperman, I have been at odds with the establishment media for two decades, but even I am shocked by how blatantly devoted the major voices in the media have become to the Democratic party line. According to the New York Times or network news, Americans who want to have confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections are “election deniers.”

Parents who want to protect girls’ locker rooms from being infiltrated by boys with penises (and that used to be the only kind) are  “transphobes.” Anyone objecting to 5 million illegal immigrants being welcomed across the border by the Biden administration’s policies are racist “replacement theory” conspiracists.

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It goes on and on. And so today my closing argument before the election is to reject not just the Democrats and their pro-abortion obsession, but to expose the entire media superstructure that has propped them up.

If only all Republican candidates were as smart as Kari Lake, the former newswoman running for election as governor of Arizona. She never lets a hostile journalist get away with asking questions loaded with false premises and Democratic Party talking points. Instead, she responds with facts and a challenge: “Tell the truth.”

Few reporters have taken her up on that challenge, but it is the key to restoring balance in the media, which is supposed to have a crucial role in maintaining our constitutional republic. Sadly, most GOP candidates are afraid to speak truth to power, which these days rests in the hands of both social media and the traditional media. As long as Republicans pretend that they will get a fair shake from CNN or NBC, they are just lambs going to the slaughter.

A good example of that was seen on “Face the Nation” on Oct. 30, when CBS “journalist” Margaret Brennan dropped the veil of objectivity. Her second guest that morning was Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minnesota, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee – and Brennan gave the game away.

The interview took place the weekend after the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, by a mentally ill homeless Canadian, so it was entirely reasonable that the topic of this assault should come up when talking to a colleague of Pelosi’s.

“How concerned are you about the risk of political violence,” Brennan asked Emmer, “and how should it be minimized?”

Emmer answered as any sane person would: “There’s no place for violence, period, in our society, physical violence or violence against someone’s property.”

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But Brennan hinted that Pelosi’s Republican colleagues harbor a Pelosi exception, so she implied that Emmer somehow supported the violent San Francisco home invasion targeting the speaker of the House.

“[J]ust to be abundantly clear, you denounce any kind of attack on the Pelosi family?”

Duh, yeah.

Then Brennan went full Democrat in her questioning, and tried to connect the attack on Mr. Pelosi to concerns that some Republicans have about election integrity.

“I want to ask you about something in our CBS News poll that shows that, even as Republicans are poised to lead this contest and take control of the House, we see suspicion, specifically among Republicans, about the voting process,” she said. “A big majority of Republicans support the idea of private citizens challenging election officials as they process and report vote counts on election night. … Two-thirds of Republicans support the idea of private citizens patrolling around ballot drop boxes and polling places.”

This is strictly a Democratic Party talking point, mind you, and one divorced from reality. There is nothing wrong with monitoring elections. Virtually every state has a statute that allows citizens to question the credentials of electors, i.e., voters.

In my home state, Title 13, Chapter 13 of the Montana Code Annotated spells out the universal right of a registered voter to ensure election integrity:

An elector’s right to vote may be challenged at any time by any registered elector by the challenger filling out and signing an affidavit stating the grounds of the challenge and providing any evidence supporting the challenge to the election administrator or, on election day, to an election judge.

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There are no fewer than eight reasons given why a presumptive elector may be challenged at the ballot box or actually “at any time.” That presumably includes when votes are being deposited in drop boxes, so yeah, Margaret Brennan is not being a fair reporter of the facts; she is just repeating Democrats’ propaganda.

When Emmer replied that citizens should be engaged and participate as poll watchers or be involved in elections with “whatever your state requires and allows,” Brennan implied that there is only a binary choice for citizens – you can either be a poll watcher or be engaged in “voter intimidation.” But that is not the way the law reads. Challenging a potential voter is not unlawful at all. Instead, it is indeed a vital part of our electoral process and is designed to ensure honesty.

Brennan also suggested that drop-box watchers are dangerous criminals, and so are congressmen like Emmer who had questions about the rules under which the 2020 presidential election was operated.

“[Y]ou are on this list that we have of 307 Republicans running for office who have raised doubts about the integrity of the election. I mean, they’re drawing a direct line here between sowing distrust then and what we are seeing right now,” said Brennan, presumably trying to blame Emmer for the attack on Paul Pelosi.

“Do you regret sowing doubts yourself?”

Belatedly cognizant of the fact that he was being ambushed, not interviewed, Emmer still made the mistake of treating Brennan as if she were a real journalist and not a political adversary. He tried to be respectful as he explained that he had signed on to a lawful challenge of the 2020 election that was filed in court by the Texas attorney general to question the validity of the changes in voting procedures that were implemented in many states due to the COVID pandemic.

At this point, Brennan tried to smear Emmer with the artless term of “election denier,” as if anyone who has questions about an election is automatically delusional.

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The only delusional person in this two-person dialogue was not the congressman, who would have been happy talking about anything that Sunday morning other than the 2020 election. It was Brennan who kept returning to the fake claims of election denialism, and then suggesting that questioning an election’s integrity is what leads to violent extremism.

It was her next gambit that finally drove me over the edge.

“I would love to talk about something other than people being worried for their lives, but, unfortunately, that’s where we are,” she said. “I want to ask you about this when it comes to political violence. On your Twitter feed, you posted this video we’re going to show just a few days ago where you’re firing a gun, and it says: ‘Enjoyed exercising my Second Amendment rights. #FirePelosi.’ Why is there a gun in a political ad at all?”

Unfortunately, Emmer was completely rattled by this time. He hemmed and hawed and tried to reason with the ravening wolf sizing him up for dinner. He pointed out that it wasn’t a political ad at all but rather a tweet, but that wasn’t the issue.

“I want the American people to ‘fire Pelosi,’” he should have said, “because she is wrong on a multitude of issues. One of them is the Second Amendment, which she wants to repeal. Come on, Margaret, you know that Democrats are all about gun control, and Republicans are going to fight them every step of the way. This tweet had nothing to do with violence, and everything to do with freedom.”

But he didn’t. Instead he found himself being berated for espousing violence.

It would be nice to believe that Brennan was just being momentarily stupid when suggesting that the hashtag “Fire Pelosi” means that Emmer was encouraging people to pick up a gun and fire it at Pelosi. But she is not stupid. She knew exactly what she was doing: Giving cover to the Democratic Party 10 days before the most important midterm election in generations.

She knows, and admitted, that a red wave is almost certainly going to swamp Nancy Pelosi on Nov. 8, so she did everything she could to avoid talking about the issues, which yes, include owning guns for protection in an ever more dangerous society.

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Emmer finally got a word in edgewise toward the end of the interview when he said, “I’m sure people [presumably including Brennan] would like to talk about anything but what the Democrats have done to this country, which, quite frankly, is exploding cost of living, a crime wave in our major cities that is the result of this defund the police nonsense and cashless bail… Those are the issues that are top of mind for every voter in this country… That’s why they’re going to show up … on Nov. 8.

Brennan’s response told everything you needed to know about her arrogance and disinterest in hearing both sides: “Mm-hmm.”

Remember, every vote for a Republican on Nov. 8 is a vote against the dishonest media.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book, “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends,” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter or Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

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