THE COLUMN: The Sting

Michael Walsh21 Nov, 2022 5 Min Read
Two thousand mules, 70 million suckers.

If you knowingly sit down at a fixed poker game and lose your entire stash, would you also complain that some of the other players also cheated? If it was a friend who brought you into the game, would you then go to another one with him? And having lost all your money when you bet the farm, would you re-mortgage it and bet it all again on the chance that this time things would be different? If you're a Republican, the answer is: of course you would, because you just did and you're about to do it again.

If the national elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022 didn't teach the GOP a lesson or three, what will? From Donald Trump's surprise (though not a surprise to me) win in 2016, it's been mostly all downhill for the party of Lincoln, which has been thrice set back on its heels and sent to the power poorhouse. The day after Trump's election, the institutional Left launched its legal coup against Trump and as early as mid-February 2017 had claimed its first and most important scalp in Mike Flynn, the man who knew where all the bodies were buried during the Obama administration. Saddled with hostile incompetents such as Reince Priebus and Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration was kneecapped by its own naivete and betrayed by its two deadliest enemies, Jared and Ivanka Kushner, the twin vipers known around the West Wing as "the Democrats." By the time Trump was goaded by them and the media into firing Steve Bannon, the man who got him elected, MAGA was finished as a philosophical and governing force in the Oval Office. The rest, as they say, was commentary.

So from a position of power in January 2017, when the GOP under Trump held the White House and both branches of Congress; to the 2018 mid-terms, when Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi, the pride of Baltimore, took over the House and unleashed not one but two impeachments against Trump; to the disaster of 2020, when the Trump forces refused to take the re-election campaign seriously and instead substituted supererogatory rallies in place of a brass-knuckles ground game; to the most recent congressional elections, in which the GOP barely recaptured the House but blew the Senate again, it's been one disaster after another. Why, it's almost been as if the fix has been in the whole time! 

It's not like there was no warning. Once the Democrats miraculously cleaned out the GOP in formerly red Orange County, Calif., in 2018 it should have been clear even to such notable dummies as Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy that the game was no longer being played on Game Day, but weeks and even months before, plus a few days after the polls had "closed." Early voting, "harvested" voting, "absentee" voting was a Tammany wet dream come to life: who doesn't like their chances on Election Day when more than half the votes are already in the bag and you know to an absolute certainty where they went? Add to this the unconstitutional changes to the voting laws rammed through in blue states during the Covid hoax, and the Dems were in the catbird seat long before Nov. 8.

The old joke used to be that the dead vote was critical in Democratic precincts but now this could literally be true, since the votes of dead people could already be in the can, not to mention the candidates themselves, well before election day. This is why, in the final weeks before the vote, the Democrats were exuding (in Mark Twain's famous words) "the serene confidence which a Christian feels in four aces." Polls? We don't need no stinkin' polls! Besides, why have a traditional one-man, one-day election—a binding snapshot in time—when you can have a permanently floating crap game, one in which you're always ahead no matter when it stops?

"Cheating" scream the die-hards on the Right, playing right into the hands of those who fixed the game in the first place. "Stop the steal!" they shout, when the steal is now part of the game. The "2000 Mules" of non-dispositive red-meat fantasy, whose presence is deduced from the arcana of cell-phone triangulation and the laws of probability, may or may not have existed, but the point is: they didn't matter. They were simply the fat ladies and strong men of the sideshows, meant to distract the gullible and easily panicked into ignoring the fact that their pockets have already been picked, their cars stolen and on their way to chop shops in Tijuana, and their home repossessed.

Thus, as I mentioned last week, there's no need for "cheating." Thanks to Tammany Hall's centuries-long perfection of electoral chicanery and the Republicans' willful blindness, the system has become the steal. Typical con men, the Democrats preach the "sanctity" of the vote when what they really lust after is the roundheels of the ballot. There are no virgins in this whorehouse, just the soiled doves of the media who gussy themselves up for the traveling salesmen and visiting firemen, and then collect their pimp money in the back alley from the bankers and the lawyers who like the system just fine the way it is.

It's a great racket: if you play your cards right, you can deal yourself a whole new hand at the closing bell and walk away with all the chips while your opponent impotently sputters in frustration. And should the marks finally catch on and start adopting some of your tactics, it hardly matters. California has already shown the way to eliminating the two-party system in its state elections via the "jungle primary" system, and just now solidly red Alaska has "elected" a Democrat to fill its lone House seat thanks to an enormity called "ranked-choice" voting. The mouthpiece of the Democrat machine, the New York Times, explains it all for you:

Mary Peltola, whose victory in a special election on Wednesday makes her the first Democrat in nearly half a century to represent Alaska in the House, won the contest for the remainder of Representative Don Young’s term with an upbeat campaign that appealed to Alaskan interests and the electorate’s independent streak.

But Alaska’s new voting system also played a big role in Ms. Peltola’s three-percentage-point victory over former Gov. Sarah Palin, her Republican opponent. Ms. Peltola, who will become the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold the House seat, won at least in part because voters had more choices. While more voters initially picked a Republican candidate, that didn’t matter. Given a second choice, many Republican voters opted for a Democrat — Ms. Peltola — over Ms. Palin... When voters have more choices, they’re less likely to vote along strict party lines, reducing polarization and giving independent-minded or more centrist candidates a better shot.

Bet you didn't know that elections will soon no longer be binary; pretty soon we'll have as many "choices" as Facebook has genders. So step right up, suckers and try your luck. Remember, until the country returns to day-and-date elections, between limited hours, in person only, with ironclad identification, there will be no end to this mischief. The Democrats, who boast of being "the oldest voter-based political party in the world," are simply better at it than anybody else. And if nothing meaningful is done, when the GOP loses again in two years, the 2,000 donkeys of the DNC will look at their "friends" at the RNC and say like Henry Gondorff to Doyle Lonnegan: "Tough luck... but that's what you get for playing with your head up your ass!"

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis

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13 comments on “THE COLUMN: The Sting”

  1. Personnel is policy.

    "Saddled with hostile incompetents such as Reince Priebus and Jeff Sessions, the Trump administration was kneecapped by its own naivete and betrayed by its two deadliest enemies, Jared and Ivanka Kushner, the twin vipers known around the West Wing as "the Democrats." By the time Trump was goaded by them and the media into firing Steve Bannon, the man who got him elected, MAGA was finished as a philosophical and governing force in the Oval Office. The rest, as they say, was commentary."

  2. Going after trump on Fake Charges is typical of Liberals Liberal Democrats and Traitors this whole thing is a Witch Hunt by the UN,CFR DNC Globalists and the gutter dwellers from the M.S. Media

  3. "Once the Democrats miraculously cleaned out the GOP...in 2018:"...The "miracle" was that GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan wanted to give the House back to Democrats, so he deliberately left 38 races with no Republican candidate on the ballot in Nov. 2018. Only 3 districts lacked a Dem. candidate. Afterwards, Paul Ryan went on Fox News grinning. He showed us who's boss...https://ballotpedia.org/U.S._House_elections_without_a_Democratic_or_Republican_candidate,_2018
    In Nov. 2018 election, districts without a Republican candidate on the ballot, per Ballotpedia:
    Races without Republican candidates
    Alabama’s 7th Congressional District
    Arizona’s 7th Congressional District
    California’s 5th Congressional District
    California’s 6th Congressional District
    California’s 13th Congressional District
    California’s 20th Congressional District
    California’s 27th Congressional District
    California’s 34th Congressional District
    California’s 40th Congressional District
    California’s 44th Congressional District
    Florida’s 10th Congressional District
    Florida’s 14th Congressional District
    Florida’s 20th Congressional District
    Florida’s 21st Congressional District
    Florida’s 24th Congressional District
    Georgia’s 5th Congressional District
    Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District
    Massachusetts’ 1st Congressional District
    Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District
    Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District
    Massachusetts’ 8th Congressional District
    Michigan’s 13th Congressional District
    Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District
    New York’s 5th Congressional District
    New York’s 6th Congressional District
    New York’s 7th Congressional District
    New York’s 8th Congressional District
    New York’s 16th Congressional District
    New York’s 17th Congressional District
    Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District
    Texas’ 9th Congressional District
    Texas’ 20th Congressional District
    Texas’ 28th Congressional District
    Texas’ 30th Congressional District
    Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District
    Washington’s 2nd Congressional District
    Washington’s 9th Congressional District
    Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District
    Races without Democratic candidates
    California’s 8th Congressional District
    Georgia’s 8th Congressional District
    North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District

  4. Much as I agree with those steps as being minimally necessary, my guess is in raw count of votes Dems outnumber Repubs. Over the years Dems have through dribs and drabs expanded the voting window to make sure their votes show up on any one of the multitudinous election days. Ranting about narrowing the window only gets voter suppression howls.

  5. Arguing for Republicans to join in the Democrats’ cheating game is moronic. It will irreparably destroy the chain-of-custody of all ballots. At that point, elections will become selections, with Uniparty Democrats and Republicans deciding who wins, not the voters. This has been the goal since Bush vs Gore in 2000. And yes, establishment Republicans are fully on board with it.

  6. The GOP, with a few exceptions, is part of this fraud. They're owned by the Left and do what they're told. In return, they are given more power, more wealth and nifty vacation spots like Epstein's Rape Island. Neither McConnell nor McCarthy were surprised, as well as many others in the GOP.

  7. Remember, until the country returns to day-and-date elections, between limited hours, in person only, with ironclad identification, there will be no end to this mischief.

    Not enough: it is also necessary that the vote count be done
    -- at the place where the voting has taken place: no shuffling boxes of ballots around;
    -- by representatives of all parties who care to send them, not by dodgy election officers;
    -- starting immediately after the end of the voting;
    -- continuing until all the votes are counted, with at most a break for coffee and sandwiches.

  8. Just learn to cheat better than the Democrats and the Democrats will demand that mail-in voting be banned and RealID photo IDs be required for in-person voting.

  9. Things that don't work to help Republicans win elections anymore: campaign consultants, candidate quality, advertising, suing, complaining. Republicans need to adapt or die. In each election going forward, they will have to spend a couple billion dollars with an army of people going door to door with suitcases full of ballots and ask people if its ok to fill them out and then they can sign them. General Michael Flynn for Speaker of the House! (or the other Michael: Walsh of course!)

  10. Thing is, the Left's leadership doesn’t care about being sent home. When the Left is in power, it pushes the pedal to the metal all the time knowing that even though they may get temporarily sent home, the cycle of politics will put them back in power soon. In the interim, the GOP will have done nothing to roll back their communist programs and, once back in power, it’s hammer down. The Left plays the long game, and the GOP doesn’t even realize a game is being played.

    1. As I wrote ages ago in NR, the Left always acts as if they have a supermajority and will never lose another election. And if they do, it's just a bump in the road.

  11. the idea that the GOP has a ground game that they just didn't follow is and ossified GOP consultant talking point ... the only people who benefit from the old school ground game was and is the highly paid consultants ... until the GOP plays by the rules in place ... early voting, mail in ballots ... they will lose ... clean up the voter rolls (reducing the cheat possibilities) ... aim for 100% of registered GOP voters to ACTUALLY VOTE via early voting or mail in or on election day ... That should be the new ground game and the old school consultants just don't know how to do that ... maybe buy a few Dem consultants, THEY know how to do that ...

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