Election reform: a national imperative

The Friday Letter / No. 520 / Dec. 16, 2022 / 10 years of Friday Letters
Edited with typo corrections at 8:48 a.m. ET

For weeks we've been warning that the best campaigns with the best candidates won't save the country if Republican legislatures fail to reform corrupt election practices in states that Trump should have won – and probably did – in 2020: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Now comes Dan Gelernter this week with an argument that nails this idea with force and clarity. Writing at American Greatness, Gelernter says the first thing conservatives must do is prevent what Democrats, Uniparty Republicans and the Chinese are salivating with anticipation to witness: a fatal battle between Trump and DeSantis over the nomination.

In case you've been asleep, those never-Trump Uniparty Republicans include Romney, Murkowski, McConnell, Cornyn, and Cassidy, among others.

Leave DeSantis in Florida where he belongs right now, governing as the most effective state chief executive in the country. It won't matter who wins the nomination if Republicans don't stop the ballot fraud.

Putting our energy into electing strong constitutional governors and state legislatures is the best course, and it's what the Founders intended.

“The worse Washington gets – and it gets bigger and worse no matter who’s president because the bureaucrats never change – the more important states become,” Gelernter writes.

He says DeSantis can't win in 2024. “No Republican can, unless voter fraud is addressed first. That means voting in person, on Election Day, and with a valid picture ID, not voting by mail over the course of a month. If we don’t fix that – and we’re not fixing it – it does not matter who the candidate is: Trump, DeSantis, or any other Republican. None of them have a chance in hell. It has nothing to do with who they are.”

Kari Lake would have taken the bold first post-2022 step toward that fix, and she was defeated not by Arizona voters but by long-standing corruption in Maricopa County, a county deep with Republican voters but run by Democrats. She promised to call the legislature into special session to clean out that cesspool once and for all. She lost because Arizona voters tolerate corruption. There is no other way to describe it.

Georgia's legislature made some welcome if limited reforms but still allows drop boxes. Its inept secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, wants Georgia to adopt the ridiculous system of rank choice voting that liberal Senator Lisa Murkowski rammed through in Alaska to assure her re-election. And the lieutenant governor, whose name we won't even bother to look up, actively campaigned against Herschel Walker and helped seal the Democrat hold on the Senate. This guy is a Republican, although a Uniparty one.

The most important new book of 2022 is Mollie Hemingway's Rigged. The most important film documentary is Dinesh D'Souza's 2,000 Mules. Neither got the national attention they deserved. D'Souza is blackballed from Fox News, and government censors threw One America News off the cable net.

Gelernter's final advice: “Trump, DeSantis – if you attack each other, you are damaging yourselves and us. We love you both, so stop it: DeSantis, wait for 2028. This 'we need you in 2024' line is a trap. Trump, support DeSantis as governor. And get back on Twitter while you’re at it. Truth Social is not where it’s at. . .

“If voter fraud is addressed, Trump will win in 2024. And he'll make an even better president the second time around, because of everything he's seen and everything we've seen since then. DeSantis' time will come. But right now, we need him in Florida.”

The secular attack on Christmas

The Walmart commercial opens with a question: “The best part of Christmas is the presents, right?”

Wrong, actually. The best part of Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ, beginning with the four weeks of Advent, the season of exciting anticipation. As our civilization's decline accelerates, one must wonder how long the ruling class will allow Christmas to be recognized as a federal holiday. This is a real fear. Don't laugh.

Pagan, anti-American leftists aligned with the Democrat Party are already knee-deep in their attacks on Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. Anyone who doesn't understand this is not paying attention. The scary part is that this is what the voters want, as demonstrated by their confirmation of the Democrat Party as that best suited to rule the country and its decline.

But just so you won't lose all hope, see these two pieces at The Federalist: “How Christians Can Push Back on the Commercialized Christmas Season” by Sophia Martinson, and “7 Easy Things You Can Do to Keep Christ as the Center of Your Christmas” by Jordan Boyd.

For those whose understanding of the Christmas story and their own faith are shaky, Boyd reminds us that Christ's birth was foretold in the Old Testament by the prophet Isaiah eight centuries before the fact.

“If you want to deepen your connection to the Christmas story,” she writes, “consider flipping back to the book of Isaiah and counting how many prophecies were fulfilled by Christ's birth.”

The Friday Letter is published at USSA News.