2012 US General Election Discussions: Start to Finish

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Toughy

Lubbock TX is about 100 miles from where I was born and raised in SE NM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1822003.html

Tom Head, Texas Judge: Obama Reelection Could Lead To 'Civil War,' I'm Ready To 'Take Up Arms'

I'm going to refrain from making a snarky comment about this guy's last name

Okay, I don't often let my inner conspiracy theorist out and I've actually been wrong before, but this election has me seriously worried. The thing is, I think certain very deliberate things are taking place and will continue to take place. I also think that some of what I fear is that part of the tragedy is that we will have stumbled into it. I think Koch et. al. are going to try to suppress the vote in Ohio and any other state where they can. That's the deliberate part. I think they are going to try to make the election close enough to contest and this would be against a *sitting* POTUS, so not like 2000. That much is deliberate. That gives the following scenarios:

1) It appears Obama wins but it is not a landslide. Counting goes into the night. Because some voters were kept from polling because of voter ID laws that are very Constitutionally suspect, there are reasons for the results to be delayed and contested. There's a recount in one or more states. All during that time, FOX News and all the usual suspects start with the breathless fantasies of what Obama is going to do next. Tea Party groups start organizing protests. Someone brings a gun. There are counter-protesters. There is a lot of over-heated rhetoric about socialists and Marxist takeovers and 'taking our country back'. Enough Republicans *genuinely* believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is, in fact, illegitimately occupying the White House. With elected officials saying there could be civil war, some people start 'taking back' their towns. Now, in the larger cities chances are things stay pretty as they are at first but in smaller towns, more likely to be *very* red, they start declaring themselves 'Free America'. Suddenly some states go. What does the Federal government do? If it does what it must, that confirms what the Tea Partiers have been telling each other for four years now--that Barack Obama is a dictator who has come to take over the United States and now he is making his move.

2) It appears that Romney wins but it's not a landslide. There's enough of a suspicious odor around the returns in certain parts of Ohio or Florida or other swing states that people consider the results suspect. Obama challenges the election and a recount for those states is required. It looks like Obama is gaining on Romney and may pull ahead. The SCOTUS, in a strictly party line vote, intervenes and halts the recount. Romney is declared the winner. The cities explode in protests. Marches are called for across the country. There's a long winter and then January 2013 rolls around. Romney is elected and there are massive protests in the coastal cities. Tea Partiers, who see the protests as the unwashed masses who *aren't real Americans* rising up and so they decide they are going to go out and 'defend' their country. People bring guns..

Either way, both sides do what is rational within the frame of their narrative. The problem here is that while the Left has its conspiracy theories *no one* in the Democratic Party of any significance gives them any heed. On the other hand, the Republican Party is wholly in thrall to the John Birch wing and we underestimate how much they *really and truly believe* what they have been telling themselves all these years. If Obama wins they're going to turn out into the streets, they're going to have weapons and shots *are* going to be fired at which point, all bets are off. If Romney wins, the Left is going to turn out into the streets and not a few of those people will be non-white. The Right will interpret this as an uprising, shots will be fired, all bets are off.

What happens after that, I don't know.

Since that is a total and complete bummer, here's a third scenario. It's the one that would be best for the nation, given our current circumstances. It is not the Pollyanna scenario, just the best *possible* given the constraints:

3) Caught between a rock and a hard place, Romney *has* to pivot on the abortion issue. The Religious Right is *enraged* perhaps even more than at Obama. To try to woo them back, he has to engage the full-on Birther, a task he assigns to Ryan. Reverend Right is brought up again. The last three weeks are just blatantly racist with not even a fig leaf of pretense given--at least from the independent groups. Romney can benefit from them while denying any involvement. In other words, what happens is so repugnant that the Republican party realizes, too late, that they've gone too far. Obama wins in a landslide. It will never be Reagan again Mondale in 1988 where Reagan won 49 states but it is lopsidedly in favor of Obama. The Republican party tears itself apart in recrimination. The theocrats, the racists and the acolytes of Ayn Rand are shown the door by the more establishment Republicans who are, in the final analysis, glad to be rid of them. The next four years the GOP starts to rebuild itself. Shed of the need to kowtow before the Family Research Council, the Minuteman Patriots and Grover Norquist, the Republican party begins reaching out to minority groups. In 2016 is still a bad year for the GOP. Locally a third party calling itself the Tea Party Patriots, do well in the South and a few midwestern towns but nothing national. In 2020, the GOP comes back closer to what the party was during the Eisenhower administration. Still a center-right party but a *sane* center-right party.

As a result of the election, having stared into the abyss, the states call for a Constitutional convention. Four amendments come out of it:

1) Corporations are explicitly not people.
2) Federal financing of elections. ALL elections. Broadcasters and newspapers are required to carry campaign advertising during election seasons.
3) Elections are six weeks long from start to finish. Voting is mandatory and moved to Saturday (you can pay an extra tax to not vote but I think we should require voting. Many other republics do).
4) The electoral college is removed. It is a 19th century artifact. The problem it was designed to solve no longer exists.

I would actually like to put in two or three more but I think that pretty much every sane person in this nation would agree that the four above are needed pretty damn badly.

Okay, my inner Cassandra has been let out for a moment.

Cheers
Aj