Posted on 09/05/2016 10:32:36 PM PDT by Kaslin
The Democrats are now playing the Russia card. As Donald Trump rises in the polls against an increasingly unpopular Hillary Clinton, Democrats are raising the specter of the nefarious Vladimir Putin. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s famous reset of relations was a bust, but we are supposed to trust her to handle Putin in the future. More important, the Democrats are sowing grounds to challenge the election, relying on their unnatural ability to squeeze, as if by magic, extra votes from the courtroom.
There may be an even more insidious objective, however, than swaying the 2016 result. Outgoing Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, never a fan of election fair play, warned of Russian tampering and called for an FBI investigation. This followed warnings by Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, of potential cyber-attacks come November. He indicated he was considering designating the election system “critical infrastructure. This would be followed by a Washington campaign to “assist” and “protect” balloting, which inevitably would turn into control. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky warned that Johnson’s action “may be a way for the administration to get Justice Department lawyers, the FBI, and DHS staff into polling places they would otherwise have no legal right to access, which would enable them to interfere with election administration procedures around the country.” That would dramatically, and permanently, transform the constitutional balance between the national and state governments.
Despite scare-mongering by Reid and Johnson, there is no evidence of any impending cyber-attack on the American electoral system. Even Johnson apparently admitted that he could point to no indications of such a threat. A far greater danger to the integrity of U.S. democracy is vote fraud, yet the courts seem determined to block any effort to even require identification to cast a ballot. This undermines the great strength of America’s elections, state control.
As von Spakovsky pointed out, “we have the most decentralized election system of any Western democracy.” This approach protects America from having Russia (or China or anyone else) manipulate electoral outcomes. Nationalizing the process actually would make U.S. elections far more vulnerable to outside attack.
Which demonstrates the continuing wisdom of the nation’s Founders in creating a system that kept most important public policies and activities at the state level. The national government was established to deal with national problems, not to elevate to the national level controversies which belonged closer to the people.
The Founder’s idea, called “federalism”, naturally grew out of Americans’ commitment to self-government. The people, not a king or emperor, were sovereign. They were to solve their own problems and chart their own futures. That required decision-makers to be close to each other and the challenges facing them.
In this way federalism had a lot in common with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity. Whenever possible, higher, more distant institutions should leave undisturbed authorities below. Each government had a specific role and should not encroach upon the responsibilities of others.
Early Americans well understood the meaning of federalism: creating two distinct levels (local authorities being subsumed within states) of government with separate and defined duties. Unfortunately, however, the founding generations allowed ambiguity to creep in by calling the national government the “federal” government.
The very concept of federalism requires protecting the vibrancy of state (and local) institutions. The federal system meant dual authority rather than the unitary system prevalent in Europe, including in Great Britain. Although the Civil War established the ultimate supremacy of the national government, the conflict did not wipe out state sovereignty. The so-called federal government remained small, without much day-to-day impact on most people’s lives. Even enthusiastic nationalists at the time could not have imagined the wholesale federal takeover of education, health care, and welfare.
Of course, to speak of “federal” action now means to nationalize an issue. Thus, supporting the founding principle of “federalism” risks communicating the opposite of the truth to people, suggesting that the Constitution turned most problems over to the “federal,” that is, national government. And that continuing islands of state authority, such as running elections, are anomalies which should be wiped out.
Federalism in the original sense of the word always set American democracy apart from that of other nations. Power was separated and balanced; responsibility was accorded to institutions best able to confront problems. The people retained ultimate sovereignty and remained close enough to their officials to hold the latter accountable.
Unfortunately, these principles are under sustained attack. Attempts to tie Trump to Russia are just another attempt to expand federal, as in national, authority. With so many of their leaders AWOL, only the American people are left to stand up for their country’s founding principles. Only We the People.
The ‘truth’ is that the Russian government has been interfering in our elections for a long, long time, and this is actually the first time they are trying to avoid doing so.
Pooty Poot is not stupid. He knows that Trump is dangerous to his imperial aspirations, while Rotten Cankles would strive to enable them.
Eff the lying female genital organ.
ping
Are the Rats concerned the Russians may tamper with their tampering?
This nothing but Obama’s in-kind contribution to the Clinton Campaign.
They want to be in a position to pre-filter results before they hit the media so that if they need to concoct some kind of irregularity to forestall bad outcome for her in a particular state they can claim ‘foreign tampering.’
Likely, these actions would be driven by political analysts from her campaign and basically be directed anywhere about which they were uncertain about outcome.
In my opinion if DHS or anybody else in the Fed does this it is an act of war on the American people. The federal government is mandated out of this by the US Constitution, especially when it is done in such a real-time manner. Should it happen, it is a declaration of war that should be met with revolt, frankly.
Probably not because they are the true experts at vote tampering but they'll use "Russia's alleged tampering with election" as the the ruse they use to being in the DHS brownshirts (and the loaded buses of illegals to vote enmasse everywhere.
Get people EVERYWHERE all over the nation to film videos of them in riot gear with automtic weapons at the polling places. Do the same with the buses that show up at the polling places that the escort in. Then post it everywhere until so many people are pissed the point of no return begins.
I really don’t think they’ll go full out in the open boots on the ground. They just want to insert themselves in the aggregation stage to be able to rule whether each State’s SoS office (or equivalent) can go ahead with validating the election before the results are given to the Electoral College system.
If they don’t like the results they refuse to let the State validate, and they likely would cause some kind of federally-supervised recount, legal challenge, ‘factoring’ or otherwise.
It’s really nefarious if you ask me. Insert yourself down the gullet of the election system and control everything that is digested and passed on.
So giving away control of the internet is supposed to help how?!?
The guilty are the most worried about someone doing the same to them. not that's the case here but what they are doing sounds like they are going to soft-tamper with the election. They old use any number of ruses to keep certain demographics from voting using anything from lies to outright deception. All it takes it just a creative and devious mind.
He merely has to declare that Reagan was the one who defeated the "Evil Empire" the last time, and now that the Obama/Clinton administration has resurrected it, only he (Trump) can defeat it again.
I subscribe to the paper copy of the Tacoma News Tribune (largely for the comics page), and todays top page one subject "above the fold" is "Russians may interfere with elections". Now, I know that medicinal marijuana is legal here in Washington, but these "journalists" really need to cut back on their intake.
Maybe. But consider this: Putin might think he would be better off with someone at the US helm who followed agreements and quit helping the enemy.
One might think Putin has imperial aspirations, but look at what the Clintons and Obamas are doing. People seem to think Putin might blackmail Hillary. I find that laughingly outrageous. It has never worked for anyone else, why would it work for him ? He doesn't have anything on Hillary that the spy agencies (and MSM) of nations around the world don't already have.
The only people who don't know (or don't want to know) about Hillary's peccadillos are the American Public.
“Maybe. But consider this: Putin might think he would be better off with someone at the US helm who followed agreements and quit helping the enemy.”
Could be. I’m not an authority on Pooty Poot’s thinking.
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