Republicans need to adapt or die
The underwhelming Republican ripple (almost totally due to reapportionment) that took place on Nov. 8 raises the question as to whether the GOP really has any chance of taking back the White House in 2024 or whether the fix is already in.
While there were a number of factors involved in the GOP’s abject failure to ignite a wave election in 2022, despite having the wind at their backs and an incompetent dementia patient in the White House, the key issue is that elections in America are no longer about one man (or woman), one vote. As many political analysts have observed, it’s now all about collecting ballots, legitimate or illegitimate. This is the inevitable result of our elections being corrupted by mail-in voting which most nations of the world have eschewed as susceptible to rampant fraud and which even former President Jimmy Carter denounced.
Of course, COVID was the trigger which enabled the Democrat Party and its foot soldiers in the public employee and other unions to turn our elections upside down and inside out. No longer do we have an Election Day, but an election month. No longer do we vote at the polls, but we send our ballots through the highly reliable and totally non-political United States Postal Service, presided over by one of the federal government’s most powerful Democrat-run unions. As a general rule, we don’t require voter identification and often don’t even check signatures. Ballots take weeks to count because they are accepted up to the day they are postmarked and maybe later. Ballots are often collected in drop-boxes run by the Democrat Party or collected door-to-door by Democrat ballot-harvesters. The NCOA system is even thought to be manipulated at the county registrar level, allowing millions of ballots to be sent to addresses of non-existent voters, ready and ripe for the political Mafia to sweep by those addresses and scoop them up. Many voters report getting five, six or seven ballots at their homes.
Republicans arrive at the polls on Election Day as they are advised to do, only to be told that they already voted (or someone voted for them) or they find, as in Maricopa County, that the voting machines aren’t working and they need to wait in line for three or four hours or go somewhere else to vote or maybe just drop their ballot in some box and maybe it will be counted someday. And, even if the machines are working, Republican voters report repeatedly that their votes get “flipped,” with the machine registering their vote for the candidate they voted against.
The Democrat Party has mastered the process of election rigging and election fraud. And, in doing so, they have guaranteed themselves victory after victory in coming years and, possibly, one-party rule. Their mastery of the mail-in ballot machinery, regardless of whether the ballots are valid or invalid, is bolstered by George Soros and various dark money groups spending 10s of millions of dollars to ensure the election of Democrat Governors and Secretaries of State in the so-called “swing states” so that they control the election (or more accurately, selection) process. That’s why Arizona is probably lost to any Republican candidate for President in 2024.
What is the stupid party to do?
For starters, the GOP leadership must adapt or die. Absent state legislatures changing election laws back to pre-COVID standards, the likelihood is that mail-in voting is the wave of the future and Republicans better get ready to play that game as well as the Democrats or give up any hopes for political power in the United States for the foreseeable future.
And, Republicans used to do so. Thirty years ago, in California, for example, the bulk of absentee voters were Republicans and Democrats voted at the polls. The California Republican Party and GOP candidates ran aggressive vote-by-mail campaigns, actually mailing applications to Republican voters and following up by phone or at the door to ensure those voters voted those ballots. These type of get-out-the-vote drives normally led to huge Republican advantages in the early vote that Democrats were often unable to overcome on Election Day. Now, the entire process seems to have been reversed with Republicans stubbornly refusing to cast a vote by mail and saying they only vote on Election Day.
Yet, Election Day is a tricky thing. Suppose the kid gets sick or you get stuck in traffic or there’s an accident on the road. A million and one things can intervene to prevent you from being able to get to the polls that day. Or, you may just not have four hours to stand in line in Maricopa County. And, unlike having an entire month to vote, Election Day is your very last chance.
With month-long voting, Democrat party operatives have 30 days (in some states more), to harangue and harass their voters by phone, e-mail, text and at the door to get their ballots in. More often than not, they have the manpower (through the unions) to physically collect that ballot at the front door and maybe other stray ballots that just happened to arrive by mail.
It may be a scam and far from what the founders envisioned, but it’s “democracy,” right?
The Republican Party needs to set aside its pride and fight fire with fire. It can no longer afford to lose election after election because it’s too lame to play the game under the current rules. It needs to implement a massive ballot harvesting program, especially targeting low-propensity Republican voters. Where legal, it needs to set up drop-boxes in churches and Republican-owned businesses. It needs to hire paid door-to-door canvassers to go to GOP households as soon as the mail ballots arrive and get them voted and collected and follow up with phone banking, e-mailing and text messaging. We’ve done it before – prior to having today’s modern technologies — and we can do it again.
We tried Election Day voting and thinking we could overwhelm Democrats who had a month to vote in just one day. It didn’t work. Republicans need to change or be prepared to accept that we will never elect another Republican President and probably not a Republican Congress either.
About Dr. James Veltmeyer
Dr. James Veltmeyer is a prominent La Jolla physician and author of “Physician on a Mission: Dr. Veltmeyer’s RX to Save America.” He was voted “Top Doctor” in San Diego County in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019. Dr. Veltmeyer can be reached at [email protected] and by visiting his website at drveltmeyer.com.