Trump Wednesday refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses in November. He is deliberately undermining confidence in the integrity of mail-in ballot results – mail-in ballots that are expected to favor the Democrats. According to a report in The Atlantic, the White House is laying plans to actively steal the election: According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of
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Trump Wednesday refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses in November. He is deliberately undermining confidence in the integrity of mail-in ballot results – mail-in ballots that are expected to favor the Democrats. According to a report in The Atlantic, the White House is laying plans to actively steal the election:
According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.
Meanwhile, in the face of one of the most severe threats ever to American democracy, great libertarian defender of liberty Donald Boudreaux is busy lamenting the threat to freedom from COVID lockdowns. Honest:
Is it plausible that government officials have sufficiently accurate and detailed knowledge about how mandated restrictions on socializing will affect the economy, especially over time, such that these officials can be trusted to mandate only those restrictions that produce benefits greater than their costs? Is it plausible that, even if lockdowns in the specific case of Covid-19 pass some cost-benefit test today, the resulting expansion of governments’ powers will not be abused tomorrow? And is it plausible that a people bridled, broken in, and subjugated as never before by the Covid-19 lockdowns will retain enough of a sense of personal responsibility and desire for freedom that they will resist government overreach in the future?
OK, so he’s getting a bit hyperbolic about a policy he disagrees with. Libertarians do that. But isn’t he also beating the drum about the threat Trump poses to democracy? As far as I see, it’s nothing but crickets.
Libertarians wonder why people think they value property rights over democracy and human decency.