To Keep it Respectable

The Detroit News, which is the state’s oldest and biggest newspaper, [apparently the Detroit Free Press is bigger and older; LGM regrets the error, which was committed by an intern who has been sacked] has endorsed Tudor Dixon for governor.

Now on one level this is largely meaningless, as the actual number of votes a newspaper endorsement will sway in 2022 is probably negligible. But on another, the endorsement reveals the two-step that putatively “respectable” [sic] Republicans engage in when working to get Trumpist candidates elected.

Here’s the paper’s explanation why its editorial board’s concerns about Dixon’s long and unbroken track record of denying that Joe Biden actually won the 2020 presidential election isn’t any kind of big deal:

We also sought clarity on her position on the 2020 election, and more importantly, her commitment to assuring future elections are not undermined by sore losers.

Dixon said she supported an audit of the 2020 balloting, which we felt was unnecessary given the lack of evidence of fraud, but we also believe more transparency will enhance confidence in the outcome of elections. Most importantly, she expressed a commitment to abiding by the will of the voters, and we trust she’ll honor her word.

In other words, Dixon remains an unrepentant election denier, but that doesn’t matter because she’s in favor of what even the paper itself admits is a farcical Arizona-style “audit” of the 2020 results, and because she didn’t actually come right out and say that she would refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote if she were defeated next month.

Here’s Tudor’s record on this issue:

Tudor Dixon has embraced election conspiracy theories and repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was stolen.

When asked to raise her hand during a primary debate if she believed not only that there was fraud, but enough to impact the outcome of the 2020 election, Dixon joined the majority of her opponents in reaffirming her claims that it did. This is consistent with the conspiracy theories she has repeated time and again over the last two years and throughout her campaign.

Even before she launched a bid, Dixon made an online commentating career out of stoking public distrust in the democratic process while anchoring on ‘Real America’s network,’ an extreme right-wing cable network.

Dixon “claimed the election was stolen and accused Democrats of ‘obvious’ and ‘sloppy’ voter fraud” in the days after the 2020 election. She took to Twitter multiple times in the months directly following the 2020 general election to cry fraud and theft without providing any basis for these accusations. She has used these sentiments to advocate for voter ID even though it is already state law and limit absentee ballots because she believes they caused “widespread fraud” in the 2020 election.

Part of her extensive efforts to shoulder this baseless crusade, Dixon has thoroughly rejected the Republican-led Senate Oversight Committee’s 55-page report definitively stating that there was “no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud.” During an appearance on Off the Record, Dixon got in a heated back and forth with the rest of the panel, arguing that they were “misleading [their] viewers” by simply explaining the reports findings that there was no evidence of fraud. 

Dixon has also expressed support for an Arizona-style “audit” in Michigan, despite the multi-million dollar sham exercise reinforcing the fact that there was no evidence of fraud and actually netting more votes for President Biden than in the certified results. 

See below for a list of additional statements made by Dixon that reinforce her rabid fixation with relitigating the past.

• “Steal an election then hide behind calls for unity and leftists lap it up”
• “Zero self awareness made [Democrats’] voter fraud sloppy and obvious”
• “Republicans would have to have voted for their Republican congressional candidate and no presidential candidate or Joe Biden to make these numbers work. And we know that didnt happen”
• “Please tell me, how many of you voted for your Republican Congressional candidate and also checked the box for Joe Biden? Or Dems, how many of you voted for a Democrat Congressional candidate and checked the box for Trump? Oh, now you see…”

The trick here is to simultaneously aver that claims of significant election fraud are false, but that making such claims the centerpiece of one’s political identity should not be disqualifying from holding the highest office in the government because, um, Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic policies were too heavy-handed, which is really a worse form of authoritarianism that refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of elections that your party loses.

This kind of thing is critical to normalizing Trumpism, which of course must be normalized if one is ever going to vote for or endorse any Republican candidate in 2022 and beyond.