How a dictator controls elections: Free but not fair. MAGA is a wannabe. Turkey and Hungary provide the blueprint for those who aspire to be "autocratic/" dictatorial rulers and, once prosperous, stay in authoritarian control while looking like elections were reasonably held and publicly supported. Fareed Zakaria on CNN 5/21 provided a clear and concise description of where in the world, including Turkey and Hungary, why and how elections may look free but are not fair, and liberal democracies such as ours have been destroyed. https://fb.watch/kFVpNRilsV The MAGA movement is example number one of an attempt and a desire of a political campaign to copy these tactics and destroy a democracy that is both free and fair. Trump and DeSantis, and CPAC fawn over Viktor Orban's dictatorial rule. Like him, Turkey's Erdogan had to first gain control of the judiciary and, on one pretext or another, be able to discredit, gag, or, in Turkey, jail his most threatening opponent and opposition journalists. In Turkey and Orban's Hungary, the dictators and their supporters control the media. Lies and corruption go unchallenged, and there is no platform for opposition public expression. The legislative branch was controlled early in the process by unfair elections or intimidation. The judiciary is a rubber stamp operation owned by the dictators' appointments to the bench in nearly all instances, ruling in the dictators 'interests. Their legislators nod in unified support of the leaders to whom they owe their positions.
Sadly, both Turkey and Hungary are members of NATO. Turkey has attempted to play both sides of the Ukrainian war. They are the reason Sweden has not yet been granted membership in NATO.
The MAGA GOP's current tactics reveal their attempt for their core supporter minority to control the rest of us, comprising the majority, Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans. The MAGAs further undermine the "free" election perception by attempting to claim elections are neither free nor fair. They unfairly try to make it more inconvenient for those to vote whose votes they fear and intimidation at the polls themselves. Their targets are racial minorities and younger voters. Fortunately for democracy, they have not yet sufficiently corrupted much of the judiciary, but they have seized total control of a large number of state legislatures and state houses. By claiming media who reports negatively about them, MAGA has managed a de facto control of the messaging reaching loyal supporters who view all other media reports they do not like as "fake news" or "lib" slanted, ignoring, downplaying, or cherry picking, facts, and data. No wonder they are shocked or in disbelief when national polls and elections do not go their way. "Why, everyone I know and my sole media outlets to which I tune in agreed." Those votes must be the result of fraud to explain the outcome, they believe, and the stolen 2020 election is still their mouthed mantra, the ticket into the MAGA clubhouse.
In all honesty, those of the left who also are in their media silos think most right-wingers are inhumane, hate-filled, uneducated nut cases. "We are such a divided country," the tongue-wagging pundits use as an excuse to explain away close election calls. Radicals on the left and right are also guilty, claiming anyone who compromises is "disloyal to their cause." The only way to break this curse is beginning to happen as independents and moderate Republicans revolt and vote. The midterms and recent polls of independents are revealing this new trend.
There are many known and obvious tactics of voter suppression. Among the tools the MAGAs use in the South are reducing early voting windows, mail-in voting, eliminating ballot drop boxes in targeted neighborhoods, claiming fraud that the election was stolen when they lost without providing evidence, gerrymanders, and district boundary drawing by legislative bodies they control that give their side more districts resorting to distorting the public will and sentiment, approving violence or threatening and intimidating racial or ethnic groups with antagonistic partisan poll watchers and unleashing or otherwise protecting violent constituents like the neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, Three percenters, Oath Keepers, and others from prosecution. To them, all judicial system prosecutions are just political, laws and evidence and juries to the contrary notwithstanding. While Trump's role in inciting January 6 is still being revealed in various court cases, he recently stated in a rally that he would, if elected, pardon those already convicted for everything from vandalism to criminal conspiracy to overturn the election of 2020. The "House" sub-sub-committee on government overreach led by Jim Jordan to attempt to prove a conspiracy of the "lib" FBI against MAGA Trump in 2020 or another committee to try to show "the Biden crime family" has so far fizzled. This was thanks to when the Durham special investigation final report failed to find evidence of widespread conspiracy in the FBI's Russia election interference cases and the disappearance of the key witness to Hunter's laptop. That the AG Barr and 63 federal judges and the Supreme Court found no evidence of widespread election fraud in 2020 points to the importance of an independent judiciary holding its ground. The MAGA crowd blithely ignores and is still missing judicial findings.
Current figures on those identifying as conservatives most loyal to FOX, AON, NEWSMax , especially after Hannity's departure, in 2021 (impacting the 2022 midterms) are available: Newsmax and OAN News Consumers Also Likely To Turn to Fox News | Pew Research Center
