The self serving dishonesty of Republicans

We saw the same tactic deployed in the past on climate change:  after actively promoting the mere handful of contrarians, you would see them pointing to polls and saying "but the public just isn't convinced enough that climate change is real or serious or deserves government action, it would be wrong for us to move on this now."

Now it's used by Republicans regarding the completely unjustified claims of widespread voter fraud in the Trump election, and pointing to polls as to the number of Republicans who believe it meaning that voter laws just have to be reformed.

While fighting off professional sanctions for her legal career, Powell noted in a filing, “Millions of Americans believe the central contentions of the complaint to be true.” Then the filing added — tellingly when it comes to Powell’s lack of actual proof — “and perhaps they are.”

The same filing also alludes to another arena in which this widespread belief has been used to justify certain actions. It states that “dozens of laws have been enacted by state legislatures in response to concerns similar to those raised in the complaint.”

And it’s right. GOP leaders in key swing states across the country have repeatedly cited the perception of fraud — rather than actual widespread fraud — as legitimizing their efforts to add new voting restrictions. One Iowa state senator went so far as to say, “The ultimate voter suppression is a very large swath of the electorate not having faith in our election systems.”....

It’s not difficult to see where this kind of justification can go awry. It incentivizes creating a pretext for something you already wanted to do, as long as you can find enough people to embrace it.

Powell wanted to overturn the election, so she cited all kinds of dodgy supposed evidence for that, and she earned credulous media coverage from others who wanted to believe (or at least allow other people to believe) the election had been stolen from their side. Likewise, Republicans writ large haven’t generally subscribed to Trump’s most far-reaching claims of fraud, but they’ve done virtually nothing to rebut them, allowing the situation to fester.

What results is a bunch of legislators and extreme actors in the effort to overturn the election citing the very perception they’ve fomented as somehow legitimizing their original argument — and justifying the particular bandage they had already wanted to apply to the perceived wound. If a lie makes its way into the mainstream, is it really a lie? Or just a difference of valid opinions? Who can know? And how can you impose sanctions on someone or block a voting restriction if both were predicated on a sincere belief held by so many people?