How’s this for a movie plot? Its been a couple of months since the presidential election, the votes have been counted and recounted.
Fifty or so lawsuits have been brought, challenging the results and they have all been thrown out.
States have certified the results, and the Electoral College has cast their votes.
All that is left is for Congress to rubber stamp the results, making Joe Biden president.
Cut to an interior shot of a Waffle House somewhere in Alabama during the lunch rush.
Someone drops a bowl of grits on the floor, and in the mess is a likeness of Donald Trump with the word “winner”. The crowd rushes out of the diner shrieking, “We need to tell the people!”
Next scene, in a dark cabin in northern Idaho, skinhead kids gasp and stare at the ouija board bearing the message, “4 More Years”.
Mom and Dad rush to Parler and NewsMax to get the word out to the faithful that God wants Trump to stay in the White House.
Then, a flashback to the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in 1975, with the last of the American personnel boarding helicopters while the NVA occupies the city.
Over the roar of the chopper and the gunfire just outside the compound can be heard the lusty voices of the escaping yanquis singing, “We Are The Champions”.
This could be a political thriller of the first order, or it could be a Quixotic slapstick comedy about people who simply can’t get their minds wrapped around facts. I’m leaning toward the latter.
Suspending disbelief is a critical element of fiction.
A good story will lead the reader to ignore what he knows about the world, and will suck him into an alternate narrative.
That narrative, to be believed, must appeal to something other than the reader’s logic. Emotion has always been a good substitute.
So, for this movie to work, millions of folks must be convinced to accept an illogical hysteria over what their own eyes and ears are telling them.
They must be convinced that, despite all the functions of our political and legal institutions, they are right and the rest of the country is wrong simply because it feels that way.
Ordinarily, there would be some wise old father-figure of a county sheriff who would aw shucks the townspeople, and comfort them with “Y’all just go on about your business and don’t freak out, we got this handled.”
But in this case, we have the Wyoming Republican Party inciting the townsfolk to buy into the conspiracy theory, and telling everyone “Its time to FIGHT!”
The Wyoming GOP is like that wild-eyed town drunk who always moans about alien invaders and commies, wanting everyone to buy into his psychosis.
Frank Eathorne and the Wyoming GOP Central Committee are telling us to forget about what the facts say, and are trying to convince our congressional delegation to monkeywrench the election results simply because things didn’t turn out Frank’s way, and because someone’s spinster aunt in North Dakota had a dream about voting machines.
It will be instructive to see which way our delegations bends, either toward our Constitution or toward Aunt Fanny in Bismark.
If Frank and his pals in the Central Committee believe, in spite of all the investigations and court decisions to the contrary, that Trump actually won the election, then I have a good saddle horse that never bucks, a pen of primo calves, a pickup that’s never been stuck and the best cowdog in the world to sell them.
Gullibility this profound only comes around once in a blue moon and I want to get in on the gravy train.
I’ll use the money to buy a front row seat at the Academy Awards when the Wyoming Republican Party wins the Oscar for comedy in political theater.
Rod Miller is a Republican, rancher, a former congressional candidate, and longtime political operative in the state of Wyoming.
