I'd bet a case of green-bottle beer that we've seen the last time Liz Cheney appears with anyone running for elected office.
It was appalling this year when Cheney, with a top-notch conservative voting record as our former representative, nevertheless hit the road to get Kamala Harris elected.
Liz hates Trump.
The sight of Liz sitting next to Harris at campaign rallies crystallized the bare-knuckle nature of the election.
In the end, Liz's help apparently didn't help Kamala.
Her help was more like throwing an anvil to a drowning man.
Some other final thoughts on the election:
- I voted against the property tax constitutional amendment on the Wyoming ballot, but it passed handily, thanks to a campaign based largely on mailers from the real estate folks.
There were reservations about what a future legislature might do if the amendment – creating a separate category for residential property – passed. But I think voters figured something, ANYTHING, would be better than the current skyrocketing property taxes.
The onus now falls on the new legislature, led in the House by Freedom Caucus members, to address the situation, ease the burden on owner-occupied property, and not make up the difference by raising taxes elsewhere. Make it work by cutting spending.
That will be the first big test for our new, more conservative leadership.
I hope they're up to it.
- Democrats raised $1 billion to elect Harris, and they still ended up $20 million in debt.
Imagine that.
- Ever wonder how Joe Biden got 81 million votes in 2020 – 12 million more than any president had ever received - in the middle of a pandemic?
That was at a time when we had to wear masks, we had to stay six feet apart, our kids couldn't go to school, and we had to go one-way down the aisles at Walmart to avoid some Typhoid Mary coming the other way.
In the middle of all that craziness, when you would expect low turnout for just about anything, somehow Joe Biden got 12 million more votes than Barack Obama received in his first election, the previous high.
Anyone else smell a rat?
Biden told us it was the cleanest election in history, and the courts, as inauguration day loomed, rejected over 50 allegations of fraud or cheating, not conducting time-consuming evidentiary hearings.
Take a look at popular vote totals (for both candidates) in recent elections: Obama vs. McCain, 129 million. Obama vs. Romney, 127 million. Trump vs. Clinton, 129 million. BIDEN VS. TRUMP, 156 MILLION. Trump vs. Harris, 146 million.
The folks who desperately opposed Trump in 2020 played the COVID-19 pandemic like a Stradivarius, flooding states all over the country with mail-in ballots - some requested, some not - and multiple ballots. And it worked.
How else do you explain 27 million MORE total votes in the middle of a pandemic?
I know you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube when it comes to the 2020 election.
But, honestly, don't those numbers make you suspicious?
- And lastly, imagine having a kid at some Ivy League university, paying anywhere between $50,000 to $65,000 a year in tuition, and hearing that some professors canceled classes the day after the election because Trump won.
Imagine how that parent, paying all those thousands in tuition, feels hearing that some students are such emotional basket cases that they needed Legos, coloring books, and milk and cookies to get them through the election of Donald Trump.
I was glad to read in Cowboy State Daily that the University of Wyoming did not participate in such laughable insanity.
When I went to UW in 1969 and 1970, it was not unusual to have some Vietnam veterans in our classes. They were easy to spot. While they were young like us, they were a lot more grown up. Most were good students, many getting an education on the GI Bill, and a lot more clear about what was important in life, and what was not. They weren't kids, like us.
Imagine offering those tough, experienced veterans Legos and coloring books, or milk and cookies, to help them deal with something far less stressful than going off to war.
Debilitated by an election?
I can imagine their response.
Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
