TODD: One of the ways that we can be active is to do something that the left tried to outlaw — not outlaw, but they tried to make unsavory — and that is whataboutism. If you are in this sewer of… I don’t want to say that. Twitter can be a sewer. I refuse to contribute to Jack Dorsey’s hate machine or Mark Zuckerberg’s surveillance machine anymore, so I don’t do it anymore. I use it for show prep.
I communicate with listeners directly (not actually), you know, direct message and so forth. But if you are in those realms, you’ll see people go, “That’s a whataboutism. You’re doing a whataboutism.” Whataboutisms are really valuable. They’re incredibly valuable. Here’s an example. You come home. You walk up your drive, or you walk up to your home, front door, and you notice that the door is kicked in, and you say, “Well, that’s weird. When I left home, that door wasn’t kicked in.”
You’re doing a whataboutism. If you’re at home minding your own business and you say, “You know what? My left arm is awfully numb, and, gosh, the left side of my neck is just pulsing and I got this weird headache, and I taste sulfur.” Your doctor’s not gonna say, “Why are you doing a whataboutism?” They try at every turn to make it unsavory to apply logic to things. So I’m gonna give you a whataboutism.
When the Georgia state assembly passed election reform last week, I wonder how many of them read the report in words from their own Jimmy Carter, who authored a report himself in 2005 on election reform at the request of George W. Bush. Carter and former secretary of state James Baker oversaw the Commission on Federal Election Reform and issued a report. If you read it today in 2021, you’d nod your head at each of their suggestions. Rush read it for all of us late last November on this program. Give his words another listen.
RUSH: Speaking of the election outcome, do you know that we have had a solution for this election madness for 15 years? Yep! We have had a proposal. We have had a recommendation from the deep state. From the denizens of the deep, we have had a proposal on the table for 15 years on how to prevent what happened in this election. Jimmy Carter and James Baker of the Bush political dynasty found all the answers to all the problems in 2005.
So for the last 15 years, every single elected person in the swamp has failed this country. The Democrats took this as a roadmap. “On September 19, 2005, former President Jimmy Carter returned to the White House to provide President George W. Bush a copy of the report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform. Carter co-chaired the commission with former Secretary of State James Baker.”
Among their suggestions… This is 15 years ago, and this is just to show you how none of this stuff ever matters. It never sees the light of day. It’s not done for any real purpose other than for people to say they did it; they worked on it. But it is never, ever to be actually applied. Among the recommendations made by former President Carter and James A. Baker III in their proposal:
“They called on states to increase voter ID requirements; to be leery of mail-in voting,” they warned about it, and they suggested that it would not be helpful. They defined and then recommended to “halt ballot harvesting,” the entire practice. They suggested ways of maintaining “valid voter lists,” voter registration forms, “in part to ensure that dead people are promptly removed from them.”
They recommend “to allow election observers to monitor ballot counting; and to make sure voting machines are working properly” before every election. “They also wanted the media to refrain from calling elections too early and from touting exit polls.” Folks, do you realize what this is? This is a roadmap that was written 15 years ago that was designed to specifically prevent everything that happened in the 2020 election.
And it was created because there were problems in the 2000 election — that led to Bush v. Gore — and then, of course, there were problems in the 2004 election because that election failed to elect John F-ing Kerry. And so they put together this… It’s uncanny! It is uncanny. The story is in the Daily Signal. “Seven Ways the 2005 Carter-Baker Report Could Have Averted Problems with the 2020 Elections.”
“They called on states to increase voter ID requirements; to be leery of mail-in voting; to halt ballot harvesting; to maintain [accurate] voter lists, in part to ensure dead people are promptly removed from them; to allow election observers to monitor ballot counting; and to make sure voting machines are working properly. They also wanted the media to refrain from calling elections too early and from touting exit polls.”
Everything they recommended was ignored. I, your host, El Rushbo, am not surprised. These things are never, ever actually followed. They’re simply… This is a classic illustration — we talked about it last week — of a blue ribbon panel. Congress could have given a lot of weight to all this if they would have engaged in something other than just a report.
If there had been some actual legislation, it could have been entitled Election Reform. But, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! All they did was farm it out. They farmed it out to some blue-ribbon deep staters, Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, and these guys came back with exactly what was wrong, how to remedy exactly what was wrong.
They even forecast and predicted what would go wrong 15 years later, and they suggested ways to avoid it, and not one of the recommendations was followed. Not one. So, they knew. They knew and they know. In fact, one might go so far as to say that the recommendations in this report may have actually provided a road map of how to do it rather than a series of suggestions on how to prevent election problems, this might have been the roadmap for how to execute them, because it’s eerie. Folks, it’s eerie. Every one of these seven recommendations is exactly a warning against what happened.
TODD: The Maha. So let’s take the education, this potential power, and let’s make it powerful. And let’s use a whataboutism. Well, look. Our election process is so secure that everybody knows this. It’s the most safe, secure election in all history. What about the Carter-Baker Report? What about that? “What about the fact that when I got home, my door was kicked in and yesterday it wasn’t?
“And what about this numbness in my neck that wasn’t here an hour ago and now is?” Whataboutisms are nothing more than applying consistency. See, if you have the opportunity to stop a crime, and you choose not to, it’s a choice. Inaction is action, and again, to make this potential power powerful, ask your workmates, “If we got paid to write a report on how to increase our efficiency or stop loss or stop theft or increase our efficiency or profits or whatever — if we spent money on it and time — and the CEO said, ‘So what’d you do with that?’ and you said, ‘The opposite,’ you’re done.”
Let us take this potential power and make it powerful by sharing it.