With the “midterms” less than a week away, it is a good time to prepare your mind for the flood of Gaslighting that will gush from the media advocates of Critical Primary Theory heralding the start of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination process.
On March 23, 2021, Gaslighting Republicans began monitoring primary Gaslighting in the media with the post “Politico’s Gaslighting Today” in which David Siders’s writing in Politico announced the beginning of the “if-Trump-doesn’t-run” primary. (At this point, new subscribers should review my previous posts for additional background.)
https://open.substack.com/pub/curly/p/politicos-gaslighting-today?r=3ooz6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
My first few posts about early media gaslighting feature some of the “best” works of the “journalists” working the primary beat on the east coast during 2021.
https://open.substack.com/pub/curly/p/media-gaslighting-this-week?r=3ooz6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/curly/p/media-gaslighting-this-week-070?r=3ooz6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/curly/p/media-gaslighting-finale?r=3ooz6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
GASLIGHTING IS LIKE A VIRUS
On July 20, 2022, Domenico Montanaro of NPR gave us this excellent opportunity to demonstrate how the Gaslighting virus spreads when he wrote this:
“Trump's choice
Of course, Trump doesn't have to win a majority in the primaries to win the nomination again. He just has to win a plurality, as he did in many of the early 2016 primaries.”
Soon after, Philip Bump with the Washington Post caught the Gaslighting virus and wrote this on September 26:
Donald Trump benefited in 2016 by having several rivals in the Republican field, allowing him to win delegates with a relatively small share of the vote. That could benefit him again if he runs in 2024.
Then, Ed Kilgore offered this rendition in the New York magazine’s misnamed Intelligencer on September 27 after contracting the Gaslighting virus from Bump:
As the Post’s own Philip Bump quickly noted, Trump didn’t need the support of a majority of Republican primary voters in 2016 to win a majority of delegates and the presidential nomination (he actually won about 45 percent of the vote in caucuses and primaries, despite the overwhelming percentage he won in some late primaries after he had locked down the nomination). In part, that was because opposition to Trump was divided among 16 other candidates (the number dwindling as the primaries discarded candidates). Additionally, though, unlike Democrats with their rules requiring strictly proportional delegate awards based on vote shares, Republicans still allow bonus delegates for congressional-district and statewide winners and even some winner-take-all primaries (the situation in, for example, Florida, where Trump smoked two allegedly favorite sons, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, in results that Ron DeSantis might want to review carefully).
While it is simply FALSE to suggest that primaries choose the Republican nominee, this small sample of three misinformed writers with large megaphones illustrates how this very effective Gaslighting propaganda tool distributes the false narrative that “primaries choose” the Republican presidential nominee by passing the Gaslighting virus from one host to the next.
PREDICTION—Every future article in the legacy media about the 2024 Republican presidential nomination process will contain evidence of the presence of the Gaslighting virus.
Such promotion of Critical Primary Theory is an example of overt Gaslighting; openly dishing misinformation in support of the primary nomination narrative. (The seen)
Covert gaslighting, on the other hand, is the failure to even mention the word “convention” as having anything whatsoever to do with the nomination process. (The unseen)
As the Gaslighting floodgates of disinformation open next week, watch for these telltale signs you are being gaslit.
—Vague use of the term “primary” as the exclusive means of securing the nomination.
—Media “sources” with economic interests in primaries. (Republican strategists, pollsters, officials in “early primary states”, other media, conservative activists, prominent Republican operatives, lawyers and anonymous sources.)
—Absence of any reference to or about the role of the Republican National Convention in the nomination process.
THE ETHICAL DILEMMA
The use of primaries as the “official” method of choosing the Republican candidate for President of the United States is unconstitutional; an infringement on the right of the individual delegate members of the Republican Party to determine, by their secret ballot, their preferred nominee at the Republican National Convention.
Journalists, especially, should be champions of the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
Lawyers, with their specific sworn duty to protect and defend the Constitution also cannot support primaries without compromising their oath.
Every lawyer in the United States swears an oath. Swearing the lawyer’s oath is the admission ticket to the privilege of practicing law. Each state’s oath varies. However, there is a similarity in all oaths: every lawyer swears to support the Constitution of the United States.
https://dhdwlaw.com/helpful-info/what-is-the-oath-that-attorneys-take.html
Watch for a special post soon after the results are known next week as the chess pieces begin to move in pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination for 2024.
Click on Gaslighting Republicans to view previous posts
Curly amazes me how corrupted the process is in choosing our Presidential candidates seems like rules and procedures don’t matter as long as those seeking power follow the theme means justify the ends. Sad day for America that we lack leaders seeking office or hold office lack the courage to do the right thing