Via the IJR, this is an exceedingly polite admonition coming from a guy who’s been dubbed “an enemy of the people” by Trump and whose wife has received graphic sexual threats from certain thuggish Trump fans who really don’t like the outcome of Georgia’s election.

Too polite, frankly.

Let me gently suggest to Brad Raffensperger that a great many people who’ve supposedly been “misled,” starting with the president himself, haven’t been misled. They’re knowingly engaged in a pressure campaign based on false pretenses of fraud to try to overturn the results of the state’s election. It sounds hyperbolic but it isn’t to say that they would undo democracy in this country if they could in the name of giving Trump another term in office to rule over the ashes. And they’d do it even if you could prove to their satisfaction, beyond all the evidence already adduced, that the election in Georgia really was fair.

What this guy has to lose at this point by simply admitting that, I don’t know. He’s been demagogued to the point of unelectability already. Humoring Trump and his legal team by treating them as victims of a con rather than as the perpetrators affords them far more grace than they deserve.

GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger (R): “There are those who are exploiting the emotions of many Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half truths, misinformation. And frankly, they are misleading the president as well, apparently." pic.twitter.com/M1IS53N74W

— The Recount (@therecount) November 30, 2020

What is with pols in this party going easy on people who insult their wives? Bad enough that Ted Cruz would become a Trump toady after Trump mocked his wife’s looks during the 2016 primary. Now here’s Raffensperger, whose wife is being harassed, bending over backwards to treat the harassers as having been “exploited.”

Another state voting official also blamed an “Internet cabal” and unnamed lawsuits rather than Trump for the chaos in Georgia:

Georgia election official @GabrielSterling: "The ridiculous things claimed in some of these lawsuits are just that — they're insanity, it's fever dream, made-up, internet cabal." pic.twitter.com/oB1TjHcodx

— The Recount (@therecount) November 30, 2020

Somehow Raffensperger and Sterling arrived at the same point as the president himself did a few weeks ago, scapegoating Sidney Powell for a national outburst of crankishness that actually goes far beyond her. Trump dumped her from his legal team for pushing conspiracy theories about massive fraud even though he seems perfectly open to those theories. Now these two are pointing fingers at unnamed ringleaders “exploiting” Trump and his voters even though Powell doesn’t have 1/1,000th the cultural influence over the right that Trump does.

Damian Penny asks a good question. What did Raffensperger expect would happen after Trump narrowly lost his state? Raffensperger has said many times since Election Day that he’s a proud Republican and a Trump supporter. Why did he support Trump when it was perfectly, eminently foreseeable that Trump would behave this way after being defeated?

Donald Trump got into politics by spreading racist “birther” conspiracy theories about President Obama, shrieked that any 2016 primaries he didn’t win were rigged, personally insulted and belittled any Republican who didn’t promptly bend the knee, kept personally insulting and belittling even Republicans who did bend the knee, went through unprecedent staff turnover and leaking in his White House, insisted that everyone he had hired and subsequently fired was always terrible, and throughout it all, assumed absolutely no responsibility for anything – explicitly, in the case of a rapidly spreading pandemic. Donald Trump can never be wrong, he can only be wronged.

When you vote for the Face-Eating Leopards Party, don’t be surprised when the Leopard starts eating your face.

Raffensperger’s so surprised at having his face eaten that he’s looking around for someone to blame for having “exploited” the leopard.

You know, maybe a guy like that deserves to have his face eaten, no matter how admirable his integrity in defending Georgia’s results has been.

He tried to make amends to Georgia Republicans today for having done his job dutifully and well, promising at this same press conference that he’s looking into claims that outside groups are trying to send mail-in ballots to people outside the state for the upcoming Senate runoffs. It’s illegal for a non-resident to vote in Georgia’s elections, of course, so that’s a proper subject for investigation. I hope for his sake that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue win because another defeat for the GOP will be treated as “confirmation” by the leopard-in-chief and his supporters that the fix was in not once but twice this year in Georgia’s elections. Kemp and Raffensperger are almost certainly one-termers no matter what, but that would cinch it. *Someone* has to pay for Democrats winning close races in GA and it’s certainly not going to be the guy who spent four years gradually alienating the suburban voters who ended up putting Biden over the top.