EDITORIAL: Message from conservatives to conservatives

If you’re a patriotic conservative who still believes Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, maybe you’ll listen to other patriotic conservatives.

Set aside an hour and dive into this report: https://bit.ly/3RAZaIW

Put on your cynical glasses and by all means, punch holes wherever you can find them. But you should also be prepared if not to change your mind completely, then to at least lose a little of the ardor behind your “Trump was cheated” stance.

Oh — and you’ll have to get past a title sure to feel like a slap in the face: "LOST, NOT STOLEN: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election."

"There is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole,” the report concludes. “In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct."

The report’s authors boast strong GOP bonafides. Signers include retired federal appeals court judges Thomas B. Griffith, J. Michael Luttig and Michael W. McConnell, former Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, former U.S. Sens. John Danforth and Gordon H. Smith, longtime Republican election lawyer Benjamin L. Ginsberg and veteran Republican congressional chief of staff David Hoppe.

"Even now, twenty months after the election, a period in which Trump's supporters have been energetically scouring every nook and cranny for proof that the election was stolen, they come up empty,” says the report. “Claims are made, trumpeted in sympathetic media, and accepted as truthful by many patriotic Americans. But on objective examination they have fallen short, every time."

Specifically, “Lost, Not Stolen” scrutinizes, in detail, all the election-related cases in Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Michigan. The allegations and findings of every case are presented concisely and clearly — and to all but the most fact-averse readers, there is only one possible conclusion. Yep, the report title says it all.

Meantime, the Idaho Republican Party shifted further right in its recent three-day convention, sweeping out party chairman Tom Luna and other less radical Republicans. But on a positive note, a resolution declaring the 2020 presidential election results invalid did not get out of committee.

The resolution concluded with this paragraph:

“We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election; and we hold that acting president Joseph Robinette Biden was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

Wiser Idaho GOP heads acknowledged that facts are discernible and enforceable. They also understood that our state and our nation are best served by grasping the opportunities for success ahead of us, not twisting in the wind over unexpected losses in our wake.