R gameplan: When you can't win legitimately, lie, stereotype, and intimidate

There seems to be two basic paths to electoral victory - love and hate.  The path that Republicans have doubled down on isn't "love."

From MSNBC -

An awful lie about Haitian migrants led to this threat against citizens far away

There appears to be a campaign among some conservatives to bully everybody else into political inactivity or silence. appears 

The hateful lie pushed by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets not only endangered those migrants, it also led to an Ohio sheriff three hours away threatening citizens who show support for the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a Sept. 13 Facebook post that he later claimed “may have been a little misinterpreted,” Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski suggested tracking “all the addresses of the people who had [Harris] signs in their yards” so that “when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live...We’ll already have the addresses of their New families...who supported their arrival!”

The hate spewed by Cheeto et. al. has traveled.

From AZ Mirror, written by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy -

In a key legislative race, the GOP candidate joked about feeding dogs to Haitians

A GOP candidate whose state Senate race could determine which party controls the legislature embraced a racist lie demonizing a group of legal immigrants, telling a room of gay Republicans last month that Pima County’s stray dogs would be fed to Haitian people if Democrats win elections.

Vince Leach made the comment at a Log Cabin Republican meeting in Pima County on Sept. 22. The former state senator, who defeated Sen. Justine Wadsack in the July GOP primary, made the comment in the midst of a back-and-forth between Republican legislative candidates and the crowd.

“At the end of the day I want every Republican up and down the ballot,” Rep. Cory McGarr, R-Tucson, told the crowd. That includes even insignificant races, and would apply to the job of “dog-catcher,” a position that isn’t elected in Arizona.

[snip]

That’s when Leach entered the conversation. “They’d feed ‘em to the Haitians,” he said.

[snip]

Leach’s comments stem from a conspiracy theory that was initially spread by neo-Nazis in the town of Springfield, Ohio, in an attempt to demonize Haitian immigrants in the community. Since then, the false claim has been spread across the right-wing media ecosystem, where it was embraced by Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the vice presidential nominee for the Republicans, and later being promoted by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. 

In the weeks following the former President’s boosting of the claim, Arizona Republicans have fully embraced it. While appearing on Real America with Dan Ball, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Kari Lake claimed that “cities wouldn’t want to confirm” the false rumor when responding to Ball claiming that pets were being “barbecued” in Ohio.

[snip]

Arizona Republican state Senate nominee Mark Finchem also shared a meme alluding to cats being eaten by Haitian immigrants, while Flagstaff Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers posted multiple times on social media amplifying the false claim. 

And the Arizona Republican Party trumpeted the invented story, creating a billboard themed after fast-food restaurant Chick-Fil-A’s ads.