In a brief piece titled “Who’s afraid of Charlie Kirk?” National Review senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty frets that, because Democrats don’t see the corrupt small-faced propagandist/”youth” activist’s get-out-the-vote operations for convicted felon former President Trump as a formidable, existential threat, like Leonard Leo or Mitch McConnell then conservatives should be worried that the Orange Warlord made a fatal mistake by outsourcing the canvassing to Kirk. From Dougherty:
If there were a really effective GOP get-out-the-vote operation, I feel like we’d be getting all these dark profiles of Kirk, and stories implying that Turning Point USA is using questionable legal methods to steal the election. Nobody was embarrassed four years ago about spreading the theory that Trump was going to steal the election by using post offices.
We got those profiles of Cambridge Analytica in 2016 for its small part in helping Brexit and Donald Trump – even though, by the standards set by the Obama campaign in 2012, these were minuscule digital campaigns. If they’re not accusing you of having dark, mysterious powers of influence, you probably aren’t having any impact at all and don’t belong in Republican politics.
Lol. The actual truth is a lot of the situation’s simply a black box. There are not, as far as we know, any real insider-y pieces about the day-to-day of the canvassing ops led by Kirk – or the other ones by Elon Musk and whoever else Team Trump handed it off to. All we have to work with is the recent spate of reporting quoting actual Republicans… and most of them are pissing their pants about it.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t going to work. It just means that some Republicans are skeptical that it’s going to work. Many of them with experience in this specific sub-specialty of campaigning who believe they know the winning formula for how the traditional “ground game” is supposed to go.
Turning Point Action will PAY for your hotel accommodations to chase ballots in AZ and WI! 🏨🤯
Help Donald J. Trump & all republicans WIN in November!
Sign up at: https://t.co/96QL0TL2hL pic.twitter.com/VOB6GumxBA
— Driena Sixto (@DrienaSixto) September 20, 2024
But if conserva-nerd magazine writer wants someone to blame for the lack of stories precision designed to terrify libs maybe he should look in the mirror and then pick up the phone to ask why, 40-odd days before the election, Turning Point’s advertised incentive to get people to travel to Arizona or Wisconsin to “chase ballots” is to offer to put them up in a hotel room, and how many takers they’ve gotten so far. If it’s anything short of 300 then Dougherty can just kill the story and continue whining that Rolling Stone and Atlantic readers aren’t quaking in fear of Charlie Kirk.