Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
The US electoral system pushes politicians to the left and right due to primaries, where politicians need to win over a small number of more polarized voters. We can change this system into non-partisan ranked choice elections so that politicians don’t need to bend over for the extremes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ws3w_ZOmhI
“Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has officially drawn a Donald Trump-backed challenger.
Ed Gallrein, who preemptively earned the president’s endorsement last week, launched his campaign Tuesday to oust the seven-term lawmaker Trump began targeting earlier this year over Massie’s opposition to Republicans’ megalaw.”
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/21/congress/massies-challenger-00616290
“President Donald Trump is ratcheting up pressure on Republicans to redraw congressional maps across the country, going as far as weighing a primary challenge to New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte if she continues avoiding a remapping effort in her state.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/30/redistricting-republican-loyalty-test-trump-00584932
A lot of the public were Googling if Biden dropped out right before the election. Maybe a primary would have helped informed the public about Democratic candidates’ positions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0qV-mFhn2A
Jon Stewart on Biden 2024: It Is What It Is? | The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbAdKUho6f8
“even as Haley’s support has grown among these types of Republicans, she’s still far from Trump’s levels of support. Instead, Haley has found herself on par with DeSantis, who started the cycle in a much stronger position but has steadily declined. Even among college-educated voters, where Haley has experienced the greatest growth, she’s trailing Trump by about 30 points nationally and is only ahead of DeSantis by about 5.”
https://abcnews.go.com/538/college-educated-voters-arent-saving-nikki-haley/story?id=106236805
“”Unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world,” said Reagan, calling the ability to attract newcomers “one of the most important sources of America’s greatness.” Immigrants help ensure that the U.S. remains “a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier,” he continued. “If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”
It was the last speech he delivered as president and it was, as some have called it, a “love letter to immigrants.” And though he made no distinction between “legal” and “illegal,” Reagan was broadly willing to treat immigrants with humanity.
“Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems, make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit?” he said during the 1980 Republican primary debate. Four years later, during a presidential debate with Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, he explained, “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.” Reagan would follow through on that statement by signing an amnesty bill into law in 1986. Any immigrant who entered the U.S. prior to 1982 was made eligible for a pathway to citizenship, ultimately extending amnesty to nearly 3 million immigrants.”
https://reason.com/2023/09/28/at-ronald-reagan-library-gop-candidates-reject-ronald-reagans-immigration-vision/
“Trump would still be the runaway favorite. But the process of winnowing away the weaker candidates reveals something interesting about the Republican field: It’s not Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who seemingly has the best chance of consolidating the anti-Trump vote. It’s former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
That’s the main takeaway from a unique poll of the primary field released Friday by FairVote, a nonprofit that advocates for the adoption of ranked choice voting. The survey included about 800 Republican primary voters and operated under the principles of ranked choice voting: each participant was asked to rank the GOP field from first to last, and the candidate who finished in last place in each round of vote-counting was eliminated, with their votes reassigned elsewhere depending on the respondents’ preferences.”
…
“Things get really interesting after former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is eliminated in round nine. The bulk of his support flows to Haley, who surges into second place with 20.3 percent of the total.”
…
[If you did the ranked choice process until there were only two candidates, the results were: Trump 62.3%; Haley 37.7%]
https://reason.com/2023/10/06/how-ranked-choice-voting-would-sort-the-republican-primary-field/
“They’re more conservative than other Republicans. More likely to be men. Less likely to have graduated from college.
And they’re way more confident they’ve made up their minds, even though the first primary or caucus is still four months away.
That’s the coalition former President Donald Trump has assembled in asserting his dominance over the Republican presidential primary.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/16/trump-gop-poll-voting-00116382
“Whatever you think of Donald Trump, we know what Carlson thinks, thanks to private communications that Dominion Voting Systems uncovered through discovery in its defamation lawsuit against Carlson’s former employer, which agreed to pay $788 million rather than defend its promotion of Trump’s stolen-election fantasy. “There isn’t really an upside to Trump,” Carlson said in a January 4, 2021, text message to his staff, describing “the last four years” as “a disaster.” Back then, Carlson was eager to be rid of Trump: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.” The day after the January 6, 2021, riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol, Carlson privately called him “a demonic force” and “a destroyer.”
But that was then. Carlson, like the GOP politicians whose phoniness he claims to despise, has adjusted to the reality that Trump remains stubbornly popular among Republicans. He is even willing to reinforce the election conspiracy theory that he publicly called unfounded and privately called a lie. Carlson’s current coziness with Trump was on vivid display Wednesday night, starting with the question of why the “far-and-away front-runner,” whose views are of such keen interest to voters, decided to skip the Republican debate in Milwaukee and any other similar forum in which he might have to defend those views or his record as president against competitors keen to make a dent in his commanding lead.
Trump’s answer was that felt no need to go through that ordeal, precisely because he is so far ahead. Why put up with “all these people screaming at me, shouting questions at me”—which Trump contradictorily claimed he “love[s] answering”—when he could sit down with an interviewer who is desperate to please him, especially in light of the criticism revealed in those embarrassing messages? Anyway, Trump said, he would probably get better ratings “using this crazy forum” than he would on Fox News, which televised the debate that he skipped. “I’m grateful that you did,” Carlson replied.”
…
“Trump said Biden “is worse mentally than he is physically,” as evidenced by the fact that he “can’t put two sentences together.” Trump, by contrast, can put many, many sentences together, but they do not necessarily make sense, bear any logical relationship to each other, or stand up to critical scrutiny. Fortunately for Trump, Carlson was offering none of that.”
https://reason.com/2023/08/24/tucker-carlsons-sycophantic-interview-with-trump-illustrates-the-advantages-of-skipping-the-debates/