Fifty-six days after issuing a debate challenge to critics of Final Five I am happy to report a host and an opponent have been found for next month - and details will be announced soon.
Unfortunately one big opponent of Final Five not only refused to debate, but sent out a nasty 10-tweet rant instead calling me a cancer and offering “proof” that Soros really supported Final Five with his “evidence” being that I went to a liberal event - something I had already announced in an email to 10s of thousands of conservatives.
The Soros claim is easily refuted by the fact that all of the Soros-backed statewide candidates came out strongly AGAINST Final Five last year in the first vote it faced.
As much as liberals would love to see another endless and senseless drawn-out Twitter or public email battle between conservatives - I won’t stoop to the ad hominem attack (won’t even mention my attacker's name to be sure it’s not taken as personal) but will simply restate simple facts for anyone who wants them.
Two things regarding going to a liberal event. First, I was actually not allowed to speak this year perhaps because at a similar event back in the summer of 2016 I was the only Trump supporter and the other 120 participants were angry when I stated to the whole room that Trump would win. Second, he didn’t “discover” I went to this liberal event - we had already announced it ourselves with this email to 10s of thousands and blog with Riley Gaines which read:
“It was also quite a contrast to talk with people at the American Democracy Summit, where we were in a tiny minority as Democrats won an online Presidential poll of attendees 92 percent to 8 percent in Los Angeles, to Anaheim an hour away with our friend and the great California GOP Chair Jessica Patterson (who had the most GOP pickups of any state party in 2022) introduced both Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump."
As noted most recently in this News Undone, “Final Five would have delivered Wisconsin for Trump,” the facts all point to Final Five helping Republicans, which I am sure is why Soros-backed statewide candidates in NV fought it so hard and even tried to throw it off the ballot.
Since they can’t argue that Final Five would hurt Republicans, opponents are telling people when they contact legislators to never say the word “Final Five” and instead say they needed to vote against Ranked Choice Voting. Well of course we all agree that the normal Ranked Choice Voting used in places like Maine and New York - where a confusing ballot made voters rank 13 candidates - should be stopped if introduced in Wisconsin. But saying to stop using the word “Final Five” is like saying “You can’t call a square a square - you need to call it a rectangle,” even if a square works and other rectangles do not.
We only support an instant runoff or ranked ballot in limited cases such as at the end of the Final Five process when conservative votes are being diverted to pro-life, Constitution, and Libertarian Party and you want all conservative votes to transfer to elect a conservative; or the case where five serious candidates transferred votes to nominate Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, or on a military overseas ballot like we passed in Georgia.
The only other attack I see is that some who support Final Five are “busted” because they received donations from others who support Final Five. That’s like saying a legislator who supports the 2nd Amendment is “busted” because the NRA gave them money, or one who supports low taxes is “busted” because a business owner gave them a donation. Unless the anti-Five Five attackers want public financing of campaigns, obviously donors will give to candidates with whom they agree.
As Founder John Adams famously said, “Facts are Stubborn Things.” We look forward to debating the merits of Final Five, rather than giving liberals what they want - conservatives personally trashing each other.
After the original post above, a couple of people close to the person attacking us explained the bizarre and false attack that Soros had given us money. We now understand that this charge is based on the time that a couple of conservative groups …
This group that gave Heritage Foundation one of their biggest gifts ever at $25 million and
The foundation of the Founder of the American First Committee and Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador to Norway Douglas Stuart Jr.
… teamed up with a couple of liberal groups to co-fund our former sister organization Take Back Our Republic (no “Action” at the end). The reason liberal and conservative groups both gave money to Take Back Our Republic (and not to our current group Take Back Our Republic ACTION) is that as a 501c3 they were not allowed to do anything political. The conservative and liberal donors wanted to see if there was any common ground on trying to keep foreign and other pay-for-play money out of politics. So the charge is basically that Soros gave money to one of the liberal groups and since that group gave that 501c3 money as did the other very conservative groups - that means Soros money came to us indirectly. Quite a stretch, but at least we understand the charge.