Republicans fear they have grown too conspiratorial to win elections: report

The Republican Party may be growing too disconnected from reality to win elections, GOP operatives are warning.

According to a new report in Politico, "some GOP operatives and Trump World luminaries are worried that the truly wild conspiracists may be mucking it all up. Hogan Gidley, one of Donald Trump's top lieutenants, took a subtle dig at some Trump allies and put some distance between their efforts and his group's work on election reform. Other Republicans have expressed fears that talk of 'audits,' machine rigging and foreign plots will depress voter turnout and discourage some people from seeking office."

Gidley is leading the Center for Election Integrity at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute.

"The comments illustrate the growing fissures erupting within Republican circles over how the party should address the last election. It's a fissure that's been caused mainly by Trump, who has been intent on continuously re-litigating the 2020 outcome with increasingly outlandish conspiracies that other Republicans echo. Gidley himself has pushed misleading arguments about some of the 2020 election outcomes, including on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots," Politico noted.

But Mike Lindell is not backing down and instead predicted the exact moment that the Supreme Court would take action to reinstall Trump, despite the fact the U.S. Constitution does not allow such a maneuver.

"When asked for comment, Lindell — who has led a national crusade to push false claims of fraud and voting machine hacking, and is being sued for defamation by voting machine manufacturer Dominion for $1.3 billion — said in a text message that he would be bringing his "voter fraud" case to the Supreme Court on Nov. 23 at 9 a.m.," Politico reported.

But could it already be too late?

"A Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday shows that 77 percent of Democrats, 49 percent of independents and 28 percent of Republican voters trust the election system a lot or some. Just 9 percent of Republicans say they trust the election system a lot," the publication noted. "Among self-identified 2020 Trump voters, just 22 percent said they believed the 2020 elections were free and fair; while 72 percent said they probably or definitely were not. They were slightly more optimistic about the 2022 elections, with 38 percent saying they believed that they would be free and fair. But 51 percent still said they believed they would not be."

However, the poll showed Republicans have more enthusiasm heading into the midterms as President Joe Biden's agenda remains bogged down in Congress.

"The Morning Consult polI offers some measure of relief for Republicans worried that voters won't turn out amid talk of vast election conspiracies. A full 92 percent of self-identified Republican voters said that they planned to vote in the 2022 elections, with just 4 percent saying they did not plan to. By contrast, just 70 percent of self-identified Democrats said they planned to vote, and 29 percent said they did not plan to," Politico reported.