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[The Washington Post] The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by No Worries, Oct 29, 2004.

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  1. No Worries

    No Worries Member

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    The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy
    By Harold Meyerson
    Wednesday, October 27, 2004; Page A25

    With Election Day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own.

    Time was when Republicans were at least embarrassed by their efforts to keep African Americans from the polls. Republican consultant Ed Rollins was all but drummed out of the profession after his efforts to pay black ministers to keep their congregants from voting in a 1993 New Jersey election came to light.
    For George W. Bush, Karl Rove and their legion of genteel thugs, however, universal suffrage is just one more musty liberal ideal that threatens conservative rule. Today's Republicans have elevated vote suppression from a dirty secret to a public norm.

    In Ohio, Republicans have recruited 3,600 poll monitors and assigned them disproportionately to such heavily black areas as inner-city Cleveland, where Democratic "527" groups have registered many tens of thousands of new voters. "The organized left's efforts to, quote unquote, register voters -- I call them ringers -- have created these problems" of potential massive vote fraud, Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman James P. Trakas recently told the New York Times.

    Let's pass over the implication that a registration drive waged by a liberal group is inherently fraud-ridden, and look instead at that word "ringers."

    Registration in Ohio is nonpartisan, but independent analysts estimate that roughly 400,000 new Democrats have been added to the rolls this year. Who does Trakas think they are? Have tens of thousands of African Americans been sneaking over the state lines from Pittsburgh and Detroit to vote in Cleveland -- thus putting their own battleground states more at risk of a Republican victory? Is Shaker Heights suddenly filled with Parisians affecting American argot? Or are the Republicans simply terrified that a record number of minority voters will go to the polls next Tuesday? Have they decided to do anything to stop them -- up to and including threatening to criminalize Voting While Black in a Battleground State?

    This is civic life in the age of George W. Bush, in which politics has become a continuation of civil war by other means. In Bush's America, there's a war on -- against a foreign enemy so evil that we can ignore the Geneva Conventions, against domestic liberals so insidious that we can ignore democratic norms. Only bleeding hearts with a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set still believe in voting rights.

    For Bush and Rove, the domestic war predates the war on terrorism. From the first day of his presidency, Bush opted to govern from the right, to fan the flames of cultural resentment, to divide the American house against itself in the hope that cultural conservatism would create a stable Republican majority. The Sept. 11 attacks unified us, but Bush exploited those attacks to relentlessly partisan ends. As his foreign and domestic policies abjectly failed, Bush's reliance on identity politics only grew stronger. He anointed himself the standard-bearer for provincials and portrayed Kerry and his backers as arrogant cosmopolitans.

    And so here we are, improbably enmeshed in a latter-day version of the election of 1928, when the Catholicism of Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith bitterly divided the nation along Protestant-Catholic and nativist-immigrant lines. To his credit, Smith's opponent (and eventual victor), Herbert Hoover, did not exploit this rift himself. Bush, by contrast, has not merely exploited the modernist-traditionalist tensions in America but helped create new ones and summoned old ones we could be forgiven for thinking were permanently interred. (Kerry will ban the Bible?)

    Indeed, it's hard to think of another president more deliberately divisive than the current one. I can come up with only one other president who sought so assiduously to undermine the basic arrangements of American policy (as Bush has undermined the New Deal at home and the systems of post-World War II alliances abroad) with so little concern for the effect this would have on the comity and viability of the nation. And Jefferson Davis wasn't really a president of the United States.

    After four years in the White House, George W. Bush's most significant contribution to American life is this pervasive bitterness, this division of the house into raging, feuding halves. We are two nations now, each with a culture that attacks the other. And politics, as the Republicans are openly playing it, need no longer concern itself with the most fundamental democratic norm: the universal right to vote.

    As the campaign ends, Bush is playing to the right and Kerry to the center.

    That foretells the course of the administrations that each would head. The essential difference between them is simply that, as a matter of strategy and temperament, Bush seeks to exploit our rifts and Kerry to narrow them. That, finally, is the choice before us next Tuesday: between one candidate who wants to pry this nation apart to his own advantage, and another who seeks to make it whole.
     
    #1 No Worries, Oct 29, 2004
  2. 4chuckie

    4chuckie Member

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    Perhaps you should know why the republicans want monitors at the polls:

    In 4 counties there are more people registered than people eligible to vote.

    Everyone's vote should count, but people shouldn't be able to vote twice. it would have been simpler to ask everyone for a valid ID but it sounds like the monitors won't be allowed so people can try to pose as deceased realatives, make beleive roommates (just so you know Dick Tracy and Betty Boop both registered this year in Ohio for the 1st time, at least we know where the fictional characters go to retire).

    Ohio will be this years Florida.

    But the Cleveland Plain Dealer will announce tomorrow Bush has taken a 3 point lead.
     
    #2 4chuckie, Oct 29, 2004
  3. Chump

    Chump Member

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    Ohio doesn't ask for a party when you register, Betty and Dick could very well be republicans for all we know, I'm not really sure why right-wingers automatically think that the fraud is on the Dem side. Remember no Republican has ever won without Ohio.
     
    #3 Chump, Oct 29, 2004
  4. 4chuckie

    4chuckie Member

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    This could be the year it changes, but it likley won't matter (Bush could lose Ohio and get the necessary votes from Florida while taking Iowa, Wisconsin and New Mexico or Hawaii). The Cleveland polls looks great, Bush is in Columbus tonight with the Governator and just saw a TV broadcast that 25,000 people are at Nationwide Arean to see them (broadcast was at 5, Bush arrives at 7:30) and the Bush campaign is cranking here in Columbus. Plan is to make 500,000 phone calls (currently at 2.5M, plan is to make 3M by Tuesday) plus tons of people out hitting teh streets and (it's big in Ohio) a large campaign to inform people before/after OSU's football game tomorrow.

    As for who caused the fraud? Well put it this way maybe it is a republican but I'd bet it's the other side. They registered teh ballots and turned them in. Maybe I'm wrong but I feel good about it.
     
    #4 4chuckie, Oct 29, 2004
  5. Woofer

    Woofer Member

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    It only brings back memories of the Jim Crow and the South in the 60's. Except they are targeting non-Cuban Hispanics in Florida as well. What a long way we haven't come, baby.
     
    #5 Woofer, Oct 29, 2004
  6. IROC it

    IROC it Member

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    Was it the evil Democrat side that was at work when I had my voter registration sent back to me because I had overlooked the "check here if you are a U.S. citizen" box, even though I had signed it (verifying my citizenship)?

    No. I just filled out the new one, and sent it back.

    To get all bent, as most in here would, I'd say that the democrats were behind it since I live in a heavily republican area, and they must have been trying to skew the results by intimidating me. :rolleyes:

    Listen, someone has said it here before, more than once... If people are not politically motivated enough to go to the freaking post office or DMV and get there OWN voter registration card, fill it out, and get it done, and then correct their mistake if they made one.. ON THEIR OWN... then why do I want someone that was harvested by one side, or the other, to "sign up to vote" selecting the president of the country in which I live? Is that fair to the informed?

    If people are not brighter than a 2 watt bulb, why get them plugged in? What light will that shed on the issue that indicates the will of the people?

    But as long as crack, alcohol and cigarettes can buy votes... hey, sign 'em up! And why shouldn't the cast of Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies, and Marvel Comics vote too?

    Simply put. If you can get YOURSELF registered, if you're LITERATE and MOTIVATED enough to do that, then vote.

    But If I have to hold your hand to get you to the poll, then I might as well admit that I'm multiplying MY vote by the number of votes I RECRUIT.

    Vote harvesting is the shameful practice.
     
    #6 IROC it, Oct 29, 2004
  7. francis 4 prez

    francis 4 prez Member

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    i assume you support the article you posted but for some reason you made it easy to find all the ridiculous and discrediting portions by bolding them. strange.



    besides, the republicans have to counterbalance all the dead people that will be voting.
     
    #7 francis 4 prez, Oct 30, 2004
  8. No Worries

    No Worries Member

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    In these four counties, are there more indians, buffaloes, and trees than 400 years ago? do the people on welfare drive cadillacs? more dead Democrats vote than dead Republicans? etc.

    I will assume your above statement is vicious make believe, until you provide a link.
     
    #8 No Worries, Oct 30, 2004
  9. No Worries

    No Worries Member

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    Republicans should not drive other Republicans to the polls!!!
     
    #9 No Worries, Oct 30, 2004
  10. halfbreed

    halfbreed Member

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    Anyone who watches the news would know that the story is true. While they don't say which party the newfound humans voted for, they were registered with a batch brought in by the democratic party. If it was the other way, you'd be saying that Bush is trying to steal the election.
     
    #10 halfbreed, Oct 30, 2004
  11. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    chuckie, your beloved home state of Ohio is going for Kerry, no matter how many black folks you guys try to keep out of the polls.
     
    #11 SamFisher, Oct 30, 2004
  12. bigtexxx

    bigtexxx Member

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    Sam, what makes you think that kerry will take Ohio? Tradesports' futures market now has Bush as the favorite.
     
    #12 bigtexxx, Oct 30, 2004
  13. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    Cause he's ahead in the polls. 3 more shopping days texx till bitterness sets in. O'Reilly better get some batteries.
     
    #13 SamFisher, Oct 30, 2004
  14. bigtexxx

    bigtexxx Member

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    Futures markets have been proven to have less margin of error than traditional polls.

    By the way - it looks like the last two polls taken in Ohio (Zogby and Mason-Dixon) both have Bush ahead.

    You and Beej may need to coordinate a group hug.
     
    #14 bigtexxx, Oct 30, 2004
  15. thadeus

    thadeus Member

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    What word best describes an even balance between laughter and disgust?

    :D :(
     
    #15 thadeus, Oct 30, 2004
  16. 4chuckie

    4chuckie Member

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    Sam sorry buddy but Ohio is all Bush. Forget the national polls which check with 600 people check with the Cleveland Plain Dealer (in the heart of democrat country) who say Bush is up by 3 in a poll relased today.
     
    #16 4chuckie, Oct 30, 2004
  17. 4chuckie

    4chuckie Member

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    #17 4chuckie, Oct 30, 2004
  18. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    LOL, yeah, Bush's lead in the cleveland poll shrinks to within the MOE, and you paint it as gaining momentum. Do you understand the concept of margin of error or are you equally unknowledgeable in this aspect as you have proven to be in the areas of Corporate Governance, macroeconomics, etc?

    High turnouts = the end.
     
    #18 SamFisher, Oct 30, 2004
  19. 4chuckie

    4chuckie Member

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    I guess I am totally unknowledgeable when compared to you. But the good thing is alot of us "unknowlegeables" will gee teh job done on Tuesday (again), while you bright, elitists can get an exuse to cry about how unknowlegeable the US is for another 4 years.

    So keep on thinking you're smarer than us. it's that attitude that you the Heinze-Kerry exude that turns makes alot of us think "The party of acceptance sure does stereotype alot of people"
     
    #19 4chuckie, Oct 31, 2004
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