Attendence of CPAC panel demonstrates what GOP base really think of minority voters

Crickets chirp as tumbleweeds roll through — and somewhere, the long, lonesome howl of a wolf is heard. That is one ghost town of a panel.

“CPAC organized a panel on minority outreach – an ongoing problem for the Republican Party and its base – and few thought the subject was worth their time,” explains Steve Benen. “…This is no way for a movement or a party to deal with a demographic problem that’s only going to get worse for the right.”

That picture is a Kirlian photo of the racist soul of the GOP. No one showed up, because no one cares. And no one cares because they’re all certain that minorities are mostly welfare queens and food stamp shoppers, Mitt Romney’s 47% makers-not-takers, and the fewer there are at the polls, the better. If there was a panel on voter ID (and there might be, I didn’t check) it’d be busting at the seams.

The base isn’t interested in voter outreach, because they want to keep minorities away from the polls. And if that means the impending demographic doom of the Republican Party, then no one deserves that doom more. If they only want white voters, then they’re only going to get white voters.

That’s not going to work out well for them.

Atty. Gen. Holder joins bipartisan effort to restore voting rights to ex-felons

CNN: One of Washington’s oddities of late is Attorney General Eric Holder’s liberal social justice goals finding unity with the tea party movement’s curb-big-government proposals led by Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee.

On Tuesday, the alliance is on display as Holder, for the first time as attorney general, calls for states to automatically restore voting rights to prisoners who are disenfranchised upon conviction. Paul, who supports voter ID laws Holder has sought to block, has pushed to overturn disenfranchisement laws that he says affect too many black men.

Holder, Paul and Lee are pushing to overhaul the nation’s criminal justice system, seeking to discard mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent crimes and reduce costly prison spending. The three are appearing Tuesday at a Georgetown Law School forum sponsored by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“Eleven U.S. states restrict or completely deny voting rights to prisoners even after they’ve completed sentences, probation and parole,” the report goes on. “Florida, among the most restrictive, bars 10% of its population from voting as a result of such laws. About 5.8 million Americans are prohibited from voting because of current or previous felony convictions, Holder says.”

The laws hurt African-Americans disproportionately, since our criminal justice system is rife with institutional racism and sentences are grotesquely distorted by class privilege. According to report, this means that “nearly one in 13 black adults across the US” are denied their right to vote because of a past felony conviction.

It’s a bit of a mystery why Lee and Paul want to address this issue, since even acknowledging it knocks out a leg supporting the GOP’s War on Voting. Republicans have had a difficult time finding cases of voter fraud to support their push for voter ID. And a very large proportion of those they do find are a result of these laws. A guy is sentenced in Wisconsin, for instance, where voting rights are restored and later moves to Florida, where they’re stripped. He tries to vote and finds out he can’t — oops! That’s technically “voter fraud,” despite the fact that there was no intent to defraud anyone. If felons’ franchise are restored, a massive chunk of their already meager collection of “voter fraud” stories evaporates.

Still, give them credit for wanting to do the right thing. Stripping the right to vote from felons for life is meant to capitalize on the criminal justice system’s racist bent, in order to suppress minority voting. The sooner this tactic dies, the better for democracy.

[photo via U.S. Department of Agriculture]

California is why GOP are terrified of free and fair elections

Change the California GOP’s mascot from the elephant to the mastodon.

Raw Story: With only five months remaining before the primaries, the increasingly moribund California Republican Party finds itself without any viable candidates for many of the top statewide contests, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Four years after having been swept by the Democrats in all eight statewide contests, the California GOP has had trouble recruiting candidates in a state where fewer than 30 percent of voters are registered as Republican. As it stands now there are no Republican candidates for the offices of  California attorney general, lieutenant governor, treasurer, and controller.

“This is a real challenge in that we are two steps away from a nightmare scenario where the statewide ticket appears so weak that some Republicans simply give up and throw in with Jerry Brown, creating chaos for Republicans running in competitive seats around the state,” warned former chairman of the California Republican Party Ron Nehring.

"Complicating matters for the state GOP is California’s voter-approved primary system, in which the top two vote-getters regardless of party advance to the fall election, which could result in two Democrats facing each other in November," the story goes on. "This would leave the approximately 1.7 million to 1.8 million  California Republican voters without party representation on the ballot for statewide offices driving down voter participation and affecting  California US House Republicans electoral prospects."

But that’s not the only handicap that California Republicans face going into the future — if you can call leveling the playing field “handicapping.” In 2005, the state put the task of redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan board, effectively eliminating the problem of gerrymandering. In California, voters truly choose their elected officials — while in most other places in America the elected officials choose their voters, drawing district lines around the people most likely to vote for them and turning democracy into a sham.

The result of making Republicans compete on a field with no advantages? Pretty much what you’d expect for a party that only makes up 30% of the electorate: doom.

This is why Republicans everywhere resist redistricting reform and this is why they try to give themselves every advantage through voter suppression laws and gerrymandering. This is why they cheered the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Without the cheats, the GOP is over with.

Doubt me? At 30% GOP, hippy-dippy loony liberal California is actually more Republican than America as a whole. Recent polling by Gallup shows that only 25% of Americans identify as Republican.

In a real contest, Republicans would be ruined — which is why they try to lock Democrats’ and third party candidates’ ankles to an anvil before every race.

Christie's an amateur

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times - Free Press.

Something to keep in mind after reading Newt Gingrich’s defense of Mandela

In case you missed it, that defense is here. While Newt’s anti-apartheid history seems pretty legit, he still doesn’t get let off on the charge of hypocrisy, as this story from New Year’s Eve 2011 demonstrates.

Associated Press: Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich blasted the Justice Department for blocking a South Carolina voter identification law and suggested the Obama administration wants to “steal elections.”

During a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the former House speaker questioned why Attorney General Eric Holder is “so determined not to identify if people are not eligible to vote”

Gingrich went on to say that, “you have to ask, why is it that they are desperate to retain the ability to steal elections and I think that’s what it comes down to.”

The Justice Department recently rejected South Carolina’s law requiring voters to show photo ID at polling places as discriminatory against minorities. Republicans argue stricter voter ID laws are needed to avert voter fraud.

Gingrich was the big beneficiary of voter fraud in 2012, not Obama. Hypocrisy abounds.

So yeah, Newt was a passionate defender of the rights of black people — so long as those black people were way the hell and gone over in South Africa. When it came to the rights and freedoms of people here at home… Well, you know, screw that.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

When Republicans Dream

Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer.

If imaginary voter fraud requires a nationwide crackdown, what do you suppose will be the response here?

Talking Points Memo: A sorority at the University of Alabama offered incentives like free drinks and limo rides to the polls for members who cast votes in the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education election, the Birmingham News reported Wednesday.

An email obtained Monday by the newspaper, sent by a member of the sorority chapter’s executive board, urged members residing in the city’s District 4 to vote in exchange for perks. The email also encouraged members to vote for certain candidates.

"In a list that was e-mailed to me this weekend, y’all are the only [members] registered in the specific district that are allowed to vote," the email read, as quoted by the Birmingham News. "Cason Kirby, a past SGA president of the University of Alabama is running for the City Board of Education, and Lee Garrison a UA Alum is also running."

"They would really appreciate/need your vote to win this election. It’s going to be really tight, and it is SO IMPORTANT that they get the Greek Vote," the email continued. "I told both of them that I would do my best to make sure that I got every Chi O that was registered to the polls. There is a big incentive for you going as well!!"

"Stretch limousines could be seen shuttling passengers to and from sorority row and the District 4 polling station Tuesday," the report goes on. Both Kirby and Garrisonwon their elections by a hair — which suggests this vote-buying campaign made all the difference.

Would voter ID have stopped this? Would restricting voter registration or eliminating early voting? The answers are obvious no, no, and no.

Imagine what the response on the right would be like Latino or African-American voters were being limoed to the polls with free drinks from a community center in an inner city neighborhood. Brietbart.com would run the story from every conceivable angle, making up a few along the way.

So what huge outcry can we expect from Republicans, now that we finally have hard evidence of real voting irregularities that actually managed to swing an election?

Well, considering the voters were likely privileged rich white kids, I’d say the odds are very good that we won’t hear a word about it from the right.

[photo by Gary D]

Former Sec. of State Colin Powell blasts NC’s voting restrictions

News and Observer: With Gov. Pat McCrory in the audience, former Secretary of State Colin Powell took aim at North Carolina’s new voting law Thursday, saying it hurts the Republican Party, punishes minority voters and makes it more difficult for everyone to vote.

"I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote," said Powell, a Republican, at the CEO Forum in Raleigh.

"It immediately turns off a voting block the Republican Party needs," Powell continued. "These kinds of actions do not build on the base. It just turns people away."

The retired general served as the keynote speaker at the event and made his remarks moments after McCrory left the stage. His comments represent the most high-profile criticism of the Republican-crafted law that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, cuts early voting days and makes it harder for students to vote.

In one comment, he seemed to rebuke McCrory for suggesting that voter fraud likely exists but is hard to detect. The governor had compared it to insider trading.

"You can say what you like, but there is no voter fraud," Powell said. "How can it be widespread and undetected?"

"What it really says to the minority voters is… ‘We really are sort-of punishing you,’" Powell said, which is correct. You can’t complain that minorities always vote for Democrats when you’re screwing them over and blaming them for imaginary crimes every chance you get. The going theory among Republicans is that minorities vote for Democrats because they’re all poor and dems give them "handouts." The less racist and more reality-based reason is that Republicans are dicks toward minorities — relentlessly.

That said, this is more of a feel-good story than anything. Colin Powell is a conservative who’s unwilling to exist outside of reality, which means the base has written him off as a RiNO a long. long time ago. No one on the right is going to listen to him or even take him seriously, because he stopped being a team player a long time ago. Powell has taken on conservative political correctness like this on more than one occasion, which puts him outside the GOP hivemind. If there’s one thing all these supposed “rugged individualists” hate more than liberals, it’s a conservative who dares to think for himself and disagree with the forced conservative consensus spilling out of talk radio and Fox News.

Enjoy Powell speaking truth to power — just don’t expect power to listen. If you do anything other than repeat their bullshit back at them, you might as well be a freakin’ Marxist.

[photo by Scott Ableman]

GOP War on Voting

Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons.

Sensenbrenner’s phony defense of the Voting Rights Act

The Hill: A leading House Republican is calling on Congress to update the Voting Rights Act just a day after the Supreme Court neutered its central provision.

Warning that “the threat of discrimination still exists," Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) is urging lawmakers from both parties to cast aside partisanship and restore the law for the sake of protecting voters’ rights.

“The Voting Rights Act is vital to America’s commitment to never again permit racial prejudices in the electoral process," Sensenbrenner, the second-ranked Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday in a statement.

“This is going to take time and will require members from both sides of the aisle to put partisan politics aside and ensure Americans’ most sacred right is protected."

The problem is that Sensenbrenner’s a big fan of the sort of voter suppression the VRA was meant to prevent. When Attorney General Eric Holder said that South Carolina’s voter ID requirement amounted to an illegal poll tax (and it did), Sensenbrenner came just short of accusing him of trying to destroy America. He has also been a big supporter of Gov. Scott Walker’s voter ID attempts in his own home state of Wisconsin. So any claim he has to being a defender of voting rights is complete horseshit and you have every right to laugh at the absurdity of the claim for as long as you want to.

Sensenbrenner expands on his arguments in an op-ed in Politico. And it’s a barely disguised attack on Holder and the idea the voter ID is a form of disenfranchisement — despite the fact that that’s exactly what voter ID laws do. It’s pretty clear that what Sensenbrenner wants is an Orwellian bill that we can pretend is a “Voting Rights Act," but allows states to pass racist voter suppression laws. In other words, a typical GOP bait and switch from a party that’s become so awful and so unpopular that they believe that they either have to fool people into voting for them or block them from voting at all.

[photo by Wispolitics.com]

Pretending it's the End of an Era

Lee Judge, Kansas City Star.

GOP: voters more dangerous than assault weapons

Quoth Jim Crow

Kate Palmer, AAEC.

The electoral college map if only white people could vote

Still wondering what all that voter suppression was all about? There you go. Romney landslide.

[via buzzfeed]