Last weekend my fellow Iowa blogger 2laneIA published a comprehensive diary on Congressman Steve King's "greatest hits." Click the link to read about King's suggestion that we electrify the border fence with Mexico like we do "with livestock," his prediction that terrorists will be "dancing in the streets" if Obama becomes president, and his pride in working to scale back funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (which he calls Socialist Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents). I mentioned a few more low points for King in this post.
This is what a lot of conservatives are going to be telling themselves after election day: That Obama cheated, that the media cheated, that McCain wasn't a conservative anyway, and that the only reason Sarah Palin wasn't a hit with swing voters is that the press - with an assist from conservative quislings like Frum and Brooks and Parker and Noonan - poisoned the well. And in such thinking lies the seeds of years or even decades of defeat.
I took a lot of flack from my own side in late 2004 (or was it early 2005?) when I purged this site of those I called "fraudsters" -- people who blamed our 2004 loss on voting machines and other Republican trickery. While there was systemic disenfranchisement of our voters in key states (like Ken Blackwell's Ohio), no Diebold trickery was needed to steal that election. Yet the obsession on those conspiracy theories by too many detracted from the true reform our party needed to undertake before it could win again.
My take? This is hatchet-think when we need a scalpel. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Plus, Howard Dean was going to launch his 50-state strategy, with or without the help of 50 or 100 or 200 DKos diarists and their commenters and readers.
More fundamentally, the issues raised by the majority of "fraudsters" (myself among them) were not limited to claims that Kerry won, but touched on a variety of issues that even now have yet to be robustly addressed. Indeed, some never even claimed that Kerry won at all. Other issues included voters rights, election integrity, Democrats standing up to GOP bullying and criminality, and Kerry breaking his word about fighting to see that every vote would be counted. Georgia10 did a marvelous job of continually summarizing developments and articulating concerns, and her work alone was sufficient to demonstrate the complexity that Kos's mischaracterization seeks to erase. Additionally, I wrote a diary "OHIO & Lakoff: The Right Wing Power Grab Frame" in which I wrote:
What matters to me most about Ohio are 3 things: (1) Racism. (2) Voter Suppression. (3) The Right Wing Power Grab.
Newsweek reports on efforts by the PA GOP to disenfranchise voters for their attire:
Now, a political fight over what voters can wear to the polls is headed to court in Pennsylvania - with the Republican Party favoring a dress code and Democrats opposed.
It's not just a question of Obama t-shirts, you see. What does the great and powerful Republican party fear?
"The first thing would be a button or a shirt, and maybe the next thing would be a musical hat," said GOP chairman Robert Gleason, who called a news conference in support of dress codes.
Scraping the bottom of the talking point barrel there, aren't you Bob? More conservative victimhood and paranoia inside.
On Sept. 10, reporter Eartha Jane Melzer of online publication, the Michigan Messenger broke the story that the GOP of Macomb County, Mich. was planning to use public lists of foreclosures to challenge the eligibility of potentially thousands of low-income and minority voters in that hard-hit region. Since that time (and at least party through Project Vote's efforts to catalyze action to stop the illegal disenfranchisement), the story has been picked up by multiple news outlets around the country and generated a lawsuit from the Obama campaign and the DNC on behalf of potentially-disenfranchised Mich. voters.
STATE BLOGS
