WP: The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy

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.

(snip)

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.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A707-2004Oct26.html

TOO BAD YOU"RE FOUR YEARS LATE WASHINGTON POST!

"Plotting a coup d'etat..." At least one commentator sees what's at stake.

People can't exercise their fundamental right to vote because of some bullshit checkbox designed to block new registrations.

http://www.blogwood.com/

I appreciate his comparison of Bush with Jefferson Davis. Bush truly is the first truly confederate president since Davis. It has taken a century for the South to rise again, and in Bush and the repug congress, it has truly done it. The irony is that it was through the Republican party that opposed them and brought them that they ultimately accomplished this...

I believe that this has a lot to do with why the repugs won't abandon Bush. They know culturally that they are now "on top" for the first time in many years and they don't want to let that power go.

Gives one hope...

There's a word for the GOP's shameless suppression strategy: un-American.

for trying to stop people from voting, regardless...

Your vote is your voice, any fascist trying to steal your vote should be shot.

That's a hell of a line. That's why the WaPo is NOT a "gray lady" of the 4th estate. Jeff Davis... jeeze, that's cold.

We'd all expect to find such words of wisdom printed in the pages of the Onion or Salon.com, but the Washington Post?! Plainly one of their editors must have developed a spine at last, good for them! Bravo! :bounce:

MIAMI, FL—With the knowledge that the minority vote will be crucial in the upcoming presidential election, Republican Party officials are urging blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities to make their presence felt at the polls on Wednesday, Nov. 3.

"Minority voters should make their unique voices heard, especially the African-American voting bloc, which is always a major factor in every election," said Florida Republican Party voter-drive organizer Mark Monreal, as he handed out flyers at a community center in the mostly black Miami neighborhood of South Farms. "That's why we put up hundreds of brightly colored banners featuring Martin Luther King Jr. and the 'Vote November 3' reminder. We needed to make sure they know when we want them at polling places."

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4043&n=1

Keep in mind that in some jurisdictions, Spanish-language materials printed by the local election commission gave the wrong date for Election Day. Coincidence?

:tinfoilhat:

P.S. :loveya: