Republican criminal values
The Republican Party says it still has a zero-tolerance policy for tampering with voters even as it pays the legal bills for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to thwart Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.Read the rest at Roger Ailes.
James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.
The Republican National Committee already has spent more than $722,000 to provide Tobin, who has pleaded innocent [sic], a team of lawyers from the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly.
posted by The Inside Dope @ 8/13/2005
2 comments
2 Comments:
The suggestion that politicians are conspiring to prevent people from voting is one that resonates powerfully with the public. Over the last 50 years or so in most parts of the country the Democrats have seen it to their advantage to increase voter turnout and the Republicans have seen it to be in their interests to suppress turnout. Because of this the public is prepared to believe Democrats when they accuse the Republicans of trying to prevent people from voting.
The Democats, therefore, are giving away a powerful weapon when they are seen to be suppressing democracy in any way. Party leaders like Michael Madigan should be making an effort to be perceived by the public as encouraging candidates to run and giving the public as much choice as possible.
The Democrats should work on being the democracy party. It would be a winning issue.
Dave, excellent point as usual.
It's pertinent that you bring up the long-standing fact that Republicans have always been the party that sought to limit the number of people who vote, vs. the Dems who have sought to expand this.
Expanding the vote can only be seen as being pro-democracy, and thus the Dems had the high ground.
Of course, the fact that the basic numbers suggest that if more people voted, more would vote Democratic has always been the thinking behind the Dems GOTV efforts.
But in the past presidential election, we saw for the first time the Republicans actually mounting massive GOTV efforts in order to bring more people to the polls.
This could be an ominous sign for the Dems, though I still think that if every person who was eligible to vote actually voted, the Dems would be the beneficiary.
Illinois' style of machine politics is relatively rare these days. With good reason, it's been largely eliminated in most states. Compare the way things are done in Iowa, for instance.
It's unfortunate that in Illinois, politicians seem to be wholely owned subsidiarys of party leaders in Springfield and county chairs.
When this fact serves as an incumbant protection service, it's not surprising that this is seen as anti-democratic.
When one party holds power for a long time, they tend to try to control the system as much as they can get away with.
Unfortunately, they almost always overstep their bounds and end up facing a backlash. Let's hope the Dems don't fall prey to their own success.
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