The GOP Would Rather Steal The Election... But De-Legitimizing Comes In A Close Second

Yesterday two of the smartest people I know, Digby and People For the American Way president Kathryn Kolbert, took the cable media clowns to task for blowing up this whole ACORN situation into a context-free Republican propaganda opportunity. Fox News should now change its name to Acorn News and even MSNBC is failing in its duty to explain that these trumped up charges are an integral part of the Republican Party's 2008 last ditch attempt to steal the election.

Look, Republicans across the country are neck deep in corruption-- from NJ extremist Scott Garrett being caught playing footsie with lobbyists and not paying his state and federal taxes to Republican operative James Tobin being indicted today for election tampering in New Hampshire. The Republican Party is involved in a systematic attempt to disenfranchise African American voters in Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and Michigan. As Digby astutely pointed out today, the genesis of the whole Bush Regime Department of Justice scandal involved the refusal of Republican appointees in the U.S. Attorneys offices around the country to go along with trumped up charges about voter fraud (against ACORN and similar groups). It looks like the media is less discerning and picky. It was a Karl Rove operation then and it's a Karl Rove operation now.

Today, they've trotted out Village Wise Man John Danforth, who almost certainly gave the entire village a collective thrill up their legs. He is a high priest of bipartisan seriousness and if he says there's a problem with voter fraud I have little doubt that the establishment will immediately start fulminating about it despite the fact that Karl Rove and the GOP have been up to their necks in vote suppression for years. Danforth and Rudman (also on deck to help) wouldn't lie. They are "above politics" don't you know.

Their full blown propaganda campaign of the moment is aimed at furthering several different related goals. The first is to freak out the local registration offices, many of which are run by small town bureaucrats who are either subject to the propaganda or are GOP partisans themselves. They want to create a feeling of chaos around the voting processes and call the absentee ballots into question.

The second is to intimidate voters into not participating and making it difficult for those who do. They want people to believe that they will be grilled and scrutinized when they try to vote and perhaps make lines long and the process so arduous that people will give up.

Third, if the election is close, they will challenge its validity in court. After all, that worked like a charm in 2000. But barring that-- and it looks like it won't be close enough to do that-- they are laying the ground work to delegitimize the victory. That is an essential tool for rebuilding their movement and creating justification for the kind of character assassination and obstructionism that is their specialty.

If Ann Kornblut on MSNBC a few minutes ago is any indication the press sees this as a "both sides do it" sort of thing. Democrats complained about Bush vs Gore and vote caging and phone jamming and the vote suppression program in Ohio over the past two very close elections. Therefore, it's equivalent that the Republicans would complain about voter fraud and ACORN. The difference, of course, is that vote suppression was so inculcated in to the republican governing apparatus that they fired the US Attorneys for failing do their bidding and bring false voter fraud cases. That should be just a little bit of a heads up about who's doing what here.

The media needs to talk to Iglesias and McKay and some of the others involved in that scandal to remind themselves about the kind of systematic pressure that was brought to bear to effect the outcomes of elections during the Bush years. It might just wise them up to how absurd this hissy fit about ACORN really is. (But I doubt it ... )

Meanwhile, McCain's lobbyist brigade (i.e., "the campaign") is preparing him for the debate tonight with a kind of training video he can watch on Cindy's private jet)