Koch-Conservatism Is Predicated On Taking Away The Vote From As Many People As Possible Without Provoking A Revolution

I'm savoring every paragraph of Corey Robin's new book, The Reactionary Mind so I limit myself to no more than 5 pages a day. (Yesterday I had no electric power from noon 'til 9pm, so I cheated and read 2 whole chapters.) But two of the themes that have emerged from the book so far is that conservatism is a reaction against emancipation (the sharing of power) and that conservative parties are the parties of losers (literally-- people feeling loss).

Nothing so disturbs the idyll of inheritance as the sudden and often brutal replacement of one world with another... While conservatives are hostile to the goals of the left, particularly the empowerment of society's lower casts and classes, they often are the left's best students.

...Where their predecessors in the old regime thought of inequality as a naturally occurring phenomenon, an inheritance passed on from generation to generation, the conservatives' encounter with revolution teaches them that the revolutionaries were right after all: inequality is a human creation. And if it can be uncreated by men and women, it can be recreated by men and women.

That is Koch-conservatism at its essence and that's why Koch-creatures like Scott Walker (R-WI), Rick Scott (R-FL), Rick Snyder (R-WI), Rick Perry (R-TX), John Kasich (R-OH) are so profoundly dangerous to American democracy. All came to power by mobilizing largely racist, right-wing faux populists and all immediately set about reversing the effects of emancipation on every front-- voting rights being one of the first tackled in each state. This week Scott Keyes tackled Koch's ALEC laws disenfranchising millions of American voters in time for next year's election. It is conservatively estimated that 5 million lower income and minority voters will be unable to vote next year because of restrictive GOP laws that reverse emancipation for likely Democratic voters. These new laws, he writes, could be enough, as we saw in Ari Berman's Rolling Stone essay last month “to shift the outcome in favor of the GOP.” Keyes:

Thirty-one years after Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and father of the modern conservative movement, told a Dallas crowd that “I don’t want everybody to vote,” Republicans are making good on his call to making voting more difficult in the United States. Let’s take a closer look at the different ways in which states are make voting significantly more difficult.

WAR ON VOTING: Perhaps the most sweeping change in voting rights since the 2010 election is the proliferation of state laws requiring citizens to present photo identification in order to vote. First introduced in Indiana in 2008, new “photo ID” laws have the potential to disenfranchise 3.2 million voters, mostly poorer residents and minorities. This was plainly evident when a group of retired nuns in the Hoosier State were turned away from voting in the 2008 primary election because they lacked proper photo identification. Three years later, half a dozen new states have followed Indiana’s lead: Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. Rather than each state independently concluding that they needed a photo ID law, model legislation was pushed to state lawmakers by the right-wing corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In South Carolina alone, a new study warns that “nearly 180,000 voters-- most of whom are elderly, student, minority or low-income voters-- will be disenfranchised as a result of this discriminatory bill.” Meanwhile, a 96-year-old Tennessee woman named Dorothy Cooper attempted to comply with her state’s new photo ID law this month, only to be denied a voter ID because she didn’t have her marriage certificate. Cooper later told MSNBC that her experience now is worse than in the Jim Crow era. Unperturbed, some politicians like Herman Cain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have thrown their support behind a national photo ID law. The war on voting isn’t just restricted to new photo ID laws; five states-- Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia-- have reduced their early voting periods as well.

RESTRICTING REGISTRATION: The war on voting isn’t simply resigned to Election Day. Instead, a number of Republican-controlled states are making it more difficult to even get registered in the first place. Such restrictions generally come in three forms: new requirements for individuals attempting to register, onerous regulations on non-profit organizations that conduct voter registration drives, and restrictions on when people are permitted to register. In Kansas and Alabama, those wishing to register to vote must now provide proof of citizenship first. Other states like Florida and Texas have opted to make it significantly harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register people to vote. Project Vote said the new Florida law, which requires “complicated, onerous filings” including a mandate to turn in completed voter registration forms within 48 hours of completion, will “make it next to impossible” for nonprofit voting groups to continue their work. As a result, the League of Women Voters chose to suspend its voter registration drives in the Sunshine State. Michigan is currently considering a bill similar to Florida’s, but with just a 24-hour window to submit voter registration forms. In Maine, the Republican-controlled legislature has taken a different path, choosing to repeal the state’s 38-year-old law allowing citizens to register to vote at the polls on Election Day. The law worked remarkably well for decades, making Maine the top state in 2010 voter turnout without benefiting either particular party. Fortunately, the repeal of Election Day Registration is now subject to a citizen’s veto and will come up for a vote on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

PHANTOM MENACE OF FRAUD: Conservatives’ justification for the new restrictions on voting rights is that they are necessary to head off voter fraud. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus underscored this argument, claiming that non-profit voter organizations like ACORN submitted 400,000 fraudulent registrations in 2008. This zeal to restrict voting rights in the name of preventing fraud was also evident in Maine last month, where the state Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster drew up a list of 206 University of Maine students with out-of-state home addresses and accused them of voter fraud. The Republican Secretary of State subsequently took this list and sent threatening letters to the students, complete with a form to cancel their voter registration in Maine. In fact, as the Brennan Center for Justice notes in two new reports, electoral voter fraud is largely a myth. In a heralded paper titled “The Truth About Voter Fraud," the Brennan Center notes that “It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” Indeed, most cases of voter fraud “can be traced to causes far more logical than fraud by voters,” including clerical or typographical errors, mismatched entries, and simple mistakes on either end. In Wisconsin, for instance, approximately 3 million votes were cast in 2004, of which just seven were ultimately deemed invalid-- all from felons who were unaware of their ineligibility. Comedian Stephen Colbert recently mocked the need for photo ID laws, noting that fraud occurs in “a jaw dropping 44 one-millionths of one percent” of votes.

Is the Obama administration finally going on a counter-offense. Forget the grand stuff-- like preservation of democracy and emancipation-- it is, after all, a matter of self-preservation. From the time of Hobbes, conservatives have been advocating for less political participation for the masses. And more than a few from the ranks of the masses-- like our current crop of losers, the teabaggers-- have been perfectly comfortable with that perspective. Of all Obama's "we can't wait" initiatives, this one should be thought of as "we'd better not wait."

The Obama re-election campaign has quietly opened a counteroffensive against Republican-backed changes to election laws that Democrats say will suppress votes for their candidates and limit their get-out-the-vote drives.

The effort, led by former White House counsel Robert Bauer, prompted the suspension of an Ohio law limiting early voting. Campaign officials produced educational materials to counter a Wisconsin law that requires voters to produce photo I.D.s-- but disallows those used by Wisconsin colleges.

By this spring, the Obama re-election campaign will mount what Mr. Bauer called an unprecedented "voter protection" effort, fielding thousands of volunteers in battleground states to help navigate new election laws, months earlier than past efforts.

"We will look at what the state has done, look for ways to counter it, through litigation sometimes, through administrative interpretation sometimes. But beyond that, you have to have a program that actually goes out and shows voters what they need to do," a senior Obama campaign official said.

Republicans see no precedent for a presidential re-election campaign to go this far to counter laws passed by state legislatures and signed by governors. "It's somewhat concerning that the president's own team is seeking to undermine laws that ensure only registered voters actually vote," said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

More than 30 states have changed voter laws since 2008, including seven that added requirements that voters show photo identification at their polling places. Republicans say limits on early voting are needed to cut the administrative costs of elections, and new I.D. requirements are necessary to defend polling places from fraud.

The L.A. Times ran a very similar story based on Rick Scott's blatant attempts to hold down African-American and student voting in Florida, a state Obama needs to win again if he's going to have any chance for a second term. The corrupt and extreme right Republican legislature has passed a series of laws to hold down voting. The Times reports that a dozen GOP legislatures passed these kinds of anti-democracy laws. Five were vetoed by Democratic governors but, besides Florida, the proto-fascist laws stand in Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Early voting was reduced from two weeks to one week. Voting on the Sunday before election day was eliminated. College students face new hurdles if they want to vote away from home. And those who register new voters face the threat of fines for procedural errors, prompting the nonpartisan League of Women Voters to suspend voter registration drives and accuse the Legislature of "reverting to Jim Crow-like tactics."

What is happening in Florida is part of a national trend, as election law has become a fierce partisan battleground. In states where Republicans have taken majority control, they have tightened rules for registering new voters, reduced the time for casting ballots and required voters to show photo identification at the polls. The new restrictions were usually adopted on party-line votes and signed by Republican governors.

During Florida's legislative debate on the new law, a Republican state senator argued that it should not be easy or convenient to vote. Voting "is a hard-fought privilege. This is something people died for," said Sen. Michael Bennett of Bradenton, the chamber's president pro tempore. "Why should we make it easier?"

Democrats have denounced new restrictions as "voter suppression" laws intended to deter voting by students, the elderly, the poor, the disabled and minorities.

"There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today," former President Clinton told a group of college students in July.

This week, House Judiciary Committee senior Members John Conyers (D-MI) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) sent a letter to Committee Chair Lamar Smith (D-TX) on Republicans pushing through disenfranchisement bills on a state level. Conyers and Nadler make the case that these laws are unconstitutional and violate the letter and the spirit of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Help America Votes Act. This is what they asked Smith that the Committee take up:

· Provisions that limit voting by requiring the presentation of photo identification.

· Laws that exclude the most common forms of identification (e.g., student IDs and Social Security cards), yet offer no alternate identification procedures for eligible voters.

· Changes requiring proof of citizenship as a condition for voter registration.

· Limitations or outright elimination of early voting opportunities.

· Barriers to first time voters, such as the elimination of same day registration and limitations on voter mobilization efforts.

And last night Rachel Maddow and Raúl Grijalva explained the power grab by the Koched-up Arizona Republican Party by their move to destroy the independent commission charged by the citizens of the state with drawing legislative maps. Worth watching:



UPDATE: Even The Conservative Arizona Republic Is Condemning The GOP Power Grab

Usually a reliable mouthpiece for the Republican Party, the Arizona Republic's editorial board issued an unusually blunt condemnation of this week's unprecedented power grab by Brewerand the GOP supermajority in the Legislature.

Gov. Jan Brewer and Senate Republicans ran roughshod over the public on Tuesday... They trampled a process that voters approved in 2000 to take the job of redrawing the political map away from elected officials... If a commissioner is going to be removed, the process must meet at least minimal standards of fairness and due deliberation. Instead, this was a rush job of a few hours. And the GOP votes were lined up beforehand. Behind closed doors... The fact that Republicans disagreed with how the commission applied the various criteria for mapping ... does not fit the definition of gross misconduct... In a crowning affront to the public, Gov. Brewer is out of town on a book signing tour this week and had Secretary of State Ken Bennett issue the call for a special session. She didn't bother to come back when taking a historic blow against a voter-approved institution.