How the GOP Plans to Block the Black Vote

[Joecooool]

It happens every election: mysterious fliers, robocalls, malfunctioning machines that deny blacks the right to vote. Now the Republican Party has explicitly embraced the strategy.

I can’t identify too many threads that connect every single election I’ve ever covered. But one feature has been a constant through every election I’ve seen up close, from New York City Council elections to mayor to governor to senator to president: efforts to suppress the black vote, and, often enough, the Latino vote. I’ve seen the fliers, heard the robocalls, been at the polling places with the mysterious malfunctioning machines. No one ever knows exactly who does these things, and yet everyone generally knows. Republicans. And now we may be getting some proof. Former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer said for the first time on national television Thursday—to Al Sharpton, no less!—that his party is up to its neck in denying citizens the right to vote.

Greer—and I should say up front he’s under indictment; more on that later—was deposed by lawyers for the state GOP in late May for a civil case that will likely be heard after his criminal trial. He was specific. At a December 2009 meeting, “the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting.” They also discussed—and this is lovely—how “minority-outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party.” But with Sharpton, he really cut loose: “There’s no doubt that what the Republican-led legislature in Florida and Governor Scott are trying to do is make sure the Republican Party has an advantage in this upcoming election by reducing early voting and putting roadblocks up for potential voters, Latinos, African-Americans to register and then to exercise their right to vote. There’s no doubt. I was in the room. It’s part of the strategy.”

He also shot down the rationale for the new Florida law, this ginned-up “voter fraud” business: “In three and a half years as chairman in Florida, I never had one meeting where voter fraud was discussed as a real issue effecting elections. Never one time...It’s a marketing tool. That’s clearly what it is. There’s no validity to it. We never had issues with it. The main purpose behind it is to make sure that what happened in 2008 never happens again.”

The party’s current leaders, whom for good measure he called “whack-a-doo, right-wing crazies,” say he’s lying, and naturally they note that his credibility is open to question. He’s accused of funneling party money to himself, about $125,000. He’ll stand trial sometime this fall. Obviously, we don’t know whether he’s guilty of that. But we do know that in every single election in this country where the black vote matters, these mysterious things happen in African-American neighborhoods in the run-up to the election and on Election Day itself. We never know exactly who does it, but it’s pretty self-evident that it isn’t Democrats.

Conservative pundits like to whine from time to time about how blacks “reflexively” or “unthinkingly” pull the Democratic lever. Well, what exactly do they expect? Yes, yes, some Republicans in Congress supported the civil-rights and voting-rights acts. Fine. But those Republicans don’t exist anymore. The racists left the Democrats and joined the GOP, and that’s when—in the late 1960s—these voter-suppression efforts began.

The more you wrap your mind around it, the more astonishing the moral deficiency becomes. Think about it. Every election come the warnings that if you haven’t paid your telephone bill yet or what have you, you won’t be permitted to vote. Something that like, which I saw all the time in New York City, can be pulled off by a handful of ne’er-do-wells, and the party leaders themselves can maintain plausible deniability.

But what’s going on around the country this year requires the assent of officialdom. This is a conspiracy of thousands of people, Republican Party operatives in every state in the country (except those where the black vote is small enough not to matter), all of them agreeing that denying the most fundamental civic right to a group of citizens because they vote the wrong way is a good idea—and knowing that they can get away with it because, after all, it’s “just” “those people.” Imagine that Democrats had decided to proceed along these lines in America’s rural precincts. Something tells me that the country’s great law-enforcement agencies and media institutions would have managed to get to the bottom of it then—and that the Democratic Party would have ended up all but destroyed.

Just lately, John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky have been promoting their new book claiming to document vast treachery at the polls. The meme has developed on the right in the last few days that felons elected Al Franken to the Senate. Hennepin County (Minneapolis) Attorney Mike Freeman rebutted their charges this week. I can’t swear that Freeman is correct, but look—that was the most contested and pored-over election recount in the modern history of this country. It took nine months to determine the winner. Does it really seem likely that if massive fraud existed, state election officials (representing both major parties, by the way) weren’t able to ferret it out in nine months?

It’s a sick and sickening situation, and it delegitimizes everything else about the Republican Party. I can understand how someone believes in limited government or low taxes. I can understand how someone could oppose affirmative action. I cannot understand how any individual can be anything other than abjectly ashamed to be associated with a political party so thuggish as to try to rig elections like this and then at its conventions have the gall to invoke Abraham Lincoln and hire lots of black people to sing and dance and smile, to make up for their absence among the attendees. A black mark indeed. http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...lack-vote.html

[Vette40th]

So Joe, do you beleive?

[RedLS1GTO]

Oh... wait... you actually took this seriously?

Michael Tomasky (born 1960) is a liberal American columnist, journalist and author. He is the editor in chief of Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The American Prospect, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books.

[Stangkiller]

It's ok, I keep hearing that Obama is going to cancel the up coming election.

[Vette40th]

Originally Posted by Stangkiller

It's ok, I keep hearing that Obama is going to cancel the up coming election.

You heard that too, Marshall law, and he was going to shut down all Chik Filas at the same time, KFC stays open though..

[Joecooool]

Originally Posted by Loco Vette

I can't beleive anyone is stupid enough to beleive this shit

Dude, The guy was the former Chairman of the Florida GOP. He said this UNDER OATH in a deposition.

Jim Greer denounces Florida Republican Party officials as liars, 'right-wing crazies' in deposition - Tampa Bay Times

Seriously, WTF? Are you that loyal to your party that when the guy who was in the meetings discussing voter suppression comes out and says that is what was discussed that you can't believe it?

As an American you should be disgusted.

[Loco Vette]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

Dude, The guy was the former Chairman of the Florida GOP. He said this UNDER OATH in a deposition.

Jim Greer denounces Florida Republican Party officials as liars, 'right-wing crazies' in deposition - Tampa Bay Times

Seriously, WTF? Are you that loyal to your party that when the guy who was in the meetings discussing voter suppression comes out and says that is what was discussed that you can't believe it?

As an American you should be disgusted.

I am just taking a cue from your playbook. You post so much crap it takes too much time to debate all of it, and then you don't come back to defend it.

As for the case in point, with the current race hysteria your messiah has whipped this country into a conspiracy on the scale of what you are talking about would be national news, as it is tailor made for the left-slanted MSM. That deposition was in May and that article was published a month ago, but not a peep anywhere on the subject.

On the other hand [sarcasm] I am sure a guy who uses terms like "whack-a-do, right-wing crazies'' in a deposition and is currently under indictment is a perfectly reliable source. [/sarcasm]

Many of the questions posed to Greer were about his creation of Victory Strategies LLC, a company that collected almost $200,000 from the party while he was running it. The criminal charges stem from that contract.

No reason here for him to lie about anything!

[mrvette]

In order to vote, one must have skin in the game, period.....

name on REAL property as being a owner, or a ongoing enterprise/business as defined by the IRS....5 years tax PAYING.....

simple, really.....

[GTRain]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

Seriously, WTF? Are you that loyal to your party that when the guy who was in the meetings discussing voter suppression comes out and says that is what was discussed that you can't believe it?

As an American you should be disgusted.

Do you hate one party so much that you would post drivel on race baiting from a man arrested in 2010 and charged with 6 fellony charges...and fighting a 4 year court battle.

Is it that important to smear a party to take the word of an ousted gov't official, fighting a federal trial and disgraced into lashing out at anyone?

As an American you should be disgusted.

TALLAHASSEE — With his criminal trial dragging out, his reputation tattered and his family on food stamps, ousted Florida Republican Chairman Jim Greer may be nearing the end of a four-year political drama that has captivated the state's political class.

But new evidence being released by prosecutors shows it wasn't that long ago that he was secretly bragging about the money he got from state party coffers.

Greer is accused of secretly setting up the company then hiring it to handle party fund-raising while he was chairman. Prosecutors allege he used Victory Strategies to funnel $125,000 in party funds into his personal bank accounts.

Featured Articles From The Orlando Sentinel

[Blue 92]

I'm fairly sure the number of dead voters in Florida that arose and voted made up the difference......

[Fasglas]

Originally Posted by GTRain

Do you hate one party so much that you would post drivel on race baiting from a man arrested in 2010 and charged with 6 fellony charges...and fighting a 4 year court battle.

Is it that important to smear a party to take the word of an ousted gov't official, fighting a federal trial and disgraced into lashing out at anyone?

As an American you should be disgusted.

Fair questions. Answers will be "illuminating."

[vetteman9368]

Originally Posted by TxAg

That's a durn close race right there with LOTS of participants.

in an intellectual race they all fight for a tie in last place

[Taurus]

Originally Posted by Fasglas

Fair questions. Answers will be "illuminating."

and not forth coming...............

[Joecooool]

Originally Posted by GTRain

Do you hate one party so much that you would post drivel on race baiting from a man arrested in 2010 and charged with 6 fellony charges...and fighting a 4 year court battle.

Is it that important to smear a party to take the word of an ousted gov't official, fighting a federal trial and disgraced into lashing out at anyone?

As an American you should be disgusted.

He said it under oath.

[Vette40th]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

He said it under oath.

Under oath means nothing to politicians anymore, so why do you care that it was.

[RedLS1GTO]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

He said it under oath.

Well hell. I guess it must be true if he said it... *gasp*... UNDER OATH!

[Stangkiller]

Originally Posted by RedLS1GTO

Well hell. I guess it must be true if he said it... *gasp*... UNDER OATH!

I'm pretty sure OJ said he didn't kill his wife under oath too.

[Loco Vette]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

He said it under oath.

Clinton lied under oath too.

[Chris Fowler]

Originally Posted by Loco Vette

Clinton lied under oath too.

Yeah, but Clinton's a policitia...oh, wait...

[DJ_Critterus]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

He said it under oath.

How much shit did Holder say under oath?