The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported a few problems with voter information and drivers license information. This brought out the voter fraud sharks, generally frightened Republicans, calling for tossing the bums out.
One in five voters who registered to vote this month do not match driver's license records, state officials said today. Between Aug. 6 and Tuesday, 22% of voters who registered did not match driver records.
So that prompted a call to disqualify 22% of the voters. Fraud apparently is rampant.
“Republicans urged the board to take a harder line to make sure they prevent
fraud. Democrats argued such a stance would prevent legitimate voters from
casting ballots.
It’s so simple to these knuckleheads. If the records don’t match, you don’t get to vote. It’s like living in a perfect world where nothing can ever go wrong: the Republican economy, the Iraq war, Cheney’s energy plan, deregulation and health care. Oh sure, Wisconsin Republicans might have been told that:
“Many of those matches are likely typos or other problems, such as someone
appearing under a name and a nickname - David and Dave, for instance - in
different state databases, transposed numbers, missing middle initials.”
… but that’s not the point. You should have anticipated the database problems by getting a state ID. Fortunately, smarter heads prevailed.
The Government Accountability Board couldn't agree on what to do about voters
whose information doesn't match other records, and so decided, 5-1, not to
require voters to show ID at the polls if they don't correct that information.
Creating Wisconsin's voter database faced significant delays and wasn't fully
functional until earlier this month.
It’s funny the GOP wants smaller government and no gun owner data base, but salivate over a public data base where everyone’s personal information can be tapped instantly by Homeland Security without a warrant. Why am I trying to make sense out of all this? Maybe they just want to drive us crazy with inconsistencies?
Voter fraud lives on to thwart the poor and picked on Republican Party again.
You wrote: It’s funny the GOP wants smaller government and no gun owner data base, but salivate over a public data base where everyone’s personal information can be tapped instantly by Homeland Security without a warrant. Why am I trying to make sense out of all this? Maybe they just want to drive us crazy with inconsistencies?
ReplyDeleteI don't think Republicans want to "drive us crazy with inconsistencies." I think, with regard to the particular issues you mention, that it's less innocent than that.
The idea that "the GOP wants smaller government" is a myth. It did at one time. The desire for limited government was at the heart of what was once called conservatism and is now called paleoconservatism. Herbert Hoover, Robert A. Taft, and Barry Goldwater were all genuine in this ideology. Ronald Reagan can be seen as a transitional figure. Since he left office, paleocons have been ruthlessly purged from the GOP by the ascendant "neocons" like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and George Dubya. A few old-timers like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul still adhere to the "old-time religion," but they have been completely marginalized and have no power within the Republican Party whatsoever.
To today's Republican leadership (McCain is a perfect example), "small government" means only "a government that demands very little from the ultra-rich in the way of taxes, and lets big corporations do whatever they want" and NOTHING more. The days when the big corporations wanted government "off its back" are long gone, because now, the corporations have government in their pocket!
Of course, among the Republican rank-and-file—white middle and even lower-class voters in the red states, especially in rural and, to a lesser extent, suburban areas—the idea of "small government" is still popular. These folks believe that big government will gladly burden them (e.g. with heavier taxes, environmental regulations that make driving more expensive, and so on) and control their lives (e.g. gun control) but give nothing back. Rather, the benefits all go to someone else in the form of welfare, affirmative action, and so on.
There is some truth to this, but only some. And GOP spinmeisters are EXPERTS in exploiting these feelings. They pander to red-state resentments by whipping up the belief that Stalinism is just around the corner if a Democrat gets elected. And every once in a while they throw the rank-and-file a small bone: an anti-abortion comment that gets the left riled up and makes for great PR; a tax rebate check for a few hundred bucks; an anti-gun control bill. And all the while, they quietly go about the business of giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations and the super-rich, dismantling environmental regulations and workplace safety regulations, promoting "free trade" and making it easier to import cheap foreign goods, and so on.
Because big government is no longer the enemy but rather the servant of big business, the big-money boys who call the shots like the idea of an all-knowing government that can keep things orderly. That's why they favor all the "Homeland Security" measures, which do become more important as globalization marches on and national borders become more porous (and our borders become open to Third World cheap labor, another measure that the fat-cat GOP leadership, but not the rank-and-file, strongly favors). Gun control is of little interest either way to the big business lobby, so they gladly use it, as I mentioned above, as a small concession to the rank-and-file that is great for PR. And the government doesn't need a gun owner database because they already pretty much know everything about everybody in their other databases anyway.
Not a pleasant picture. I personally still have a soft spot in my heart for the old-time Republicans and their beliefs, as do, I believe, tens of millions of Americans in the heartland. I sometimes wonder if they'll ever wake up and see what the neocons have done to them, and take back the GOP. But I'm not terribly optimistic. As good old George Orwell put it (in the form of a secret diary entry written by Winston Smith):"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."