Bob Herbert:The Real Scandal

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/opinion/21herbert.html

It never ends. The Republican Party never gets tired of spraying its poison across the American political landscape.

So there was a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, telling Chris Matthews on MSNBC that the press should start investigating members of the House and Senate to determine which ones are “pro-America or anti-America.”

Can a rancid Congressional committee be far behind? Leave it to a right-wing Republican to long for those sunny, bygone days of political witch-hunting.

Ms. Bachmann’s demented desire (“I would love to see an exposé like that”) is of a piece with the G.O.P.’s unrelenting effort to demonize its opponents, to characterize them as beyond the pale, different from ordinary patriotic Americans — and not just different, but dangerous, and even evil.

But the party is not content to stop there. Even better than demonizing opponents is the more powerful and direct act of taking the vote away from their opponents’ supporters. The Republican Party has made strenuous efforts in recent years to prevent Democrats from voting, and to prevent their votes from being properly counted once they’ve been cast.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. I hope that our vigilance and awareness of these possibilities works in our favor..

[autorank]

2. He's always on target.

Bachmann's statements are vile and vulgar. I have no idea how she got elected but she'd better
lose. How ugly.

I think a lot of people have voted Republican without really taking this ad on seriously or without
even being aware of it. I'm glad this is coming to people's attention but it's really dangerous
and doesn't work over the short term.

Palin's small town nonsense that I heard was equally vile. Stewart took care of that.

[northofdenali]

3. What most folks don't realize is that Wasilla isn't all that "small".

And it's a bedroom community of Anchorage, the state's largest (really, only) city. Now, geographically, Fairbanks could be considered "small town"; demographically, we're a real melting pot and have been since the construction of the Alcan.

Any "small town" (i.e., Palmer, Eagle River, Wasilla, Girdwood) connected by road to Anchorage has no real demographic differences than, say, Sylacauga does to Birmingham or Rehobeth to Dover. According to Wiki, Wasilla isn't really "small" for our state:

Wasilla is the largest town in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, and is situated in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Alaska, part of the Anchorage Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2000 census, the population was 5,469. The Census estimated the population at 9,780 in 2007.<1> The estimate places Wasilla as the fourth largest population center in Alaska, after Anchorage, Fairbanks, and the capital Juneau.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasilla,_Alaska

Bachman is going down. So is Stevens. I think a lot of folks get very lazy, politically - they recognize an incumbent's name, see the party after the name, and just vote the (D) or (R). If not myopia, I would be scared of my neighbors who voted for Don Young! :scared: But I'm not, because most of them, this year, have switched to Ethan Berkowitz, the Dem candidate!

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Under 10,000 is still pretty small

There are one or two places in England that are larger than that, and are still called 'villages'.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

4. Anything but running on their record.

And now that desperation has filled the air, the rehashing of long debunked lies and the cries of "UnMurkin" is all we'll hear until Nov. 4th.

Great piece from Herbert.

K&R!!

[KharmaTrain]

6. Voter Nullification...

Bob's written some great pieces this election season...and has been following the caging and suppression efforts closely.

What's scary about what Bachmann was doing was that while she was definitely off the "reservation", she wasn't off by that much. She took talking points and played them up...she was just stupid to realize that a cable teevee show is not the same as ramping it up at the local rally. She was speaking party and candidate sanctioned talking points...and that's not to be forgotten.

The end-game here is to try to both suppress votes in any manner possible and then to nullify any loss due to some "technicality". The overall attempt is to delegitimize not only an Obama victory but those of other Democrats as well. This game was play in '06...the mantra there was to blame Foley and "weak Repugnicans"...and I expect we'll see the same tactics this time around.