Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Puncturing another Republican Big Lie

I'm sure you've heard by now about how Obama is trying to steal the election with fraudulent minority votes via ACORN. Certainly, the conservative movement has already conditioned itself to believe that if Obama wins it will because he stole the election and thus his administration will not be legitimate. We are witnessing the well of democracy being poisoned by the Republican noise machine: there is going to be an angry, probably protofascist contingent of Americans who believe they are living under an illigitimate socialist-friend of terrorists-Manchurian black Muslim supremacist-maybe anti-Christ NWO regime - and the McCain camp and the "conservative" media will have helped shape that perception for them.

It is somewhat staggering to consider how audacious and sinister this lie is; one reaches for a copy of The Origins of Totalitarianism to find a description of similar behavior. It seems to have gone down the memory hole that attempts at using ACORN to prosecute Democrats for voter fraud were AT THE HEART OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FIRING SCANDAL. Ok? That's the same scandal that is now the subject of a criminal inquiry. As Ed Brayton put it:

We know beyond any doubt that the GOP has an active strategy of trumping up these voter fraud charges against ACORN. How do we know that? Look at the DOJ Inspector General's report on the US Attorneys scandal, especially the section about New Mexico's David Iglesias. Republican political operatives, including Karl Rove himself, put pressure on Iglesias to bring voter fraud charges against ACORN based on a single canvasser who turned in some fraudulent applications in that state.

When he refused to do so because there was no evidence, he was put on the list of attorneys to be fired. The report contains emails and memos from Rove and from Republican activists throwing a fit over the fact that Iglesias - a man who ran for office as a Republican, so he hardly has any reason to be biased in favor of ACORN - would not do their bidding and bring a fraud case against them.
That Brayton link contains a fact sheet that was independently verified by Brayton for the news service he works with. You can also read more about the Karl Rove designed strategy of using bogus voter fraud charges to persecute Democrats and suppress their vote, here.

Update: As I was writing this post, specifically this line- "... Americans who believe they are living under an illigitimate socialist-friend of terrorists-Manchurian black Muslim supremacist-maybe anti-Christ NWO regime" - I was wondering if perhaps that was going to come across as too over-the-top and maybe I should spend sometime explaining why it actually isn't. A few minutes after hitting "Publish Post" I visited Media Matters and this was the first item that I saw.

Summary: Stating that 666,000 new voters have registered in Ohio, Bill Cunningham said on October 10: "Six, six, six. The mark of the beast. The great majority, of course, are registered by ACORN. ... Who conducted ACORN seminars to tell ACORN employees and others how to cheat the system? Barack Hussein Obama. I may declare him to be the beast. Six, six, six. It could be the end of all days." On the October 13 edition of Cunningham's show, a caller said of Obama, "He may be the Antichrist."
And as the graphic at the link shows, this is a man who gets to go on Fox "News" and spread this sort of lunacy.

Just when you think you may be overstating how insane the Republican noise machine is behaving, it turns out that you're actually understating it.

Update II: Sacramento County Republicans had up on their website an image saying that the only difference between Osama and Obama is BS and to WATERBOARD OBAMA with a wavy American flag image inbetween waterboard and Obama.

1 comment:

Platypus said...

"the conservative movement has already conditioned itself to believe that if Obama wins it will because he stole the election and thus his administration will not be legitimate."

Well, to be fair, many liberals feel the same way about conservatives. The difference is that there's real empirical evidence, often presented in court and leading to convictions, of widespread and systematic attempts by highly placed conservatives to subvert the electoral process. I think conservatives care less about the purity of elections than about the humiliation of being beaten at their own game.