Discriminations

In response to the growing criticism of ACORN and its policy of hiring people who submit what appear to be thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, the Dems have hauled out their quadrennial perennial: that opposition to voting fraud is itself voting fraud.

If you haven’t followed these arguments you may think I exaggerate, or that only, well, nuts (ACORNS and others) could make such an argument. Alas, you’d be wrong ... unless you regard legions of mainstream Democrats and vaunted commentators as nuts. (Oh, wait....) A good — no, great — example is brand new organization (or at least web site with a mailing list), NoVoterLeftBehind.Net, formed August 29, 2008, as an offshoot of Democrats For America’s Future, a Democratic advocacy group whose board contains an impressive collection of big shot Democrats: Don Fowler, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; David Wilhelm, another former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Carol Mosely Braun, who formerly warmed the Senate seat occupied (on those few days he wasn’t campaigning) recently by Barack Obama; James Carville, Robert Reich, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

If you think I exaggerate above, take a look at the statement recently issued by Kennedy Townsend for this august group of blue-ribbon Democrats, which begins as follows:

KENNEDY TOWNSEND: ACORN SMEAR IS EFFORT TO COVER UP MASSIVE GOP PUSH TO UNDERMINE 2008 ELECTIONS THROUGH COAST-TO-COAST VOTE SUPPRESSION

Democrats Urged to Volunteer, Contribute to NoVoterLeftBehind.net to Fight Republican Attempt to Bar “Many Tens of Thousands” of Voters From Exercising Their Right to Vote.

WASHINGTON, D.C.///October 15, 2008///The ongoing Republican attack on the lawful voter registration efforts of ACORN is a “desperate smokescreen maneuver” masking an extensive coast-to-coast GOP push to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters through a wide range of vote suppression tactics, according to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of the state of Maryland and a member of the board of advisors of NoVoterLeftBehind.net (http://www.NoVoterLeftBehind.net).

I’m now aware of any Republican attacks any “lawful voter registration efforts,” but Kennedy Townsend obviously knows better. She continued:

The attack on the voter registration efforts of ACORN may go down in the record books as the ultimate case of the ‘dirty’ pot calling the ‘clean’ kettle black. ACORN is being savaged for doing its duty to openly self-report all cases where there may be any kind of issue with specific voter registration forms. By contrast, the GOP is skulking around out of the public eye across the nation in a sub rosa attempt to use a host of outrageous and desperate vote suppression tactics to steal the election.”

For every potentially problematic ACORN voter registration form that will never result in anyone casting an illegitimate vote, there are literally hundreds of voters who the GOP will go to any lengths to keep out of the voting booth. This attack on ACORN is a sad and deeply cynical tactic coming from a party that seems to have concluded that they can’t win the election on their own, so they have to prevent the other side from voting.

I’m sure the more astute among you will not be fooled by what Kennedy Townsend is doing here. On the surface she appears to be saying that opposing a massive, nationwide effort at fraudulent voter registration is really “outrageous and desperate vote suppression,” but much deeper, at the “sub-text” level where liberals go to decipher the true intention of conservatives, Republicans, and other lowlifes, it’s clear that what she’s really saying is that Republicans are racist — they are “the ‘dirty’ pot calling the ‘clean’ kettle black” [emphasis added].

In the view of these Democratic worthies, Republicans are not merely racists but criminals.

In his appeal to Democrats launching NoVoterLeftBehind.net, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. writes: “No more 2000s and 2004s! … The Republican Party mounted a coordinated, criminal campaign to steal the 2004 Presidential election -- and it worked....”

The overheated hyperbole of these hyper-Dems is hard to take seriously. It’s of a piece with John Lewis equating McCain and Palin with George Wallace and the Birmingham church bombers. In fact, it even calls to mind the Lithwickian excesses of SLATE’s Dahlia Lithwick, most recently encountered here (with links to earlier excesses) temporarily accepting an argument those of her persuasion usually denounce (except, as here, where it’s useful to them), i.e., that racial and gender preferences stigmatize their recipients.

Actally, not only is the screamingly extreme argument of the Democrats reminiscent of Ms. Lithwick’s rhetorical excesses, it actually is her argument, which she has just made for herself here. The Republicans, she says in one of the catchy titles that are usually the best part of her articles, are “Nuts About Acorn.” “BELIEVING IN VOTE FRAUD,” she says in the catchy subtitle to the catchy title, “MAY BE DANGERSOUS TO A DEMOCRACY’S HEALTH.”

Discussing what she cutely calls ACORN’s “voter-registration shenanigans,” Ms. Lithwick writes:

There’s no denying that the organization’s system of paying workers $8 an hour to gather voter registrations creates screwy incentives....That’s why ACORN is either obligated by law or opts voluntarily to turn over all its voter-registration cards suggesting that Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys just registered to vote in Nevada. That GOP elections officials started screaming “gotcha” when those registrations were turned in is the real fraud here....

Thus Lithwick, like Kennedy Townsend, repeats the argument that ACORN is actually to be commended for turning in so many fraudulent forms. Here’s an organization that pays people to sit in libraries filling out fraudulent voter registration forms by copying names out of phone directories, paying people to register multiple times, etc., and then pats itself on the back — and is patted by the likes of Lithwick and Kennedy Townsend — for complying with legal and ethical requirements “to turn over all its registration cards”! This is chutzpah worthy of, well, Lithwick herself.

The defense that flows naturally from this “it’s not a sow’s ear; it’s a silk purse” defense is that the problem is not ACORN itself but a few bad apples it hires. Don’t believe it. Prosecutors don’t, and when push comes to shove ACORN proves it doesn’t either. As just one example, consider “the biggest voter-registration fraud in [Washington] state history,” from last July.

King and Pierce County prosecutors filed felony charges today against seven people who allegedly committed the biggest voter-registration fraud in state history....

In addition to filing criminal charges, Satterberg said state and local officials had signed a five-year agreement with ACORN that requires the organization to beef up its training and procedures for detecting and reporting fraud.

ACORN agreed to pay King County $25,000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurs again.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, fraud has been occurring again. And again....