"Voter Fraud" and Permanent Majorities

From McClatchy:

The administration, however, has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern.

"As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said.

This is a really scary article.

I am not the only one who's seen the indications that this is part of a strategy. Let's face it -- the idea of building a "permanent majority" when you don't hold majority positions on the issues is sketchy at best. If you're not troubled by much in the way of ethics or morals, this seems like a logical way to go about maintaining power. And that's what it's about.

The history of this country is marked by a strong thread of not only leveling the playing field, but allowing more and more people to play the game. This sort of activity flies in the face of that -- it's the back-door version of demonizing minorities and all the other tactics that, regrettably, seem to be most prevalent on the right. The Republican party has been, at least for the last couple of generations, an elitist organization, which by definition gives it a limited durability on the national scene. What's remarkable is that, instead of moderating its positions to appeal to the mainstream and using its philosophy to spark legitimate debate, it is reduced to stealing elections even though it controls (or did control) the entire government. Frankly, I don't think the Democrats are necessarily an automatic majority -- there is a lot I object to in the usual Democratic economic policies, for example, although the Republicans haven't offered much in the way of alternatives -- it's all buzzwords and catchphrases without a lot supporting it.

I mean, what state is the Republican party in when the Democrats are recognized as fiscally responsible?

Update

More on what a mess the DoJ has become under Ashcroft and Gonzales. Via Michael Froomkin, who got it from TPM Muckraker, who got it from Politico, a letter about hiring practices at the Bush DoJ:

So, in their own words, the career employees did some checking of their own. They reportedly detected a "common denominator" for "most of those" struck from the interview list: They had "interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a 'liberal cause' or otherwise appeared to have 'liberal' leanings. Summa cum laude graduates at both Yale and Harvard were rejected for interviews."

Two things: The political appointees, which includes U.S. Attorneys, do indeed serve at the pleasure of the president. The careerists, however, are another matter. No firings there -- they've just been pushed out. When the criteria for hiring to a nonpolitical position begin to include your political affiliation, we have a distinct problem.

I also note that Politico chose to paraphrase the follow-up paragraph (the one I quoted here) rather than quote it directly, although it follows directly from the paragraph they quoted and is succinct enough in itself, as well as being stronger. I'm jus' sayin'. (I'm not quoting it myself because Adobe Reader and WordPad are playing games, which might be why Politico did -- except they seem to have had no problems with the first quote.)

I think Congress needs to impeach Gonzales and every one of his senior staff who are left.