Tuesday, November 4, 2014

If we win, it will be in spite of Republicans' concerted effort to keep us from voting.

Republicans who promote voter ID laws and other methods of suppressing their opposition's vote, usually aren't candid enough to admit what they're doing.   Occasionally, they slip up, as one politician did a few years back when he let slip something to the effect that it was the only way they could win.

I just came across something that makes this strategy explicit.  It's from a letter asking for people to make get-out-the-vote phone calls from a letter from Paul Hogarth of the liberal blog Daily Koss.
Back in 1980, Paul Weyrich—the “founding father of the conservative movement”—gave the following speech at a Religious Right gathering in Texas: 
I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the electionsquite candidlygoes up, as the voting populace goes down.
That is what we're up against, folks.   We cannot count on simply having a majority who want Democrats to win.    We have to do better at getting people to the polls.   We have a super majority to counteract all the ballot challenges and the provisional ballots they will impose, as well as all the folks who don't have the voter ID or have already been wrongly struck from the voting records.

I've already voted.   I helped a newly naturalized citizen get registered, helped him understand the voting process, and then took him to an early voting place to cast his first vote -- ever.    His smile of pride, wearing his "I voted" sticker, was enough reward.

Please vote -- and take someone with you.   Or make some phone calls.    There's a good chance President Obama will have the chance to nominate someone to the Supreme Court in the next two years.    Let's at least keep the Senate in Democratic control.

Ralph

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