Tag Archives: voting

Know Betters Who Know Better

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had a few things to say, in the context of an AP interview about the Supremes’ VRA ruling last month, about voter ID and the sanctity of the individual vote.

Texas’ decision to implement its voter ID law hours after the court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last month was powerful evidence of an ongoing need to keep states with a history of voting discrimination from making changes in the way they hold elections without getting advance approval from Washington.

Because acting on being newly freed from the shackles of government is somehow nefarious.

The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn’t make any sense to me[.]

Because we’re irretrievably beyond redemption, men cannot change away from the mistakes of a distant past, and it takes an enlightened Progressive to instruct and guide us.

It’s inconceivable to Know Betters that such seigniory might not actually be necessary.

Unions and Elections

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Who says unions don’t try to influence the outcomes of elections—at the ballot box itself, not via campaigning in a run-up to an election?

The image below, from a Wall Street Journal article about a Boeing engineers union contract election shows the degree to which a union will go to tell its members how to vote.                                                                                     

The Coming Elections and Electoral Struggle

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I’ve written a few times about how Republicans and Conservatives can attract voters to their party and cause, and how conservative principles will draw Americans of every stripe—that demographics do not threaten us, they aid us—if only we would talk to folks.  Those are principle arguments, though.

David Horowitz has a pamphlet out, “Go For the Heart: How Republicans Can Win,” that goes into far more detail.  Horowitz makes the principle arguments more cogently, and he has some things to say specifically about what to say.

Below are a couple of excerpts.

In the 2012 election, Democrats attacked Republicans as defenders of the wealthy who are not paying their “fair share.”  Republicans responded by deploring “class warfare rhetoric,” which does not answer the charge that Republicans are defending the wealthy and are uncaring.

“Caring” is not one among many issues in an election.  It is the central one. Since most policy issues are complicated, voters want to know above everything else just whom they can trust to sort out the complexities and represent them.  Before voters cast their ballots for policies or values they want a candidate or party that cares about them. …

… In the 2012 election, 70% of Asian Americans cast their ballots for Obama, even though Asians share Republican values, are family oriented, entrepreneurial, and traditional.  Asian Americans voted for Obama because they were persuaded that he cared for minorities—for them, and Romney didn’t.

The Republican response to the Democrats’ attack (that’s “class warfare rhetoric”) doesn’t work because it’s an abstraction.  “Class warfare rhetoric” has no human face; it’s about a political style.  Criticizing the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” is a direct attack on an easily identified target, which is why so many wealthy taxpayers—including entertainment figures who are normally Democrats—were outraged by the slander.  More importantly, the Democrats’ attack on the rich is an emotional appeal to those who are not rich.  It tells them that someone cares about them.

And

Elections are necessarily about “us” and “them.”  Democrats are as adept at framing “them,” as Republicans are not.  Democrats know how to incite envy and resentment, distrust and fear, and to direct these volatile emotions towards their Republican opponents.  Meanwhile, Republicans are busy complaining about the style of the Democrats’ argument.

I’m reminded of the mouse remonstrating with the owl.  The mouse thinks the owl’s ways are wrong; the owl thinks the mouse is lunch.

An answer:

The only way to confront the emotional campaign that Democrats wage in every election is through an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language, identifying them as the bad guys, the oppressors of women, children, minorities and the middle class, that takes away from them the moral high ground which they now occupy.  You can’t confront an emotionally based moral argument with an intellectual analysis.

Horowitz goes on, then he summarizes.  Essentially, Republicans need to stop playing small ball, need to stop reacting (piecemeal as it is) to the…Democrats’…initiative: Republicans—and Conservatives, say I—need to seize the initiative, to go on the offensive:

  1. Put the aggressors on the defensive.
  2. Put their victims—women, minorities, the poor and working Americans—in front of every argument and every policy in the same way they [Democrats] do.
  3. Start the campaign now (because the Democrats already have).

For instance:

Throughout the Republican campaign, there was a lot of talk about “job creators.”  There were a lot of defenses of “job creators,” whom Democrats quickly redefined as rich people who don’t pay their fair share.  That’s the problem with playing a “prevent defense.”  Most Americans see job creators—employers—as rich people. … If you’re fighting for the underdogs, you have to go on the attack.

What about job destroyers?  What about Democrats who are killing the jobs of ordinary Americans—not just failing to create them…?
…
Why are Republicans so reluctant to name the victims of Democrat policies, particularly the victims among America’s minority communities and working classes?  Why don’t Republicans identify Democrats as a threat to those communities as Cuomo declared Republicans a threat to women?

Thus,

The bottom line is this: If Republicans want to persuade minorities they care about them, they have to stand up for them; they have to defend them; and they have to show them that Democrats are playing them for suckers, exploiting them, oppressing them, and profiting from their suffering.
…
The way for Republicans to show they care about minorities is to defend them against their oppressors and exploiters, which in every major inner city in America without exception are Democrats. Democrats run the welfare and public education systems; they have created the policies that ruin the lives of the recipients of their handouts. It’s time that Republicans started to hold Democrats to account; to put them on the defensive and take away the moral high ground, which they now occupy illegitimately. Government welfare is not just wasteful; it is destructive. The public school system in America’s inner cities is not merely ineffective; it is racist and criminal.

Horowitz’ pamphlet contains much more than just those items, though, and it’s well worth reading in its entirety.  One place it can be read is at Power Line.

There’s one more thing Conservatives–including Tea Partiers–should do, that Horowitz doesn’t mention.  We should put up candidates in Democratic primaries, forcing a primary contest if necessary, to make Democrat Senate and House incumbents actively defend their in-office records.  In public.

Lies of my President, Part 6

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This is Part 6 of my series on the lies told by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the nearly four years in which he’s been in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with his dishonesty while in office.

Here are some of Obama’s campaign ad lies (as opposed to the exaggeration, hype, and distortion that are part and parcel of campaign ads), from The Wall Street Journal.

One Obama spot says, “To pay for huge, new tax breaks for millionaires like him, Romney would have to raise taxes on the middle class: $2,000 for a family with children.”

That claim has been thoroughly discredited, including by PolitiFact Virginia and editorials in this newspaper.

In fact, the Romney plan includes reductions in tax rates across the board—for wealthy, middle class, and the poor (to the extent the latter pay any taxes at all)—while eliminating many deductions.  Since most of the deductions to be eliminated are taken primarily by the upper middle class and wealthy, this would reduce the impact of the rate reduction for those compared to the middle class and poor—while still reducing those rates across the board.  No $2,000 increase.

Another ad says, “As a corporate raider, [Mr. Romney] shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” In response, the Washington Post editorialized, “On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue.”

The Post‘s Fact Checker article debunks the “corporate raider” slur, and it identifies the jobs outsourcing claim as an Obama cynical distortion.

An Obama ad aimed at northern Virginia women intones, “Mitt Romney opposes requiring coverage for contraception.”  In fact, Mr. Romney opposes the president’s unprecedented assault on religious liberties—in this case, the federal government forcing religious institutions (like church-sponsored hospitals, schools and charities) to provide insurance coverage for contraception in violation of their fundamental moral values and, incidentally, the First Amendment.

There’s nothing to add to this correction.

Finally, there’s this whopper in front of an Hispanic audience—the recent Univision “Town Hall” interview—now about his own performance in office:

Obama claimed that his Justice Department’s botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning program was “begun under the previous administration.”  This time it was ABC’s Jake Tapper correcting the record, pointing out, “it was started in October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency.”

This is a rather blatant lie.  The program to which Obama is pretending to refer, the Wide Receiver program run under President Bush the Younger’s DoJ, had a number of significant differences with Obama’s Fast and Furious program, beyond the fact that Wide Receiver was terminated before the end of Bush’s term.

There are two differences of particular interest.  On the one hand, the program was done in coordination with the Mexican government, instead of behind its back, as was Fast and Furious.  On the other hand, far fewer guns were involved—about a quarter of the number of Fast and Furious.  In the end, Wide Receiver was terminated because it wasn’t working—most of the weapons were, in fact, lost.

But Obama’s DoJ apparently thought walking four times as many guns and doing it in secret from the Mexican government would help their version succeed.

Lies of my President, Part 5

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This is Part 5 of my series on the lies told by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in the nearly four years in which he’s been in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with his dishonesty while in office.

In a repeat of Obama’s 2008 fundraising technique, in the present campaign Obama—who spent the summer whining about being outraised by the Romney campaign, has again chosen to eschew controls on credit card donations.  Power Line describes the “standard controls:”

Federal law prohibits foreign contributions and requires the disclosure of identifying information for contributions in excess of $200.  Campaigns must accordingly keep running totals for each donor and report them once they exceed $200.

And so Obama gets—and retains—donations from such worthies as

“John Galt” (the hero of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged).  [The test donor] provided the equally fictitious address “1957 Ayn Rand Lane, Galts Gulch, CO 99999.” He checked the box next to $15 and entered his actual credit-card number and expiration date. He was then taken to the next page and notified that his donation had been processed.

and

Others repeated “John Galt’s” experiment, giving to Obama under such fictitious names as Della Ware, Joe Plumber, Idiot Savant, Ima BadDonation (with a Canadian bank card) and Fake Donor.

Scott Johnson expanded on this with a New York Post article.

It’s useful, also, to note that the above Della Ware tried the same donation to the McCain campaign in 2008, and it was rejected.  And

If you go here you will note that credit card donations to the Obama election campaign do not require the credit card security code [i.e., the CVV code]. What they have done is disable the Address Verification System (AVS) which prevents credit card fraud.

Adrian Murray advised Urgent Agenda that he’d tried the following:

Name – Adolph Hitler
Address – 123 Nuremburg Way, Berlin, Germany
Occupation – Dictator
Employer – Nazi Party

Murray promptly received an email from the Obama campaign:

“Dear Adolph, thank you for your generous donation….”

Murray tried the same thing with the Romney and Santorum campaigns; the “donations” were rejected.  I’ve been to the site, and the…deficiency…was still present last Sunday.

Hmm….