Money

Thanks to the cravenness of the GOP-dominated Supreme Court, the Republicans now have access to millions in undocumented campaign money, to include undisclosed foreign money; they are also using state legislatures to attack Democratic funding streams such as unions and lawyers.

But they do have some problems: Obama is also a superb fundraiser, GOP donors are reluctant to give to this very weak field of presidential candidates, and Michael Steele’s management of party finances was so awful that he left the party with a $24 million debt: Barbour was forced to warn state Republican parties to get out and raise their own money, and the new RNC chief has little money for turnout operations, even after cutting staff. In 2011 the DNC has raised twice as much money as the RNC; they are already about $10 million ahead for the year. This will force the GOP to rely on state organizations and independent groups like American Crossroads, which will make it harder for them to coordinate their strategies.

Having campaign money is great, but it only gets you so far. In 2008 Hillary spent $29 million in Iowa alone, and came in third there. In the same year Romney outspent Huckabee $107 million to $16 million, and Huckabee outlasted him.

Interestingly, some donors are saying they want to hear the candidates talk the Tea Talk before they donate: that would indicate that the money advantage which the Wall Streeters might enjoy over the tea party, might be smaller than thought.

Obstruction and harassment

Republicans decided very early on that they would aim to destroy Obama’s presidency even if it meant destroying the country in the process; men like Limbaugh were openly rooting for Obama to fail in his effort to clean up Bush’s mess. Thus, the endless obstruction is Congress, filibusters, many executive branch positions left unfilled, nominees getting fed up and quitting, which makes it harder for Democratic professionals to further their careers, and so forth.

Also it is only a matter of time before Issa in the House follows through on his promise to begin issuing subpoenas against anyone he can think of, in the White House, following the muddy path of Kenneth Starr. Right after Obama killed bin Laden, Issa decided to take him down a notch and made the subpoenas fly. Watch Issa the next time Obama racks up another achievement, or the GOP makes another stumble: more paperwork will go over to the White House.

Race

With Obama heading into his last election, this is the GOP’s last, best chance to truly exploit racial fears among conservatives. Newt Gingrich characteristically is leading the charge, hinting that we should bring back Jim-Crow poll restrictions and playing the Obama-food-stamp-Detroit music on his well-worn dog whistle.

But here's what really bothered me. When Romney formally declared his candidacy, as expected he attacked Obama, and as expected he said rather a lot that wasn’t true. But he also attacked Obama and his ideas as “European”. So somebody sit down with Romney and explain to this donkeynozzle that all of the ideas embodied in the founding of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights – they’re all European. All came from England, France, Holland, ancient Rome, ancient Greece. Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu. So if he wants to jettison European ideas, the first thing to go is our Constitution – which some Republicans seemingly would want to do. And incidentally, if Romney is slamming Obama as "European", he should remember that his own lineage is much more European than Obama's. In fact almost all of us are Europeans: if America got rid of all the “Europeans”, the only people left, pretty much, would be the native Americans, the blacks, the Muslims, the Chinese and the Koreans.

Just amazing. On his very first day in the campaign, Romney was pulling out his dog whistle and taking the first step on the slippery slope of “European = foreign = scary Kenyan Muslim Marxist who is black black black black black”. And I thought he was the grownup trying to fend off the attacks from the extremists: if he is going to spout this nonsense, what sort of nonsense will the Bachmanns and Palins be yammering about?

Meanwhile, Fox’s new racist-in-residence, Eric Bolling, followed up his slam on Obama “chugging 40s” by criticizing Obama’s meeting with an African head of state “Guess who’s coming to dinner? It’s not the first time he’s had a hood in the big crib.”

Working the refs

SUMMARY

Sadly, in the last few years we have seen the Republicans use thuglike political tactics while Democrats continue to follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules to a fault: as a result the Democrats get beat up for their lunch money week after week. The Republicans are not accustomed to seeing Democrats actually fighting political battles effectively. Now, however, the Democrats are throwing an elbow here and there, forcefully getting their message out, and calling a spade a spade when the situation calls for it, and the Republicans are outraged. As Democrats challenge the Republicans on the facts and their actions, as they call attention to their own accomplishments, as they point out that they were killing bin Laden and saving the auto industry while the Republicans were attacking Medicare and unions, as they point out that the Republicans won the midterms by lying about which party was attacking Medicare, the Republicans are crying “foul!” Typical of this is the dish-it-out-but-can’t-take-it behavior of Newt Gingrich, who has a thirty-year career of calling people out and attacking them, but goes into meltdown when the scrutiny is aimed at him: he changes his story repeatedly, he demands that his past behavior and past misstatements be off-limits, then he attacks the media as biased, then runs away from the media entirely. Central to this “work the ref” strategy is attacking the “refs” themselves, by continuing their 40-year effort to peddle the myth that the media is biased to the left.

DETAILS

A new tactic has emerged: the Republicans are trying to rewrite the rules for political debate. Republicans are allowed to launch whatever attacks they like, but if the Democrats challenge the Republicans on anything, or make the Republicans look bad, or even discuss their own accomplishments, they’re not being “civil”. Democrats are not allowed to mention that they, and not the Republicans, killed bin Laden. Democrats, after enduring a year of dishonest smears about Democrats destroying Medicare (and death panels and throwing grandma under the bus), are not allowed to make honest criticisms about Ryan’s very real plan to destroy Medicare. And the criticisms aimed at Democrats a year ago in the town halls, all the lies about death panels, were perfectly alright, but now that Republicans are being hit with perfectly valid criticisms in the same town halls, they’re crying foul and throwing out anyone with a camera or a microphone.

After Gingrich was busted like a piñata for condemning Ryan’s budget as “rightwing social engineering”, he realized that his idiotic statement would be featured in a hundred Democratic attack ads in 2012. So he unilaterally declared his own statement off-limits. "Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate." So quoting him accurately is really a lie.

And then he declared that all “gotcha” questions about his past are also off-limits, all while he says that everything is on the table. For Republicans, a "gotcha" question is any question which a Republican botches the answer for, no matter how simple it is. Governor Palin, which newspapers do you read? And "gotcha" questions are always the reporter's fault.

Also, Republicans have been trying for 40 years to work the refs by whining that the media has a bias against Republicans. Actually, they have a bias against liars, not against Republicans, although it is understandably easy to confuse the two. In fact, the media has been run by Republicans and corporations for a century. They cranked up popular opinion to attack Spain in 1898, they fought FDR bitterly, they aided and abetted McCarthy, the endorsed Nixon three to one even while Agnew was whining about the liberal media, they ran away from Watergate for almost a year, they gave Reagan a free pass in a way they never did for Clinton, and they were Bush’s cheerleaders in the War On Terror.

Even today, the Sunday morning political shows are jammed with Republicans, while people who regularly challenge GOP lies like Olbermann are fired by their corporate bosses. And that’s the real media, before you add all the new crazy stuff like Fox, the Washington Times, Rush, Drudge etc.

They whine that the media gave Obama a free pass in 2008. Actually it was McCain who got a free pass regarding his crooked deals with Paxson and Ruskin, the Boeing mess, the Keating mess, the earmarks, the lies, the flipflops. And there is a whole lot that Palin wasn’t asked about, regarding her shenanigans in Alaska.

Today Fox is leading the charge, blaming the real media for driving Trump out of the race and tearing down other GOP candidates; Gingrich did a whole aria on how his idiotic misstatements were all NBC’s fault.

Republicans want to blur the line between factual reporting and opinion, for a simple reason: in the world of facts, truth always trumps falsehood, but in the world of opinion, all opinions are equally valid because everyone has a right to their opinion.  So first, they plow through that barrier and insist that, just as Republican opinions deserve the same hearing as Democratic opinions, likewise Republican lies and smears must get the same coverage as facts. And this applies not only to the media but also education: in the minds of Republicans, fallacies about creation science deserve the same standing in our schoolbooks as the facts about evolution. And even in Wikipedia, Republicans were caught trying to rewrite the history of Paul Revere's ride, to conform to Sarah Palin's Finnegan's-Wake-like version of the event.

Not scared yet? Listen to this: when the Democrats ran an ad in New Hampshire pointing out, correctly, that the Paul Ryan plan will end Medicare as we know it, which even the Wall Street Journal admitted, the Republican party went into action. The NRCC contacted the television station and demanded that the station pull the ad, because they disagreed with the content; happily, the station told them to pound sand. Since when do the Republicans get final editorial authority over Democratic ads? Can the Democrats edit all of their dishonest ads, if they want to edit the honest ones from the left? Since when does only one team enjoy the right of free speech?

And what happens if some muscular, deep-pocketed rightwinger tries to put muscle behind such demands? What if Rush threatens to pull his show from a station, or a state GOP chairman threatens to pull ads, or a corporation threatens to pull its ads or its business, if the station runs Democratic ads?

And another scary example of the Republican effort to ensure that only GOP voices are heard: the GOP now has yet another tool to keep prevent non-Republican views from getting out. Congressional Democrats use the congressional mailing system to contact their constituents with mailers, political information and so forth, just as Republicans do. But now the House Republicans are using the House Administration Committee to block Democratic mailers which assert, correctly, that the Ryan budget plan ends Medicare. The Republicans are delaying the mailers and demanding revisions. In other words, Congressional Democrats can no longer talk to voters in their districts unless the GOP approves, but their Republican challengers next year can say whatever they want – in fact the Republican mailers are already out there, praising Ryan’s plan and claiming that it’s the Democrats who want to kill Medicare. In a word: censorship.

Lies

The non-stop cataract of lies from the GOP will of course continue. They won in 2002 with lies about Iraq, in 2004 with lies about Kerry, in 2010 with lies about health reform and Medicare. Because Democrats are unaccountably averse to defending themselves from these attacks.

Of course lying is easier when no one can contradict you. The GOP now has a new tool to keep prevent non-Republican views from getting out. Congressional Democrats use the congressional mailing system to contact their constituents with mailers, political information and so forth, just as Republicans do. But now the House Republicans are using the House Administration Committee to block Democratic mailers which assert, correctly, that the Ryan budget plan ends Medicare. The Republicans are delaying the mailers and demanding revisions. In other words, Congressional Democrats can no longer talk to voters in their districts unless the GOP approves, but their Republican challengers next year can say whatever they want – in fact the Republican mailers are already out there, praising Ryan’s plan and claiming that it’s the Democrats who want to kill Medicare. In a word: censorship.

Violence

SUMMARY

Ever since the Civil War, the Republican party has done all it can to question the patriotism of Democrats, calling them the party of rebellion after the Civil War, calling them communists, calling them soft on the Soviets, soft on crime, soft on terrorism. They have no compunction about demonizing Democrats as evil and deserving of every conceivable attack. They turned up the temperature in this regard during the Clinton era, spending eight years and $50 million trying to destroy Clinton personally, but they didn’t really turn it up to eleven until the scary black Muslim Marxist from Kenya became commander in chief in the middle of two wars.

Now they are more and more open about espousing the notion that Democrats, particularly Obama, are so evil and so dangerous that violence, vigilantism, lone-wolf terrorism, revolution are all justified. This ramped up particularly during the health reform debate: jokes about assassination, attacks, vandalism, threats aimed at children, intimidation, stalking, deliberate disruption of legislative sessions and town halls. And this was with the public support of Republican leaders: their argument is that if Democrats dare to actually govern, they should expect violence.

DETAILS

The GOP has spent three years tearing down the wall between political debate and violence. When the health care debate reached fever pitch, the Republicans and their allies began hinting that Obama was such a clear and present danger to America that violence was okay. It began with hints, jokes, insinuations.

The “grab your guns and destroy Obama” became an internet game; conservatives sold merchandise containing a psalm praying for Obama’s death, on bumper stickers, T-shirts, toys; Fox did a story on Planned Parenthood by creating a logo putting the organization in rifle crosshairs. A teacher in Alabama taught his kids geometry with an example that involves assassinating the President: "If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president”. Even GOP leaders were joking about killing Pelosi, killing Reid.

Then things get more serious. The Republican party spends considerable money to send vandals to town hall events with explicit orders to cause disruption, rattle speakers, stop real debate from happening, make threats, vandalize the site. Activists are told to “stop” cars with Obama stickers – will people soon be afraid to put an Obama sign on their car or in front of their house, for fear of vandalism? Activists make so many threats against Congressmen and their families – “make their kids afraid to come out of the house!” – that the police cancel town halls, which means Congressmen can’t do their core business, talking issues with their constituents. Democratic facilities are vandalized. A campaign of murder, violence, vandalism, harassment, intimidation, stalking is aimed at against abortion clinics. Armed thugs arrive at Obama events. A Democratic Congresswoman is shot in the head.

They’re developing a pattern of threatening little girls. A girl asked Obama a question in a town hall, and Fox News identified who her family is and where they live – happy hunting! Later a high school student, interested in student government, became so fed up with Michele Bachmann’s come-and-go relationship with facts, history and reality, that she challenged Bachmann to a debate or fact-test on the Constitution, US history and civics. The tea party people took offense. They called the 16-year-old child a whore and threatened her with rape and other violence; they threatened to put her address on the web, and sent threats to her school also. A local media outlet had planned to interview her on camera, but her frightened father cancelled it.

Rather than back down and consider what they were doing, the rightwing folks characteristically doubled down their bets. "Another Liberal @#S% want to be, maybe she needs to be gangbanged at her local ghetto, I bet that will make her parents proud, especially if she gets pregnant with a mulatto baby….Amy Myers is a Jew vermin from NJ who hates America and loves Obama …This disrespectful little twit needs a good spanking. She lacks intelligence, wit, respect and common sense. On second thought she needs a good beating." Then attacks intensified against the father, and then his employer. Then they denied the threats against the girl had been made. Then they said it was okay to publish the employer’s name, ridiculing those who complained.

Vigilante groups and militias proliferate across the country, recruiting soldiers and policemen to resist the allegedly illegal Obama “regime”, stockpiling guns, launching attacks, making “citizen’s arrests”, shooting policemen, attacking government buildings, harassing gay bars, seeking to provoke violence in the hope of creating martyrs to the cause. Neatly enough, one of their heroes, Rand Paul, is demanding that people who even listen to speeches advocating the overthrow of the government should be thrown in prison: how about the militia boys, then?

And that’s not the most scary part. The truly scary part is that the GOP and their allies have not only condoned all this: in many cases they actually organized it. GOP leaders have been calling for shooting and revolution, using “lock and load” metaphors, bussing protesters in to cause riots in town halls. A Republican said of his sportsman’s caucus “We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition!“ And a number of very senior GOP leaders said openly that they felt the Democrats deserved to be targeted with violence and threats, because they had the nerve to pass bills that Republicans don’t like.

And here is where terrorist tactics can go all the way to the political summit. This bears repeating: Michele Bachmann, presumptive presidential candidate, urged supporters to march into Congress with the express purpose of frightening Pelosi and other Democrats into changing their votes. “I think that will absolutely scare these members of Congress so much that Pelosi will not get the votes and it will kill the bill. I think it could be dead for 10 years. Why won’t we? Why won’t we go for broke?” She specifically wanted the “anger” directed at the Speaker, Pelosi. In other words, trying to subvert government by the threat of violence against leaders, aka terrorism. Bachmann, terrorist, president?

Vote suppression

SUMMARY

Over the last years, America has repudiated just about everything the Republicans have been trying to peddle, the tax-and-borrow financing, the culture wars at home, the holy wars abroad, and the Republicans really have no new ideas to peddle. Accordingly they know they’re going to have trouble winning elections -- as long as the elections are fair. So they are working in statehouses all across the country to tilt the game in their favor, by making it harder for Democrats to take part in the electoral process. Central to this is the Voter ID effort: they are pushing the entirely discredited myth that voter fraud is plaguing our elections, and using that delusion as a pretext to pass laws which make it harder for heavily-Democratic groups to vote: not just minorities as it was during the Jim Crow era, but also students, the elderly, working women, and other groups. They supplement this by using a wide range of tactics aimed at disenfranchising, deceiving and frightening voters, and making the process of voting as unpleasant as possible in minority areas. They are working to restrict absentee voting, early voting, late-night voting, voter registration drives, name and address changes, anything they can think of. Meanwhile they are also working to see to it that their own allies enjoy unfettered participation in the process by means of tools like the Citizens United decision, while working to block pro-Democratic groups such as lawyers and unions from taking part. And of course the old stand-by dirty tricks, jamming phone lines, fake announcements and so forth.

The article is written in five sections, describing the roots of GOP efforts at vote suppression, their attacks on the documentation of legal voters, their latest effort to expand the vote-suppression crusade, the party pols pulling the strings behind the scenes, and the GOP's ever-growing pattern of attacking the democratic process:

Vote suppression
Documentation
The latest push toward vote suppression
Behind the scenes
The ever-widening pattern

Vote suppression

This is arguably the most important article on this site. It is about the Republican war on democracy itself.

Two pivotal events happened to the Republicans in the 1960s, both involving Nixon.

First, the Republicans sustained a terrible shock in 1960, losing by a hair to that upstart Irishman. They have insisted ever since that Kennedy stole the election, but the argument is so bogus that even Pat Buchanan laughed it down, pointing out all the illegal things the Republicans did in the same election. But they vowed never again to lose a close race without a fight. They started Operation Eagle Eye to nudge election results in the right direction, beginning with the 1962 race in which young lads like William Rehnquist cut their teeth as political gangsters, harassing black voters in Arizona under the guise of protecting “ballot security”.

The Republicans have been screeching “Democratic voter fraud” for the last fifty years. Study after study shows that the voter-fraud meme is utterly baseless, but they keep yelling it, complaining to the media and to their own supporters about unsubstantiated “tips” and “reports” of “irregularities”, magnifying any error by any Democrat anywhere is a titanic vote scandal. All to crank up their own turnout, to get people like the Wall Street Journal to endlessly repeat the accusations, and to justify their own thug-like political tactics, on the reasoning that real Republican voter disenfranchisement is less important than imaginary Democratic voter fraud.

The second issue involves race. As civil rights became a central issue in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Republicans, led by Nixon, realized they couldn’t woo both blacks and white racists at the same time, so they chose to dump the legacy of Lincoln and go with the rednecks. And they decided also to get into the vote-suppression business in a big way.

They have exploited the fear of the shrinking white majority regarding minorities, as well as anyone trying to help minorities to vote: Obama, the Rainbow Coalition, ACORN, the NAACP, and the ACLU; the aim is to sell the notion that anybody black or brown is illegitimate dishonest, criminal, and anyone who helps them to vote must be a crook. The Republicans also worked to combine the concept of the big Democratic party machines with the black vote into one scary meme: “urban”. In one case they openly admitted targeting blacks and got barbecued by a judge. Later on they decided to write off the Latino vote for reasons no one can understand, and decided to criminalize that entire community with the immigration jihad as well.

So the Republicans made vote suppression a fixed part of their political strategy: seeing to it that minorities don’t vote.

How do they do all this? Long before the polls open, the GOP launches a very public, organized, completely unauthorized effort to “deter” fraud in black and Hispanic areas. It goes something like this:

“When you get to the polls, election officials are watching. We will ask you questions, and if you get them wrong you could go to jail. Voter fraud is illegal. It’s a crime. The FBI could become involved. We are putting out a reward for catching perpetrators of fraud!”

All to scare minorities away. And when that doesn’t work, they simply lie:

“There are new residency requirements! Voting machines can see who you are and notify government agencies! If you have a traffic ticket, a parking ticket, or a child support issue, if you have been questioned by the police for anything, or even been a witness, or anybody in your family, you will be arrested if you vote!”

That last one was sent by the “Harris County Negro Protective Association” which of course does not exist. And once they figure out their message, they bring out all the king’s men to get it out: robo-calls, radio ads, newspaper inserts, posters, mailers, postcards, even signs posted at polling places. Blacks and Hispanics, who have years of experience being harassed by the police even though they’ve done nothing wrong, get the message, just as they did when they tried to vote in the 1950s: show up to vote and nasty things will happen. This of course is in parallel to all their other dirty tricks: robo-call smears, push-poll smears etc, telephone harassment.

Here's a recent example, involving Julius Henson, political operative for Republican former Governor Robert Ehrlich of Maryland. Henson has such an appalling record of political dirty tricks that even other political operatives "don't want to even breathe the same air as him." Henson in his own words: "I put a man in who's dumb, who's a liar and lazy. He should be going to prison instead of [political office]. The best people lost. They're smart, and they worked hard, and they still lost to my guy. 'Cause I know what I'm doing. And I've got 14 candidates this cycle, and I'm gonna go 14 and 0 with them." One of his stunts included sending homeless people to a Martin O’Malley rally in Maryland where O’Malley was getting a key endorsement, and screaming in the endorser’s face; the backlash from the incident helped elect O’Malley. Henson admitted sending out robocalls lying to Democrats so they wouldn’t vote on election day during the recent Ehrlich-O’Malley race, and now he has finally been indicted. His lawyer actually claims the robocalls are protected free speech. Henson’s indicted coconspirator, Paul, Schurick, created The Schurick Doctrine which was aimed at suppressing the black vote by promoting “confusion, emotionalism, and frustration among African-American Democrats."


For fifty years the Republicans have been training white poll watchers and sending them into minority areas to intimidate minority voters with harassment and abuse, to frighten and humiliate voters. Their poll watchers challenge minorities with nosy, abusive questions. “Where’s your ID? You’re illegitimate! Fraud! Fraud!” Once they even justified their abuse with “some of them were voting more than once….most blacks look alike so it was hard to tell.” If a minority voter is foolish enough to ask for assistance, the Republican poll watcher is likely give them an abusive answer, or complain about the “improper assistance” they are getting from other poll watchers. Another trick is to take pictures and film of voters, to include recording their confidential conversations with real election officials.

The Republicans are quite open about trying to terrorize voters they don’t like, on the grounds that since they’re black they’re probably crooks anyway: “‘Browbeating’ is a common defense to cover irregularities.”

Next come the goon squads: big scary guys who stand in the doorway, Wallace-like, to intimidate voters. They are quite open about encouraging assault: They want to “have a human body who is tough and even mean, at the polls counting the ballots.” At one polling place, “We dispatched a 6’6,” 275 lb. football player to the polling place; he walked in, cracked the guy on the kisser, and flattened him to the floor, turned around and walked out, and no more problems occurred at that polling place! Use force if needed!”

If that isn’t good enough, bring in the fake cops. The Republicans have been caught many times sending their own people with uniforms, guns and radios to the polling places, giving the impression that they have the power to arrest people. Some wear badges that say things like “Ballot Security Program.” Some of them write down license numbers, ask questions about citizenship, sit next to the real election officials

Of course the real cops can intimidate people too: just the fear of immigration officials could keep perfectly legal Latinos from going to the polls in Arizona, so the Republicans have already won that battle. Courts have had to direct unofficial poll watchers to coordinate any complaints with the secretary of state’s office rather than starting to whoop up trouble right there at the polls or call the police.

The Republicans also push local cops to go door-to-door in black areas, armed, to ask about their absentee ballots – try to vote and you’ll get a cop on your doorstep! They have also hired private investigators and other unregulated freelancers to go out into minority areas, ostensibly hunting down fraudulent voters, offering rewards for the purpose. We will absolutely see the teabaggers taking the law into their own hands this fall.

A key aim is to ensure that their dirty work is done on election day itself: scream at election officials on election day to get their way on the big day itself, get the media reporting the results they want to see, and then it’s too late to correct errors or outright fraud.

The larger aim is to make voting a negative experience so that minorities don’t come back. Minority areas don’t have enough polling places close by, lines are long, equipment is antiquated, ballots run out, dragging out the process of identifying voters. The Republicans have been known to send homeless panhandlers to polls for harassment, or to put out the word that “anybody who moves within the county must verify their address at the clerk’s office!” So you must go to poll, learn the new rules, go to city hall, then back to vote. Or give up and go home, which is a Win for the GOP.

The aim here is entirely partisan. They are particularly focusing on states that were close in 2008, and methods that Obama voters used a lot last time: their express aim is to reverse the Democratic trend from four years ago. Even before this latest effort, they used the power of the Bush White House to drive U.S. attorneys to be more diligent in hunting alleged Democratic voter fraud: fight the GOP fight or get fired.

Documentation

The Republicans are particularly energetic at illegally attacking documentation. They aggressively and illegally purge voter rolls in minority areas, particularly in the South, as they did in Florida in 2000; often the claim is that the people being purged are convicts, which neatly feeds into white fears of blacks. They vigorously challenge voter documents, especially the increasing number of absentee ballots; in minority areas they illegally demand notarization of absentee forms, and they will challenge ballots for pencil marks that stray outside the box, for example. Many times they have used the subterfuge of sending registered mail to minority addresses; if they are not returned, the voter is illegally tossed off the voter rolls. They can also target renters who are disproportionately poor, old, black or Hispanic.

Their real pet peeve is voter identification in minority areas, a way to suppress turnout, pushing for more and more identity documents. A key aim is to criminalize being a minority, to push the “Brown = Criminal” meme: just as they screech about Obama’s birth certificate, they pop up in minority areas and bark “Show me photo ID! Show me a bank statement, a gas bill!” In at least one case a Republican poll watcher sneered at one voter “Where’s your government check?” They also resist anything that increases minority participation, such as motor-voter.

The latest push toward vote suppression

The Republicans are launching a 40-state effort to restrict voting rights, with the aim of making it harder for people who vote Democratic to vote at all, the biggest effort to restrict voting rights since Jim Crow. They have given us laws and bills that require state-issued voter ID, restrict absentee voting, lengthen residency requirements, cut poll hours, block voter registration efforts especially if they come from out of state like Mississippi in the 1960s, voter caging like they did during the Bush era, force the use provisional ballots, restrict early voting, ban same-day registration, complicate name and address changes. Gingrich has proposed bringing back Jim-Crow literacy tests, while Ron Paul said he didn’t support the Civil Rights Act from the 1960s.

This is despite the fact that their dire warnings about voter fraud have never materialized; a study of about 400 million votes in national elections since 2000 found exactly one improper vote which Voter ID would have stopped. The obvious exception occurred in Wisconsin where it was the Republicans who were caught using fraud in submitting recall petitions.

These attacks don’t just go after blacks like the Jim Crow boys did; they disproportionately hurt liberal voting blocs: the poor, the sick, the disabled, the young, students, the elderly, blacks, Latinos, working moms. They are desperate to fight these fights on all fronts, because they know they are losing demographic battles across the map, and have nowhere to go so they can find new voters before their rapidly aging base ages off the system.

One New Hampshire legislator admitted it was political: “Voting as a liberal, that’s what kids do.” Likewise Gingrich specified that it’s young voters who should be poll-tested, even though it’s the senior-heavy tea party crowd which surpasses all in ignorance of U.S. history and government. And the rightwing governors in Florida and Wisconsin, both probable battleground states, have signed election laws making it harder for the elderly, students and other Democratic constituencies to vote.

This effort disproportionately hurts women too: 32 million women may not have identity documents in their proper names. And the Republicans have already forced the League of Women Voters to give up registering voters in Florida.

To show how transparently they are aiming at the Democrats, and specifically Obama, look at Nebraska. Obama took advantage of Nebraska’s electoral system, which allows a presidential candidate to try to win electoral votes in specific districts, and he managed to pick off one Nebraska elector in 2008. GOP legislators then tried to change the rules so he couldn’t do that. Other states are trying to keep Obama off the ballot entirely with birth-certificate rules.

Another transparent effort to rig the game for the Republicans: Texas makes voting easy for GOP-friendly Texas seniors, and lets you vote with a gun permit or military ID, but not with a student ID – all designed to tilt the table toward Republicans.

And another: Wisconsin Republicans, facing recall elections for their unpopular Senators, are trying to game the system by entering fake "Democrats" into the races. The "Democrats" in some cases are actually GOP donors.

The great irony in all this is that Mitt Romney, the putative frontrunner for the GOP nomination, the potential beneficiary of all of this anti-democratic activity by the Republicans, himself has gotten in trouble more than once for fudging his state of residency during campaigns. It could be that the most visible fraudulent vote cast in the 2008 race could be Romney’s, while millions of perfectly legal voters are illegally prevented from voting against him.

This is why national Democrats need to focus on building up local Democratic parties, so the party can compete for state legislative seats and governorships. It is all the more important since the Republican-dominated Supreme Court won't uphold our Constitutional rights to equitable voting rights: they've already upheld one Voter ID law, despite the fact that the case only turned up one case of in-person voter fraud in 143 years.

Behind the scenes

The GOP sometimes tries to distance itself from these efforts by hiring operatives who are not officially on the payroll, the same deniability strategy that failed disastrously in Watergate. But they’re not really trying hard: GOP officials have admitted privately, many times, that they are suppressing the minority vote illegally. They even gave out trophies to the goons who stole the 2000 election. And the Republicans have been caught, sued and punished in court over and over. They’re answer, effectively, is “tough luck, you’re sore losers! Rules are for sissies!”

The GOP leadership is running all of this, controlling thousands of GOP lawyers via the Republican National Lawyers Association, who played a key role in the Florida fight, borrowing help from their corporate pals, using the local secretaries of state like Katherine Harris, exploiting their control of the U.S. Attorney organization during the Bush era to illegally use the Justice Department to suppress Democratic votes, and I’ll bet they use the tea party people this time too.

Just as the Democrats have insisted on pursuing their legislative agenda by Marquis of Queensbury rules while the Republicans have been kicking them in the crotch over and over, we seem to be heading for another election cycle in which Democrats play by the rules and the Republicans don’t. Which is how you lose. Just as Democrats lost in 2000 and 2004 by allowing the Republicans to suppress the vote. So as they wheel the Obama campaign machine out of the garage again, they must be sure that the effort includes voter education and resistance to vote suppression. Keep working with the usual suspects to register voters and fight voter suppression: the Rainbow gang, the NAACP, the ACLU etc. Utilize another group the Republicans loathe, the trial lawyers. When their goons show up at the polls, take their pictures, and their cars too!

So, Republicans, it is useless to deny you’re doing it, because the party has admitted doing it, and they have been caught and punished in court. And it is also useless to holler “Democrats are doing it too!” because, time after time, you fail to back up your baseless claims.

The ever-widening pattern

Look at the pattern.
Republicans go after minorities in Kansas, to stop them from voting Democratic.
Republicans throw Arizona Mexicans in jail, to stop them from showing their faces on the street so they can vote Democratic, by means of their unconstitutional papers-please law.
Republican vote suppression in Ohio, stop voters from voting Democratic, steal the 2004 presidential election.
Illegal Republican voter suppression in black and Hispanic sections of Florida, stop voters from voting Democratic, steal the 2000 presidential election.
Republicans go all out to destroy any African-American voter registration effort, stop them from voting Democratic.
Republican hissy fits when one alleged “Black Panther” shows up at a polling place with a “stick”, screeching “Hey, he’s only a Democrat, only Republicans are allowed to commit voter suppression!!”….”ACORN!!” And incidentally, the GAO and the FEC proved that the accusations against ACORN were unfounded, but they were destroyed anyway, because they tried to get more blacks to vote.
Republicans declare war on union groups, because they organize Democratic voters.
Republicans declare war on lawyers and push for tort reform, because they organize Democratic voters; Texas has passed a bill which forces you to pay legal fees if you sue a corporation and lose, and sometimes even if you win; even most Texas judges said the law was unnecessary.
Republicans shamelessly pushing Voter ID laws, voter purging laws, ex-con disenfranchisement laws.
Republicans putting criminals like Katherine Harris in charge of voting laws.
Republicans jamming the phone lines of Democratic organizers to suppress voter turnout in New Hampshire.
Republicans illegally registering voters using pro-marijuana petitions.
Republicans suppressing voter representation in Democratic districts by sending fake census forms so the real forms don’t get filled out.
Republicans undertaking such a widespread vote suppression effort in the Virginia gubernatorial race that the FBI had to step in.
Republicans pushing vote suppression in the 2008 race, using caging, purging and delays a polling places to stop people from voting for Obama in Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Montana, Wisconsin.


This is a part of the larger GOP effort to distort the entire democratic process, to suit their ends.

It is beyond dispute that they are using not only vote suppression but also great masses of unmonitored cash under the Citizens United standard, to tilt the electoral process their way.
It is beyond dispute that they are trying to ensure that only their voices are heard: the House GOP leadership is using their control of the franking office to prevent Democratic members from using their campaign fliers to warn their constituents about the GOP attack on Medicare, and they are demanding that TV stations pull ads that criticize them.
It is beyond dispute that when they do lose races, they use legislative tools like filibusters and subpoenas to stop Democrats from doing what they were elected to do: govern. This also drives public-minded Democrats out of government service, which means that Republicans will always have more experienced government officials on their bench than the Democrats.
It is beyond dispute that Republicans are particularly targeting efforts to bring crooked corporations under control, using these methods: they are undertaking Herculean efforts to block the appointments of just about anybody with regulatory power.
It is beyond dispute that Republicans are blocking dozens and dozens of judicial appointments in hopes that all those chairs will be empty when Obama leaves office: that way, the GOP can load up the federal judiciary with more and more Republicans, and work to steal the entire judicial system for themselves, just as they did at the end of the Clinton administration. This is particularly important since the courts are the arena of last resort when, say, Republicans do things which are unconstitutional and illegal, like Scott Walker and John Kasich and Mitch Daniels and Rick Scott.
It is beyond dispute that they are working to block Obama from using recess appointments as well.
It is beyond dispute that when Republicans have control of both the White House and Congress, they use many departments within the executive branch to prosecute Democrats, expose Democratic intelligence officials, harass Democrats, and spread anti-Democratic propaganda, at taxpayer expense. They did all that under Bush.
Add to that their contempt for the truth, their devotion to lies and smear attacks, and the ever-present threat of violence which we saw during the health care debate: Michele Bachmann, now a serious presidential candidate, led an angry mob into the halls of Congress with the express purpose of intimidating members of Congress into changing their health-reform votes.

So the Republicans aren't just trying to steal elections, like they did in 2000: now they're trying to steal the entire democratic process itself.

The Strategy against Obama

SUMMARY
The Republicans have perfected three tactics for tearing down Obama and his accomplishments: condemning him for doing the same things Republicans do, claiming that Obama's accomplishments are really Republican accomplishments, and portraying clear Obama wins as defeats. Sometimes they will do two or all three at once: hypocrisy and bad logic are alien concepts to desperate men.

DETAILS
The weakness of their field and their eventual candidate, will make it more critical that the Republicans pull out all the stops. Also this is their last chance to run against the scary black guy: the next Democratic nominee will be vanilla in every way, or possibly Latino.
There are more signs that the ethos of the Republican party is all about beating Obama in 2012, rather than winning philosophical battles. GOP donors are trying to push the presidential nomination process away from bomb-throwers like Bachmann, and toward theoretically electable candidates like Rick Perry. By a 68-29 margin Republicans said they’d rather have someone who can beat Obama, than a policy purist. Even tea-party activists are talking about Obama as much as the issues: they want victory more than purity. This is bad news for people like Palin. So how do you go after Obama, other than the usual pile of lies and attacks?

First, It’s Okay If You’re A Republican. The Republicans regularly condemn Obama and the Democrats for practices which the Republicans themselves have used enthusiastically. Romney in particular is notorious for attacking Democrats for ideas which he and other Republicans have also advocated. We saw a lot of this during the health reform battle: whenever the Democrats even contemplated using a procedural maneuver down the field, like budget reconciliation, the Republicans would explode with outrage, despite the fact that they themselves used it during the Bush era. They also slammed the Democrats for proposing ideas which originated with Republicans, like the end-of-life counseling in the health reform proposals, and for governmental patterns which proliferated during the Bush era, like massive expansions in government spending, and monitoring rightwing extremists.

Also, Obama cut your taxes, and moved to stop corporations from using tax havens and shipping jobs overseas, which means ultimately that we can pay even less tax. So did all these anti-tax tea-baggers come out into the streets and condemn the GOP for blocking an effort which would reduce their taxes? Or thank Obama for the tax cut? Of course not. If it had been Bush, the tea party would have given him a parade. Or a sexy photo op landing on an aircraft carrier.

The most appalling example of this is the GOP health care strategy. They won the House in 2010 by lying to the voters, screaming that Obama was going to destroy Medicare and throw grandma under the bus. The voters believed them, and voted them in. And as soon as Boehner got the gavel, what did they do? Passed a bill to destroy Medicare and throw grandma under the bus. And then told their constituents that it was really Obama doing it.

By the same token, any Republican like Paul Ryan who spent two years using dishonest demogoguery to attack Obama's health reforms, and now has the chutzpah to call Obama a demagogue just for busting the GOP in their lies, really has more brass than the Navy marching band.

Second, An Obama Win Is Really A Republican Win. In addition to the laughable attempt to claim credit for the bin Laden kill by falsely attributing the success to Bush’s torture program, the Republicans are also giving Bush credit for the bailout of the auto industry, and other Obama successes which Republicans opposed. Along the same lines, Republican governors are notorious for bragging to their constituents for getting their hands on stimulus money, all while condemning Obama for signing the stimulus program. John Kasich did the same with the auto bailout, condemning the plan and then taking credit for the bailout money.

Along the same lines, Fox is now giving George Bush credit for launching the electric car. Because George the Kyoto Killer always loved the environment.

Third, Even A Clear Obama Win Is Still A Bad A Thing. Here are two examples. First, Obama gave the order in April 2009 for our navy to take out the pirates in Somalia, which they did. In saner times the Republicans would calmly congratulate the president for his success and move on. Not this time: Rush screeched a Republican president had had the gall to murder black teenagers, "these kids", "inexperienced youths", there would be hell to pay. Bill O’Reilly strategized about how it all could have been resolved with a UN blockade of Somali ports, which evinces cluelessness about the UN, blockades, and Somalia.

And of course Hannity: "If I'm discovering here that legally he had to do it, and his PR team led by “Rahmbo” Emanuel are out there, you know, grabbing credit... There seems to me to be something wrong and that that whole story's not being told....They raced to grab the credit and, apparently, we're discovering, that legally he had no other option. If you're going to take credit for something you really didn't have any choice on, then I think you're manipulating the American people.” So clearly Hannity has no chops as a reporter of fact or as a legal expert.

Gloria Borger hit the nail on the head after the Somalia operation: “Here's the problem: If Republicans can't allow that the president did his job well in this unambiguous case, why should we believe their complaints about anything else? If they can't pat him on the back for this one, why should we even listen to their arguments about the budget, about health care, about energy?”

The second example: Obama’s Nobel Prize. The Republicans, and some reporters, whined that Obama hasn’t accomplished anything, which is absurd on its face. They argued that Obama hasn’t completed his international efforts on arms control, Middle east peace, disengaging in Iraq, outreach to Muslims, climate change, diplomacy, and ending illegal kidnapping, torture and other war crimes.

But that is the case with most Peace Prize winners. The award often goes to people who are fighting to complete works still in progress. So let’s look at the other Peace Prize laureates who didn’t actually complete the efforts they won the award for. People who, at the time they won the award, had failed to achieve their aims.

So by Republican logic, before World War Two the prize was award six times to people for failing to build lasting world peace. After WWII, the prize was awarded three more times to people like Kissinger who failed to achieve world peace, and four times to people like Begin and Arafat for failing to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Four times the award was given to people like the IAEA for failing in their disarmament efforts. Five times the award went to people like the Dalai Lama, Andrei Sakharov, Desmond Tutu and Lech Walesa for not freeing their own people.

The UN got two awards for not solving the refugee problem Martin Luther King got it for not achieving civil rights, Norman Borlaug for not ending world hunger, Al Gore for not solving climate change, Kim Dae Jung for not bringing peace to Korea, Mother Teresa for not achieving a whole bunch of things. All these people, by Republican logic, are failures.

By Republican logic, winning a Nobel Prize, it’s a disaster.

I’m just going to let that hang in the air.

Sometimes the GOP will combine all three strategies! When Obama announced his plan to move forward on the Middle East peace process, a completely uncontroversial proposal based on the formula everyone has been discussing for 40 years….within a couple of hours, half the GOP presidential field was screeching that Obama had thrown Israel under the bus, with Gingrich bellowing that Congress should pass a resolution condemning Obama’s policy: Even A Clear Obama Win Is Still A Bad A Thing. Even though Bush had proposed the same thing as Obama: It’s Okay If You’re A Republican. And within hours Charles Krauthammer closed the triangle by claiming that what Obama was doing was really the Bush doctrine: An Obama Win Is Really A Republican Win. They managed to use all three strategies before the sun even went down. Neatly, it didn't work: Jewish donors ignored the GOP atttempt to misrepresent Obama's stance and opened their wallets.

The Romney team is taking the same counter-intuitive approach regarding the auto bailout. Romney condemned Obama's bailout, which is now working brilliantly. The Romney camp is claiming, simultaneously, that the bailout out was a bad idea, and that it was a good idea which Obama stole from Romney.

Sometimes the attack-no-matter-what strategy becomes simply laughable. After House Democrats split down the middle during the first debt-ceiling vote, the Republican party issued talking points attacking Democrats who voted "yes" and talking points attacking the Democrats who voted "no", all at once. Seriously. And this will continue:  if Obama focuses on debt reduction, they scream at him for not focusing on jobs; if he switches to focusing on jobs, they will scream at him for seeking more spending.  Attack attack attack.

Congress and beyond

At some point the Republicans will figure out who their presidential nominee is, and realize he or she is doomed. Then they will steer their dollars toward keeping the House and taking the Senate: the Senate Class of 2006, the big Democratic wave, is up for reelection and very vulnerable. Those Congressional races: this is a key reason why the GOP’s disastrous Voter-ID push is so important.

Watch the generic congressional polls: a spring 2011 poll showed that the voters are as angry as ever at Congress, with the GOP in charge, particularly after Ryan’s disastrous Medicare attack. Seniors went big for the GOP in 2010 but will retaliate for the Medicare vote this time. But we must also watch for GOP members of Congress to leap to the right to avoid being flanked by angry teabag challengers.

In 2016 the Republicans won’t have a black target to shoot at anymore. Democrats can run no less than three potential candidates from Virginia, and two from Montana, plus Brown, O’Malley, Sebelius, Cuomo, and other governors and senators.

The tea-party insanity will of necessity subside someday, since the whole movement was built on lies, but then where will the GOP be? The GOP is becoming a regional party, and their core constituency, the oldest, whitest conservative voters, is aging off the system.

The battle for the center

SUMMARY
Obama has outsmarted the Republicans by moving to the center and planting himself there, frustrating their attempts to portray him as a dangerous Marxist of some kind. He voted with Bush much of the time while in the Senate. Upon inauguration he chose many moderate and conservative advisers, winning praise from the right and complaints from the left. And once he began digging into the actual policy, he maddened hardcore liberals by slow-rolling many of their pet projects such as the public option and climate change and Guantanamo and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the DREAM Act, even at the risk of impelling some of his 2008 supporters to stay home in 2012. But a leftist he isn't, and happily, the independents who pick all the presidents know that. Meanwhile the GOP has abandoned all pretense of fighting for the center.

DETAILS
As we recall from 2008, the Republicans ran a wave of lie-and-smear ads against Obama, and sent fake hecklers like “Joe the Plumber” after him; the media let them get away with it because they love a good fight. The Democrats mostly behaved themselves: compare how the Democrats, if not the press, ignored most of Palin’s crimes and follies in Alaska, and her decidedly odd family, and her decision to undertake incredibly dangerous cross-country journey after her water broke… with this:

“Barack Obama as an evil Muslim socialist dictator who had to fake his birth certificate like Adolf Hitler to be eligible for the top job! He underperformed in the election, even with the liberal media giving him a free pass! He is going to ration health care so children and old people die, remove his enemies from the radio airwaves, build an all-liberal media, make millions peddling a global-warming hoax, cripple small businesses, build a bullet train to Vegas and Hollywood, slash defense, make his temporary unemployment policies permanent, establish martial law, put terrorists on the streets, put Capone-like Chicago criminals in charge of the government, take everyone’s guns, force women to have abortions, rig the census with ACORN, and send gays in to destroy our army, invalidate all straight marriages and make all our wives whores and our children bastards! One of his scary black men cut a female McCain campaign worker with a knife! He’s in bed with those Democrats who caused the economic crash and prevented the lifeboats from saving Katrina victims! His bank buyout is really a giveaway! Anti-Obama tea parties are sprouting up across this center-right nation and on the internet because the American people and big business hate Obama! The American people will rise up in revolution! Let’s get our guns!”

But the American people have seen Obama in action for three years, and he didn’t do what they warned he would do. So who will believe the next pack of lies they brew up?

Obama helped inoculate himself against many attacks by moving to the center. As we know, all presidential elections are decided by independents, moderates, centrists. So Obama has been staking out the center of the battlefield since his Senate days. He voted with Bush half the time and had conservative views on taxes, FISA, the Patriot Act, ramping up in Afghanistan and hunting bin Laden, free-market economics, merit pay to root out bad teachers, nuclear power, faith-based programs and evangelical outreach, cutting government waste, Israel, Iran, guns, and the death penalty.

Upon inauguration, Obama picked financial advisers who were so conservative that unions complained. He picked a foreign policy team which liberals criticized as unduly hawkish. Conservatives loved his presidential transition: Kissinger, Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Fred Barnes, Lindsey Graham, Ed Rollins, Condoleeza Rice, McCain, Lamar Alexander, McConnell. James Baker called it a center-right effort. Wall Street liked the Geithner pick, and Summers and Orszag got right-wing raves too. 93 percent of Republicans believed Emanuel would be effective. Alex Castellanos, a GOP commentator, admitted that Obama has been acting and campaigning from the center. After one poll on Obama’s choices, the New Republic noted "the quotes from GOP respondents are more adulatory than the responses from the Democrats." RNC Chairman Mike Duncan quipped that Obama “ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight Eisenhower.”

Obama justified the confidence of the few sane conservatives by saving the financial sector and the automotive sector, nailing the Somali pirates and bin Laden, ripping apart the Russian spy ring, and moving deliberately on the liberals’ pet issues. Liberals were angry that Obama didn’t blow Lieberman out of his committee chair. They say he’s too far to the right on green issues, on immigration, on gays, on wiretaps; they were infuriated that Obama chose an evangelical minister who backed the California ban on gay marriages, to perform the invocation at his inaugural.

So the Kenyan Muslim Marxist line of attack isn’t going to work this time.

Neatly, Obama is more conservative than the founder of modern conservatism, Nixon. Nixon took the conservative mantle from the discredited McCarthy and Goldwater, crafted the southern strategy by way of exploiting the fears of whites, and spent two decades warning that the Democrats couldn’t be trusted on national security, or anything else. Nixon, rather than Reagan, would have confirmed his place in history as the founder of the New Right if he hadn’t flamed out in Watergate. Reagan simply built on Nixon’s work. So all the wingnuts who are screeching that Obama is practically a Marxist, need to remember that Obama is actually to the right of the founder of the conservative movement, Richard Nixon.

Do they think Obama is all about Big Gummint? Nixon proposed Medicare for all, which is much more liberal than the Obama plan. Nixon increased Social Security, Medicare, food aid and public assistance. He set up the EPA, OSHA, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Council on Environmental Quality, allowing Big Gummint to get uppity with corporations on unsafe air, water and consumer products. He imposed wage and price controls. He presented a pretty big budget and proclaimed “Now I am a Keynesian”.

Do they think Obama isn’t as gutsy as Bush on foreign policy? Nixon gave away Vietnam to the Communists, made peace agreements with our most dangerous allies in Russia and China, and ended the draft.

Do they think Obama is a social liberal? Nixon supported the pro-choice movement and the ERA for women; he played a huge role in desegregating schools, signed Title IX, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the Comprehensive Child Development Act. And…he launched the first federal affirmative action plan. Skeery brown folks are taking our jobs! That was Nixon who launched that.

So….First, Obama is actually to the right of Nixon, so all the teabag protests that Obama is to the left of Mao are just plain absurd. Second, Nixon would never survive in today’s Republican party. The racist wing of the GOP, which he helped create 40 years ago, would destroy him if he ran today. Today’s GOP is so hate-filled that even one of their most famous hate-mongers, Nixon, would no longer be welcome.

National trends

SUMMARY

Current polling indicates that only Romney has a prayer of catching up to Obama in the 2012 vote, although someone reassuring like Huntsman or Pawlenty could be marketed to the voters in such a way as to close the gap; finding someone who can go toe-to-toe with Obama in debates, however, will be extremely difficult. The Democrats are already attacking, quite early, doing their best to put the most controversial face on the GOP (earlier it was Rush, now it's Ryan) and marry the Republicans to their most controversial policies. They are cleverly attacking the Republicans on their extreme views, and praising them on their moderate views, both of which hurt Republicans with different sectors of the electorate. In the turnout battle, they are hoping that they can grasp the pendulum which swung their way in 2008 and away from them in 2010, and pull it back in their direction; tea-party disenchantment with the GOP nominee would help. They need to continue to target independents, close the sale with Latinos particularly on the DREAM Act, and remind women of the GOP war on the right to choose.

DETAILS

Polling. Pollsters say that no GOP candidate gets above 50 percent nationally, on the issue of whether they’re qualified to be president. Polling from May 2011 indicated that all of the major GOP prospects have toxic unfavorables except Romney and Pawlenty. Also, pollsters have been measuring Obama against possible GOP candidates, and Obama beats them all. But there has been a clear tier system: three candidates come within 5-8 points of Obama, and then there is a huge gap, and another group of candidates who lose to Obama by 14 to 22 points. The three who came closest are Huckabee, who quit, Paul who will never survive once people look at his record, and Romney whose scores against Obama have been slipping into double digits. Even if they run Romney, it is likely that he will lose as badly as McCain in the 2008 landslide. If they nominate anyone else, they’re looking at a real Reagan-Carter butt-kicking. And almost all this poll data was collected before Obama killed bin Laden.

So far the Democrats are already attacking the Republicans, alternately attacking their conservative policies, which anger general election voters, and praising their more moderate stances, which anger conservative primary voters. They are launching attack ads against Romney and Pawlenty, two candidates they worry about, although personally I think Romney is the one candidate who is more capable of running a smart, professional campaign against Obama. The people they worry about least are Palin and Gingrich.

Over three years, Obama has taken a beating from critics, but potential nominees like Romney have faded from memory a bit, and if they return to the limelight, they will get more scrutiny than they ever have, certainly more than Romney got in his brief 2008 run. When you look at all the Obama-Romney polling over three years, Romney only got close in the second half of 2010, before sliding back. Since then Obama has opened up a lead of 6 points and climbing.

One GOP political expert said "It is likely he will be re-elected”, asserting that the economy isn’t rock enough to beat him. Another GOP player said "Centrist voters and the ones who decide elections are still fundamentally rooting for the guy…People who don't view politics in ideological terms give him the benefit of the doubt, and that is an incredible political asset to have."

Debates. Back in the 2008 campaign, Republican hopefuls saddled up to run for President, and debate. The group included four current or former governors, two current Senators, a former Senator, and three current or former members of the House. And Giuliani, America’s mayor. At that time, Gingrich ridiculed that group as a bunch of pygmies. But compare that 2008 group to the bunch of dwarves who saddled up for the first GOP debate in the spring of 2011: Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum. The debate made Republicans cringe, openly. Was there anyone on that stage who would have a prayer of achieving a debate win against Obama?

Whoever gets the GOP nomination, will have to debate Obama. The same man who wiped out Hillary and McCain in 30 debates (without a teleprompter), demonstrating a mastery of (a) economics and finance, (b) national security and military issues, and (c) social issues. And Obama has learned so much more on the job, as Usama bin Laden could attest. Who do the Republicans have, who can debate head-to-head with Obama in even one of those three topic areas, let alone all three?

Enemies. In 2009 Obama chose to portray Rush as the face of the GOP. Now he’s chosen Paul Ryan the Medicare-killer. Brill. McCain ran an awful campaign in 2008; don’t count on the next Republican to make the same mistakes, although they could always make new ones.

Turnout. The Obama Warriors of 2008 stayed home in 2010, disappointed with his centrism: he’s got to get them out again. The GOP may have trouble rounding up the teabaggers who won them the House in 2010: they’re angry that Boehner didn’t actually give them the government shutdown, the war on Planned Parenthood, and all the other stuff they expected. After the budget deal, some teabaggers said "Our war now is with the Republican Party; we need to send home a whole boatload of RINOs." A lot of them are also angry, obviously, about their attack on Medicare. And they will be even angrier if they “lose” the debt ceiling war. Off on a RINO hunt! So which nominee could ensure tea-party turnout? Bachmann, Palin, and who else? They seem to find Pawlenty completely resistible. Watch the polls which measure the "enthusiasm gap".The true crux of the problem is that the Republicans need someone who will inspire the fiscal conservative donors to spend, and inspire the tea party to organize and vote at 2010 levels.

Latinos. The GOP is ripe for a beating on this issue, if the Democrats handle it right. To wit: Lindsey Graham screeches at Obama for not moving on immigration. Obama moves on immigration. Graham then criticizes Obama’s “cynical ploy” and the GOP blocks the plan. Durbin introduces the DREAM Act which actually has bipartisan support in the House. Lugar, formerly a DREAM supporter, ran away from it with a lame excuse, arguing that Obama’s making it a partisan issue, since Lugar could be primaried. Instead of supporting DREAM, the GOP is supporting papers-please (an idea wich is spreading to Alabama to included checking the papers of students and parents), when they’re not smearing Sonya Sotomayor.

Obama still only has 57 percent support among Hispanics. After leaning hard on illegal immigrants, Obama is now shifting his focus to employers who hire illegals, which Latinos should like. He also picked a Latina as political director for his reelection campaign: Katherine Archuleta, the first Latina to hold the position on a major presidential campaign. She will be responsible for outreach to elected officials and groups. One thing to watch out for: if the GOP nominates Perry, remember that he signed a DREAM-like bill in Texas.

Independents. America’s “center” went for Obama by a staggering 20 points, and he held them even after the election: they like the Democrats on almost all issues. They are social liberals, fiscal conservatives. Stress the GOP’s preference for culture wars over jobs. Romney has powerful pull among independents, though, which is a key reason why he polls well against Obama.

Women. Obama needs to exploit the GOP’s war on women. The evangelicals are still fighting to take away a woman’s right to choose, in jurisdictions across the country. Moms are struggling to keep their families going in a deepening recession, and fighting battles against the evangelicals on book banning, intelligent design, contraception, HPV shots, sex education, and other educational issues; lesbians are fighting the one-man-one-woman battle. And the United States is the only developed country in the world that has not ratified the CEDAW treaty on discrimination against women. Obama could do an entire aria just on the GOP war against Planned Parenthood, the cancer screenings, the works.

Other groups. In addition to the lawyers and union workers whom the Republicans have alienated, the GOP is now losing doctors. And that suggests they're losing other medical professsionals who don't make a physician's salary. However Obama still has trouble holding seniors (44 percent approval), some of whom were wooed by the tea party and haven't yet figured out that the same Republicans they elected are trying to take away their health care.

The electoral map

If the reports are accurate, the Obama team will focus mostly on hanging on to the states they won in 2008, rather than digging deeper into places like Texas and Georgia. They key battlegrounds will be the Rust Belt, where jobs, unions, the auto bailout and Medicare will be central to their strategy; the Atlantic coast, where the black vote and the Israel issue may share the spotlight with Medicare; and the southwest where Latinos want to know where the DREAM Act went. The Democrats are likely to form their strategy to beat the most dangerous opponents, the fiscal conservatives like Romney and Huntsman, which will serve to emphasize the Rust Belt even more. A vice-presidential pick could throw a wild card into the mix in one of the big states, but a lot of potential picks are actually not all that popular in their home states, and that is unlikely to effect a structural change in the electoral map.

DETAILS

If we look at the map for 2012, a picture of the race emerges clearly.

There are a number of states in the northeast and adjoining the Pacific, where Obama won big in 2008 and still leads comfortably in recent polling. Total electoral votes: 186. The Republicans could take a crack at New Jersey by putting Chris Christie on the ticket, but the man has baggage.

The Republicans have a swath of states in the south and west which went for McCain and still seem solid for Team Red next time. Total votes: 159. Or are they solid? Obama won the under-40 vote in Texas by 10 points in 2008, and did about as well among the young in Georgia and South Carolina. Obama trails Romney by 3 in Georgia, but his worst numbers there are among old folks: if Obama doesn’t take it, the Democrat after him can. Obama’s approvals actually have risen across the south, and he has the black community to draw on. He probably won’t go after TX, SC or GA, but at the very least he needs to help build the party structures in those states to help with congressional races and set the table for the 2016 nominee.

That leaves sixteen states with 193 electoral votes as the battleground. Obama needs 84. They appear in four places:

The Rust Belt, 101 electoral votes: PA OH IN MI MN WI IA MO. The latest polling shows Obama would have slight leads over Romney in all, except PA where Romney actually leads by 1, and Indiana where we don’t have good data (Team Obama expects that to be their weakest state in the region). A new poll has him up by 4 in Ohio. Unions and the auto bailout will be the focus here; dig in hard in Iowa, where the GOP organization will be extensive after the caucuses. Obama is being assisted by a number of Republican governors who are wildly unpopular now because they tried to use their electoral clout to do incredibly destructive things: attacking unions, attacking the minimum wage in Ohio, attacking teachers' benefits, cutting education and Medicaid, blocking university money, giving bureaucrats the power to decertify entire city governments. As of summer 2001 Obama led Romney in WI by 7. Possible VP picks: Santorum, Portman, Daniels, Pence, Pawlenty, Bachmann, and Paul Ryan if they want to double down their bets on that kill-Medicare plan. Does Romney have any pull left in Michigan after saying it’s okay for the automakers to go bankrupt?

There is much more information about the Democratic attack on economic issues, in places such as the Rust Belt, in the link in this sentence.

The Atlantic Coast, 57 electoral votes: VA NC FL. The GOP is fired up to attack Bill Nelson, but the Rick Scott era has been rocky and Scott is widely hated; he demanded that applicants for government assistance take drug tests and pay for them themselves, and imposed restrictions and red tape and legal threats against those registering voters, which the Democrats really need to fight in court. In Florida, Obama's approvals are above 50, he leads a generic opponent by 7, and Medicare will make the GOP push there very difficult. Obama needs to be careful on the Israel issue. There are potential VP candidates here, most of whom have baggage: McDonnell, Cantor, Rubio, Bush, Crist. For Obama, watch the Virginia boys: Webb, Warner, Kaine; Crist?

The Southwest, 31 electoral votes: AZ CO NM NV. Obama leads Romney by a mile in NM, a bit in CO, and trails a bit in the other two, with McCain out of the picture. Latinos, the DREAM Act which Romney criticized, and the papers-please bill which is similar to rules Romney signed. Foreclosures are a big deal in Nevada.

And New Hampshire, 4 EV’s. Obama leads by 1 over Romney.

These numbers were run for Romney, who polls about six points behind Obama nationally. All of the other candidates except Ron Paul are running at least 14-15 points behind Obama, so the electoral map would look very, very blue with anyone else, unless someone like Huntsman or Pawlenty can build up some sort of groundswell with independents. Gingrich is running behind in Georgia, of all places.

Obama's team is also looking to seek new targets, in case their efforts in the Midwest fall short. They may steer more resources into Arizona and Georgia, both of which have large Hispanic populations (Georgia's Latino population has doubled); Nevada and Colorado also figure into the strategy. They see Indiana as a tough get but will try if they think they need it.

Also, local party pols have been given the green light to ask Obama's field chief to bring the national campaign in to help with local races and build the Democratic team at the grassroots level, possibly helping the national campaign in the process as well. It might be a good idea to build for the future in places like Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. In Carolina, Obama polls within the margin of error against every opponent except Romney, and even Romney could be beatable in a state which takes a dim view of Mormons.

Even if Romney is the nominee, remember that Obama looks strong across the country. In summer 2009 he had approvals over 50 percent in 48 states, so people are willing to believe in him. If Obama only keeps the states he won by 9 or more points in 2008, that is still enough to win. Remember that the Republicans have failed to get more than 285 electoral votes in 20 years: the last five elections consisted of two illegal Bush squeakers and three Democratic blowouts, with a fourth Democratic win to come in 2012, since Obama will be running as a successful incumbent terrorist-killer rather than as the scary Muslim Marxist guy.

Some Democratic strategists have begun talking openly about their strategy, and there are no great shocks. They apparently plan to pull out all the stops to hold what they won in 2008, rather than seeking new states, with the possible exception of Arizona. It is easy to see the logic: the places where Obama could have attacked are either small, like Montana and the Dakotas, or unpromising like Missouri, or expensive like Texas, although it could be argued that Georgia is worth a second look. Of course all this could just be a huge head fake, and plans can change as the calendar sails on by and the Republicans pick a nominee.

On the Atlantic coast the Democrats reportedly hope to round up black support to hold onto Virginia, where Obama is still strong, and North Carolina. They plan to attack heavily in the swing states of Ohio, where they expect a hard fight, and Florida; they think Indiana will be tough and they may give up on Missouri. In the southwest they hope to retain Hispanic support; New Mexico and Nevada look good, they will work to hold Colorado, and they have grounds for optimism in Arizona. They said little about the Rust Belt or economic issues, but both are sure to be big factors in their strategy also.

Fivethirtyeight’s Nate Silver argues that a southern candidate could wrap up the south quickly for the GOP, and then move north to contest the battleground states in the Rust Belt. But I wonder if they would be better off with a native Rust Belt candidate: the Republicans will probably hold much of the deep south no matter who runs, and a northerner might gain more traction in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Of course it depends on who the northerner is: southern evangelicals are suspicious of Romney, and he might need to do some fence-mending down there before dashing back north.

In any case, the only southern names on the racing form seem to be Gingrich, Cain and Perry. One observer suggested that Romney would ignore the south and focus on the battleground states; ignoring the deep south would be smart because Obama apparently isn’t going to contest it, but Romney must try to flip Virginia, North Carolina and Florida to win.

Looking for a fighter

SUMMARY

Obama will really need to take off the gloves and fight: the Republicans know this is their last chance to run against the scary black Muslim Marxist. He needs to listen to the fighters like Pelosi and Schumer, and stop chasing the dream of bipartisanship: there will be no making nice with the GOP in 2012. He needs to bring back the 2008 Obama, the man who overcame so much and came so far so fast. He needs to shoot down the endless lies. He needs to fire up the base. He needs to defend the Senate and take the House. He has begun a rapid response unit already, like the Clintons did in 1992, and do that this early is a good sign; also they are running attack ads extremely early.

DETAILS

In the 2012 election, a great deal depends on whether we come up with the right answer to the following dilemma.

SONNY I want you to find out where that ol' pimp Tattaglia is hiding -- I want his ass now -- right now!
TOM  Hey -- Sonny...
SONNY What?
TOM Things are starting to loosen up a little bit. If you go after Tattaglia all hell's gonna break --
SONNY Oh, Tom...
TOM  -- loose. Let -- let the smoke clear -- Pop can negotiate.
SONNY No, Pop can't do nothin' til he's better! I'm going to decide what's going to be done --
TOM All right, but your war is costing us a lot of money; nothing's coming in! --
SONNY  Whattsa matter?
TOM -- We can't do business.
SONNY Well neither can they! Don't worry about it.
TOM They don't have our over-head!
SONNY Please, don't worry about it!
TOM We can't afford a stalemate!
SONNY Well, then, there ain't no more stalemate -- I'm gonna end it by killin' that old bastard! I'm gonna...kill...
TOM Yeah, well you're getting a great reputation! -- I hope you're enjoying it...
SONNY Well you just do what I tell you to do! Goddamn it! If I had a wartime consiglieri -- a Sicilian -- I wouldn't be in this shape! Pop had Genco -- look what I got.

The Democrats need wartime consiglieres. The Democrats should be poised to crush the GOP for the foreseeable future, under the current circumstances. But for three years, they have refused to fight. They need some Patton-meets-Churchill leader to take off the gloves. Guys who can dive into the line of scrimmage and punch a kidney, guys who can go into the paint and throw an elbow, guys who can slide spike-high into second. Guys who actually care about winning. Guys who are willing to smack down the Republicans every day when they lie to the press and the American people. And protecting the nation from the extremists.  Did we all forget the Bush era?

Or, to quote William Tecumseh Sherman:  "The northern generals who prosecuted the war most effectively , and most ruthlessly, had more understanding of its ideological purposes..."We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war"....Therefore the North must "make the war so terrible...[and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it. "

Obama can be that guy, when he chooses to be, which unfortunately is seldom. In the 2008 race he showed his executive leadership in assembling a 13-million-man-army led by one of the best no-drama, no-leak campaign teams in history: he built a Democratic machine unprecedented in history, with groundbreaking innovations in fundraising and the exploitation of the internet; he was the first Democrat in memory to outspend his opponent. Obama’s popular-vote total was the highest in history, even more than Reagan in 1984. Obama won by 9 million votes and by 7 percent, better than any Republican has done in two decades; his 9-million vote margin is the largest ever for a non-incumbent. He got more electoral votes than any Republican has done in two decades. His share of the popular vote was better than Reagan did against Carter.

Obama won the men’s vote, the first time a Democrat has done that in a long time. Obama won voters making over $200,000 despite promising to increase their taxes. He won every education group. He won the largest share of white support of any Democrat in a two-man race since 1976. Obama, the black guy, competed in red states that haven’t even seen a Democrat in years. He beat McCain by 10 points among young white voters, which means that in the years down the road as these kids get older, Democratic candidates will be able to win both whites and blacks.

Some Republicans tried to spin the 2008 race by arguing that Obama should have won by twenty, which is nonsense. Want to know how often a presidential candidate wins by ten, let alone twenty, unless he's an incumbent, or his opponents split into factions, or something? Three times in the 19th century, then the two Roosevelts, Harding and Hoover, and look how swell Harding and Hoover turned out: they caused the Depression. That’s it, for more than two centuries. And that’s ten-point victories, let alone twenty.

But let’s look at what Obama had to overcome, to do all this.

Obama overcame the brutal beating from the allegedly invincible Clinton machine, which seemingly had the race so locked up that everyone thought he was crazy to try; he devised a strategy that destroyed Hillary in a matter of weeks.

He overcame his inexperience and outsmarted McCain, a war hero representing the incumbent party fighting a war from the White House, a guy who had months to set up his general election campaign while Obama was battling Hillary. He blew away the “experience” argument by making McCain look foolish on foreign policy, setting the example on policy which even Bush followed, and on domestic policy, staying cool while McCain hopped around like a donkey with a bee up its butt during the early days of the fiscal crisis. He overcame McCain without attacking him on all his crooked deals, his flipflops, his many medical and psychological problems, the way McCain would have, if their positions had been reversed.

He didn’t just beat McCain, he made him irrelevant. He overcame politics as usual by ignoring all the attacks and McCain’s “double dog dares” on everything from town meetings to denouncing pastors; Obama simply addressed the needs of the people and they responded.

He overcame the deep-pocketed GOP fundraisers, the GOP culture warriors and white power people.

He made fools out of the neocons who warned of a “surrender” when he said we must talk to our enemies; even Bush agreed. He overcame the fiscal conservatives who lied about his tax plan and claimed that deficit spending and deregulation were the secret to prosperity.

He overcame the dirtiest Karl Rove kitchen-sink campaign in the history of politics, dishonest smear ads, hundreds of speeches dishonestly smearing him, robo-call smears, daily internet smears, illegal vote suppression, fake emails, fake phone calls, fake flyers, Wright and Rezko and Ayers and taxation and “socialism”, all lying to voters to get them to stay home.

He overcame the wave of Palin-mania, staying cool when the hysteria temporarily looked like it would sweep him away.

He overcame two centuries of racism, hate, and fear; he made his bones in ultra-white and actually went south to capture new territory for his party. A guy with Hussein as his middle name won during a global war on…guys with names like Hussein.

This is not to praise Obama. It’s to goad Obama: you’re a great fighter, but you haven’t gotten into the ring often enough in the last three years. Time to stop reaching out the hand of bipartisan friendship to people who want to chop your hand off with an axe, and start fighting. And not just for the White House: for Congress too. He needs to be willing to fight, willing to shoot down the lies, willing to pump up the Obama record, watchful for last-minute smear attacks and bombshells in September and October, ready to fight to regain the hearts and minds of the people, ready to fire up the troops who elected Obama in 2008, ready to raise money for Congressional races.

One positive sign: after letting the GOP firehose him with lies and attacks for three years, Obama is setting up a full-time operation to shoot down all the lies, like Clinton’s old war room. Perfect time for it. Characteristically, when Fox News heard about the new Obama team designed to shoot down rightwing smear attacks, they went after it with a rightwing smear attack.

Although Obama does need to come out and fight, that doesn't mean engaging on every little issue, or getting into mudfights with some candidate who's polling in the single digits and wants to become a star by screaming "You lie!" at the president, or whatever. The little gnats can't hurt him, so ignore them. Engage the major players and the major issues, and stay on message. And let your subordinates do a lot of the attacking.

During the first GOP debate, in June 2011 in New Hampshire, the Democrats were already on the attack: they were running ads slamming the Republicans on Medicare, and former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs waited patiently during the debate to issue a rebuttal to the GOP statements in the debate. Gibbs' appearance is part of strategy to keep visible in early states and organize there, and consistently shoot down smear attacks against Obama.