Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun May 27, 2007 at 8:22 PM Pacific

100 million minorities, vote fraud, and Republican racism

Gopfear Last week, the minority population of the United States crossed the 100 million mark for the first time.

That fact alone explains why the Bush Administration and other right-wing elites have worked so hard to portray efforts to increase minority electoral participation as vote fraud even though their claims have no basis in fact.

Why are they doing this?

It's simple math:

  • 75% of minorities who voted in 2006 chose Democratic congressional candidates
  • 1 in 5 Americans who voted in 2006 were minorities
  • Yet 1 in 3 Americans are minorities
  • With proportional turnout, 67% more minorities would have voted

Therefore, with proportional turnout, Democrats would have received 56% of the 2006 vote instead of 52%, winning by a gigantic 14-point margin instead of a 7-point margin.

Conservative Republican elites are understandably scared witless about this frightening (for them) fact of life. They know that if minority turnout increases, the Republican Party won't be able to win elections without appealing to minority voters.

The last thing these elites want is to do is moderate their hard line conservative views, so their response has been to establish a myth of rampant voter fraud perpetrated by Democrats and minority voters. The prominent Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund even wrote a book on the topic. He says:

Democrats are far more skilled at encouraging poor people — who need money — to participate in shady vote-buying schemes.

His sentence is a sufficiently idiotic attempt at propaganda that I need not offer a critique, just 4 digits followed seven letters: 2000 & Diebold.

Today's conservative elites may be less overtly racist than the white supremacists of the past, yet they still execute their political agenda with Orwellian precision. For example, Bush understands the symbolic importance of having a diverse cabinet -- yet his DOJ Civil Rights Division hasn't hired a single black attorney in four years and his administration has steadfastly pursued a racist vote-suppression agenda.

Far from being marginalized, racist ideology is fully integrated into the modern Republican Party machine.

On the airwaves, Fox News is a cheerleader for racist hosts and guests (see the clip below). Rush Limbaugh happily calls Barack Obama a "magic negro," yet Dick Cheney is a regular guest on his show. Online, Steve Sailer, a popular conservative columnist for the white nationalist web site VDARE.com contributor calls Obama a "wigger" and is praised as a "genius" by National Review's John Derbyshire. The Bell Curve's 1994 argument that the intellectual abilities of minorities are genetically inferior to whites is now a widely accepted truism amongst conservatives; indeed, one of its authors, Charles Murray, was rewarded with a plum post at the American Enterprise Institute, a mainstream Republican think-tank.

As bleak things may seem, there is cause for hope. Some brave leaders in the Republican Party are willing to stand up to their racist colleagues. Perhaps most notable among them is Florida Governor Charlie Crist who recently reformed Florida's ineffective and draconian ban on ex-felon voting, a ban which disenfranchised non-felons as well as ex-felons.

For all of us, let's hope the Crists of the GOP manage to reclaim their party from the grips of racist conservative elites.

100 million minorities, vote fraud, and Republican racism

Gopfear Last week, the minority population of the United States crossed the 100 million mark for the first time.

That fact alone explains why the Bush Administration and other right-wing elites have worked so hard to portray efforts to increase minority electoral participation as vote fraud even though their claims have no basis in fact.

Why are they doing this?

It's simple math:

  • 75% of minorities who voted in 2006 chose Democratic congressional candidates
  • 1 in 5 Americans who voted in 2006 were minorities
  • Yet 1 in 3 Americans are minorities
  • With proportional turnout, 67% more minorities would have voted

Therefore, with proportional turnout, Democrats would have received 56% of the 2006 vote instead of 52%, winning by a gigantic 14-point margin instead of a 7-point margin.

Conservative Republican elites are understandably scared witless about this frightening (for them) fact of life. They know that if minority turnout increases, the Republican Party won't be able to win elections without appealing to minority voters.

The last thing these elites want is to do is moderate their hard line conservative views, so their response has been to establish a myth of rampant voter fraud perpetrated by Democrats and minority voters. The prominent Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund even wrote a book on the topic. He says:

Democrats are far more skilled at encouraging poor people — who need money — to participate in shady vote-buying schemes.

His sentence is a sufficiently idiotic attempt at propaganda that I need not offer a critique, just 4 digits followed seven letters: 2000 & Diebold.

Today's conservative elites may be less overtly racist than the white supremacists of the past, yet they still execute their political agenda with Orwellian precision. For example, Bush understands the symbolic importance of having a diverse cabinet -- yet his DOJ Civil Rights Division hasn't hired a single black attorney in four years and his administration has steadfastly pursued a racist vote-suppression agenda.

Far from being marginalized, racist ideology is fully integrated into the modern Republican Party machine.

On the airwaves, Fox News is a cheerleader for racist hosts and guests (see the clip below). Rush Limbaugh happily calls Barack Obama a "magic negro," yet Dick Cheney is a regular guest on his show. Online, Steve Sailer, a popular conservative columnist for the white nationalist web site VDARE.com contributor calls Obama a "wigger" and is praised as a "genius" by National Review's John Derbyshire. The Bell Curve's 1994 argument that the intellectual abilities of minorities are genetically inferior to whites is now a widely accepted truism amongst conservatives; indeed, one of its authors, Charles Murray, was rewarded with a plum post at the American Enterprise Institute, a mainstream Republican think-tank.

As bleak things may seem, there is cause for hope. Some brave leaders in the Republican Party are willing to stand up to their racist colleagues. Perhaps most notable among them is Florida Governor Charlie Crist who recently reformed Florida's ineffective and draconian ban on ex-felon voting, a ban which disenfranchised non-felons as well as ex-felons.

For all of us, let's hope the Crists of the GOP manage to reclaim their party from the grips of racist conservative elites.

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