By Nicholas Stix
Talk about burying your lede! The following piece is pretty weak tea, but I suppose it’s better than nothing. Barely. But the GOP, which includes the WSJ, is going to have to do a lot better, if it is to stand a chance to win in November, and thus earn itself a reprieve on its self-imposed death sentence as a national party.
• REVIEW & OUTLOOK
• May 31, 2012, 6:52 p.m. ET
• Wall Street Journal
Holder's Racial Incitement
When looking for the Attorney General's motives, think lower.
Comments (874)
The United States of America has a black President whose chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric Holder, is also black. They have a lot of political power. So how are they using it? Well, one way is to assert to black audiences that voter ID laws are really attempts to disenfranchise black Americans. And liberals think Donald Trump's birther fantasies are offensive?
"In my travels across this country, I've heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from citizens, who—often for the first time in their lives—now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation's most noble ideals," Mr. Holder said Wednesday in a speech to the Council of Black Churches. Voter ID laws and white discrimination, he added, mean that "some of the achievements that defined the civil rights movement now hang in the balance."
That's right. The two most powerful men in America are black, two of the last three Secretaries of State were black, numerous corporate CEOs and other executives are black, and minorities of many races now win state-wide elections in states that belonged to the Confederacy, but the AG implies that Jim Crow is on the cusp of a comeback.
It's demeaning to have to dignify this argument with facts, but here goes. Voter ID laws have been found by the courts not to be an undue burden under the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. The landmark Supreme Court opinion, upholding an Indiana law in 2008, was written for a six-member majority by that noted right-winger, John Paul Stevens.
Black voter turnout increased in Georgia and Indiana after voter ID laws passed. Georgia began implementing its law requiring one of six forms of voter ID in 2007. According to data from Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the black vote increased by 42%, or 366,000 votes, in 2008 over 2004. The Latino vote grew by 140% or 25,000 votes in 2008, while the white vote increased by only 8% from four years earlier.
No doubt Mr. Obama's presence on the ballot helped drive that turnout surge in 2008, but then the black vote in Georgia also increased by 44.2% during the midterm Congressional races of 2010 from 2006. The Hispanic vote grew by 66.5% in 2010 from four years earlier. Those vote totals certainly don't suggest that requiring an ID is a barrier to the ballot box.
As for public opinion, an April 2012 Fox News survey found that a majority of Democrats (52%), Republicans (87%) and independents (72%) support voter ID laws. This is no doubt because Americans understand intuitively that ballot integrity is as important as ballot access to democratic credibility. Everyone's franchise is devalued if an election turns on the votes of the quick and the dead.
All of this honors Mr. Holder too much because the real key to understanding his speech is to think lower. A May 4 story in the Washington Post got to the heart of the matter: "The number of black and Hispanic registered voters has fallen sharply since 2008, posing a serious challenge to the Obama campaign in an election that could turn on the participation of minority voters."
In the 2008 heyday of hope and change, strong minority turnout helped push Mr. Obama to victory, especially in such swing states as Virginia and New Mexico. But as another election approaches, the minority thrill is gone. According to the Census Bureau, Hispanic voter registration has fallen 5% across the U.S., to about 11 million. The decline is 28% in New Mexico and about 10% in Florida, another swing state. Black registration is down 7% across the country.
The likeliest explanation is economic, as job losses and mortgage foreclosures lead to dislocation and migration to new areas. But it's also possible that many minorities are as disappointed as everyone else with the lackluster recovery. For all of Mr. Obama's attempts to portray Mitt Romney as out of touch, no one has suffered more in the Obama economy than minorities.
Which explains Mr. Holder's racial incitement strategy. If Mr. Obama is going to win those swing states again, he needs another burst of minority turnout. If hope won't get them to vote for Mr. Obama again, then how about fear?
Mr. Holder's Council of Black Churches address is merely the latest of his election-year moves that charge racial discrimination of one kind or another. These include voting-rights lawsuits to block voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina, intervention in immigration cases in Arizona, and various housing and lending discrimination suits. Whatever the legal merits of these cases, their sudden proliferation in an election year suggests a political motivation.
The courts will eventually expose much of this as meritless, but it's a shame the media won't call Mr. Holder on this strategy before the election. Imagine the uproar if a Republican AG pursued a similar strategy. It's worse than a shame that America's first black Attorney General is using his considerable power to inflame racial antagonism.
A version of this article appeared June 1, 2012, on page A12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Holder's Racial Incitement.
Mr. Styx, just for a head's up: Romney cannot win the upcoming election because approximately half of Republicans, especially the Ron Paul supporters, know that he would only continue Obama's policies (with a white face). They will not vote for him. Democrats and Independents will not vote for him because he is the epitome of the establishment GOP. I've been a registered Republican for forty something years and I will vote for Obama if Romney is the GOP nominee. Look for a riot at the Convention in August, btw.
ReplyDeleteOne interesting development is the surge against voter fraud.
ReplyDeleteI suspect we are seeing a reverse political rhetoric at play that springs from the same source as the Tea Party: frustration, fear and contempt ("racism" during times of non White president).
The MSM usually introduces ideas it wants accepted as conventional wisdom through a series of steps.
Once, everyone knew that integration would be a disaster, now everyone must say how horrible segregation was, in spite of the contrary evidence.
Once, gays were known to be dangerous, subversive perverts, now if you say that marriage is supposed to be for men and women, you may get fired from your job.
But the Right is potentially successfully positioning the voter fraud issue into the mainstream using the MSM playbook.
The result will be that folks will have heard enough about it by the time we get to election day, when the court challenges attack suspected fraud, folks won't be surprised or revolted by the idea.
Even if it isn't the 2012 election, the next civil war in this country will be massive and permitted voter fraud that puts non whites in control who then raise massive taxes on legal White voters. That's when it all comes apart and gets ugly up en heeah.
pls get disqus for comments
Anon,
ReplyDeleteI've got an idea for something you could do that would be more productive than effectively p*ssing in your own punch.
Get a bunch of Ron Paul supporters together and work to change your local elections to low threshold PR. That's how new parties that actually hold positions in govt are started all the time in places like Finland, Netherlands and Israel.
You can look it up-it's true.
Here's a bit of info to spur you on the path:
http://american3rdposition.com/?p=5400
In promoting PR for governmental elections, the easiest place to begin is at the local level. Usually all it takes is a change in a city or county charter in order to adopt proportional representation. City governments regularly form committees to review their charters, and these are excellent opportunities for citizens to raise the option of using PR. City officials are sometimes reluctant to lead the way in this kind of change, and they may even try to impede it. So in many areas citizens may often have to organize themselves and offer referendums in order to reform their city charter. In recent years, citizens have put PR referendums on the ballot in Cincinnati and San Francisco. Both efforts narrowly went down to defeat, garnering 45% and 43% of the vote respectively.