…and Republicans accidentally tell the truth.
It’s obvious that the efforts of the Democrats’ Battleground Texas are making some Republicans nervous. And that’s leading to some unforced errors that are creating some very bad publicity for the Texas GOP.
Take Texas GOP chairman Steve Munisteri‘s efforts to drum up support for “Battlefield Dallas,” an attempt by Dallas Republicans to counter the Battleground Texas push. Munisteri flew up to Dallas for an event and said all the right things during his speech.
It was billed of “the first public meeting of Battlefield Dallas.”
But a Tea Party Republican made the headlines when he had this to say about GOP voter outreach efforts.
“I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats,” Ken Emanuelson said.
Battleground Texas didn’t miss an opportunity to capitalize on the gaffe — they want you to listen to the audio of the event for yourself.
And you can bet as long as African-American voters continue to vote 90, 95, 98% for the Democrats, Republicans will continue to try to keep us from voting. It really is that simple and the message is clear: if we voted for Republicans, we wouldn’t be disenfranchised so damn much. if we don’t, well, the right to vote is taken away from us.
Think maybe we need a Voting Rights Amendment in the Constitution after all?
TR
I constantly worry that one day the conservatives in this country will no longer be as mindblowingly stupid as they are heartbreakingly evil.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m sure Battlefield Texas is just a social welfare group. That’s the Rovian/Roberts term for “tax exept”, isn’t it?
West of the Rockies
No doubt someone will step forth and say things were not artfully worded and that no offense was intended, that the group certainly respects the democratic process, yada-yada-yada, but why do blah people have to be so blah?
Woodrowfan
but, but, but, the righties say the fact that blacks vote 9-1 for Democrats shows that black people are the REAL racists!
Redshirt
If only Republicans gave out Obama phones too, maybe they’d get the poor and brown votes.
Oh well. Better disenfranchise the lot of them.
Eric U.
it really seems to me that the republican brand of voter fraud should be more prosecutable than the non-existent kind that they whine about
pokeyblow
Of course. The GOP is not only a party for racists, it is increasingly dependent on racist voter suppression for survival.
You’d hope that there’d be a faction of wealthy white republican types who had some residual sense of fair-play, who would refuse to go along with the Limbaugh/teabagger hate-infested morons. But you’d hope in vain.
jackmac
Yes, let’s get a Voting Rights Amendment ASAP.
And you want to see wingnuts’ heads really explode? Let’s also push repeal of the 22nd Amendment. Yeah, the one that limits presidents to two terms.
kindness
Must be somethin in the water in Texas. I figure it’s alcohol.
Redshirt
Agreed though that Texas is THE battlefield. Wrest it from Republican control, and the GOP is done.
Punchy
Once the VRA is bounced by SCOTUS, you can bet that those blacks will not be voting. At least not without showing ID, 4 pieces of mail, library card, NRA membership, Texas Republican enlistment, and absence of brown eyes.
I really shudder to think what TX (and Bama and GA) will dream up once the VRA is gone.
Gin & Tonic
@Redshirt: Agree that Texas’ 38 EV’s going blue means they don’t elect a President, but controlling the state govt there and in what, at least another 20 states that have all branches R is, while not a Pyrrhic victory, still a not very satisfying one.
quannlace
And add Phyllis Schaflly’s recent pearls of wisdom to the stew. That there’s no point in reaching out to Hispanics for the same reason that they trend Democratic. And they’ve got the highest birth rate in America, or least she believes they do. So that’s why immigration reform must be stopped, because we can’t have all those new Dem voters. Cause Schaflly must also believe that every HIspanic in America must also be illegal.
The woman’s nuts.
nineone
What mask? All I see are white hoods, and fewer of those everyday.
sb
@TR:
When was the last time they weren’t this? Serious question. How far back do we have to go?
SatanicPanic
Eric Holder hasn’t attacked them with the IRS yet? What is he waiting for?
JPL
Leave the poor guy alone, he misspoke. link He should have said, IMO, blah..blah..blah.
Amir Khalid
The name “Battlefield Dallas” is reminiscent of this terrible science-fiction movie I once saw on TV. Really ugly “alien” costumes. I’m just trying to remember the title. Wait, it’ll come to me …
Jewish Steel
Is it a gaffe if it is the honest truth?
Redshirt
If I was the evil gazilionaire George Soros I would be dumping serious money into Texas for voter registration drives for Latinos and AA’s.
It’s the “kill shot” for national level Republicans. FINISH THEM!
Amir Khalid
@Jewish Steel:
Let’s split the difference and call it a Freudian slip.
Roger Moore
FTFY.
Tokyokie
@Punchy: I live in Texas, I’m not black, and I still carry my voter registration card, driver’s license and passport to the polling place every time I vote, just in case there’s some GOP asshole there to make a stink. Not that I’ve ever encountered one, but you never know. (And it does provide some amusement for the poll workers, who, invariably at my polling place, are black.) Mostly I do it to encourage the spousal unit, who’s a naturalized citizen, to do likewise.
CDW
Too bad this recording couldn’t be played at the SCOTUS when the voting rights act was being heard.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
I believe it was called “The 2012 Republican National Convention”
quannlace
Not to worry. I’m sure they’ll be back to making stupid comments about rape again. That should take the heat off.
El Cid
This is why they have to protect us Real Amurkans from the undead forces of ACORN.
We need to relaunch ACORN if for no other reason than for the head-splodeyness.
cvstoner
This is only going to get worse as the Republican death spiral continues to grow and more and more “rational Republicans” jump ship.
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is how much more damage can the Tea Partiers inflict before the system can correct itself?
Shakezula
Nope. If the Southern Strategy wasn’t enough of a hint, you must know that 11/4 (08) changed everything. If every single brown person voted R in the next couple of elections they’d use their super majorities to disenfranchise us. No way in hell they’re going to risk another Obama in the White House.
West of the Rockies
@sb: Eisenhower? He was before my time… the first Repub. prez I recall is Nixon. He did establish the EPA, which is good. I can name a few individual Repubs. I can respect for some reason or another. Former CA gov Ahnold took green energy and the environment seriously, for instance, so I at least appreciate that.
llelldorin
@pokeyblow: But there are many such wealthy white Republican types still extant! The problem is that they form a huge wing of the Democratic Party!
(I still have no idea how you develop effective messaging for a party whose key political stance these days seems to be nothing more than “we’re not nuts.” It’s true, and I certainly prefer it to the alternative, but…)
Shakezula
@Tokyokie: I hope you’d call the cops, that’s illegal.
NonyNony
@pokeyblow:
Well first of all – you don’t get to be a billionaire by caring about “fair play”. The ones who crawl their way up take every advantage they can get. The ones who inherit it can’t think too much about “fair play” or they’d divest themselves of much of their inheritance in recognition that they were born on home plate and didn’t actually hit a home run and so they owe the world a lot for their good fortune in winning the “who will my parents be” lotto.
Second of all – the “sane billionaires” leave the party and become Democrats. It makes much more sense for them to buy their way into the Democratic party than to try to change the direction of the GOP. The nutty billionaires are willing to insanely outspend them at every turn, so their money isn’t an advantage there. And they have probably convinced themselves that the “unwashed masses” are idiot Tea Party types for the most part so it wouldn’t do any good to try to change the direction of the party anyway – write off your losses, move to the Democratic party, and work to make sure that the top marginal tax rate the Dems push for never rises above the levels that were there when Bill Clinton was in office (nevermind that an 80% top marginal rate is probably what’s best for the country overall).
Tokyokie
@El Cid: So Republicans want to make sure that no organization that hires anybody who ever worked for ACORN ever gets another dime of federal money? If such a notion weren’t of such dubious legality, I’d urge everybody who once worked for ACORN to find jobs with energy and agribusiness concerns so we could get rid of a swath of corporate welfare. These guys are even stupider than they are venal.
Paul in KY
I, personally, don’t want loser, redneck, racist, white dumbfucks to vote, if they are going to vote 9 – 1 for Republicans.
Can’t stop them from being idjits, though.
Tokyokie
@Shakezula: Well, nothing’s happened yet, but I don’t trust the GOP to not try something someday. And comments like the ones the GOP official made help legitimize my paranoia.
? Martin
Man, is there no place left for white people to say intolerant things? This is fucking discrimination!
Tyranny I tell you! White men are being systematically denied their rights!
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Battlefield Earth. An L. Ron Hubbard book that was somewhat readable & was turned into a completely unwatchable movie.
KG
In all fairness, the GOP probably wouldn’t want any demographic subset to vote if they’re voting 9:1 for the Dems. I’ll even go so far as to suggest that the Dems, on some level, wouldn’t want demographic subsets to vote if it was 9:1 for the GOP.
It’s an incredibly stupid thing to say out loud though about any group. If for no other reason than it shows that on some level you don’t believe your message will actually resonate with voters. Which, of course, is the GOP’s main problem these days. Their base is made up of two groups: true believers/deadenders; and, people who reflexively vote Republican because that’s what they’ve always done and don’t pay enough attention to know that the GOP is the one that’s mucking everything up these days.
Violet
From the Battleground Texas website:
All elections should be contested. Pay attention, Democrats. All elections.
MomSense
@jackmac:
All in! I figure the Republicans have wasted at least one term with their Just Say No program so I think Obama should get at least a 3rd term.
fuckwit
@Paul in KY: Oh gawd, not the one with Travolta? Scientology nuttiness.
Berial
@? Martin:
I wonder which of those three actually got him in trouble.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
Ah yes, that’s the one.
The Tragically Flip
Not that you can ever totally seperate the racism part of this, nor should it be downplayed but even if he had talked about some other targetable non-racial Democratic heavy constituency (union members, vegetarians, people who read books) and said the same thing, the scandal is that they still think suppressing votes of your opponents is a legitimate political tactic. That is, this can be scandalous and outrageous even if it wasn’t targeted at a historically (and still) oppressed racial minority. The desire to deny voters their franchise is disgusting whomever the target.
Suffern ACE
@? Martin: I bet if the IRS sent letters asking why commie pinko stuff ACORN was reading, they wouldn’t have the problems they are having now. Heck, I bet the book list that was created in 1950 that was supposed to catch those Reds might still be operational.
Have you now, or have you ever been in an organzation trying to get poor people to vote?
The Dangerman
@jackmac:
There’s a Hillary on Line 2 for you.
Also, does Battlefield Dallas have anything to say about JR?
Bubblegum Tate
@Woodrowfan:
Quite so! In fact, when I told one wingnut that it sounded he had written off the idea of getting the black vote, he responded: “I’ve completely written them off because they can’t get past their racism, and anyway they’ve been bought by their Democrat [sic] masters and decided that they want to stay on the plantation.”
Basically, he was Ken Emanuelson, but without the audio recording.
West of the Rockies
@Villago Delenda Est: Oh, I remember that — it was scary, especially the shorter monster with the crazed eyes (who was ultimately vanquished by the intra-party corruption ray).
Cacti
Hmmm…
Must be one of those “outrageous statements from errant Republican voices” that the College Republicans talked about.
Otherwise known as “Saying publicly, what Republicans actually think privately”.
? Martin
@The Tragically Flip: Notable is that blacks make up 12% of the population of Texas, latinos 38%. It’s telling that their focus is on the blacks.
Bruce S
Hey, I have to be honest. I don’t want most of these crazy white people to vote if it’s all about their hating Obama. But I’m not going to engage in unconstitutional harassment and other anti-American shit to block them. Big difference…
geg6
@Redshirt:
Yes, this.
And I just want to thank all the Texas Republicans who are making our job so much easier.
You know, in November 2008, I thought I’d witnessed the most amazing thing I’d ever see in politics when Obama was elected (Watergate is now second place on my all-time list). But when all is said and done, even that may be eclipsed by how the GOP has not only let the mask slip, but is out there, maskless, and with the id screaming its madness for everyone to see.
ranchandsyrup
Good news everyone. House Gopers introduced another amendment to defund ACORN. Didn’t they have some post offices to name after Reagan today?
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
You win.
Heliopause
I’m ambivalent about this proposed amendment because I haven’t seen demonstrated how it would eliminate abuses such as the ones we saw last cycle. An affirmative right to vote already exists (twice) in the Constitution; the language is a bit fuzzy but still more explicit than, for instance, the Right to Privacy. Will courts throw out a voter ID law simply because of the existence of this amendment? I don’t see why, but am open to argument.
The amendment empowers Congress to enforce it with appropriate legislation, but that power already exists as far as I can tell. So the real battle won’t change at all, it will remain in the various legislatures, where it’s up to activists to convince them to pass good legislation.
There is nothing in the proposed amendment that I find objectionable, I’m just not seeing that it will do much good, but who knows.
Cacti
@Punchy:
Plus an affidavit from the attending physician at your birth, affirming that it wasn’t in Kenya
A baptismal certificate from an acceptable christian denomination
A DNA sample
And a notarized form of consent allowing a member of “True the Vote” to stand in the booth with you and make sure you don’t choose the wrong candidate.
geg6
@The Tragically Flip:
True, but the added fillip of targeting the one and only group of voters who they once enslaved and went to war in order to continue doing so and, in fact, expand it to places that didn’t want slaves made the judges give it 10 as opposed to the 9.5 all other voter repression gets.
nineone
@El Cid: Ah, the continued Republican Outreach to women and minorities. Kinda gets you right there, don’t it? They’ll have this thing licked in no time, you’ll see, haters.
I’ve heard of kicking them when they’re down, but kicking them when they are nonexistent?
Trollhattan
@? Martin:
RU kidding me, that’s nuttin’ nuttin’ I tells ya. You want white-folk oppression, how about not being allowed to raise your kids, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, Honzlynn, Heinrich Hons and Adolf Hitler? ‘Murka is doomed.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/hitler-dad-fights-for-custody-in-nazi-uniform.html
Trollhattan
@West of the Rockies:
And, he was very into the hired help.
West of the Rockies
Okay, so really, are we waiting for these people (wingnuts) to just die? Demographically, it appears that young voters include fewer Repubs., but they are still out there. There are still youngsters being brought up to the sound of Limbaugh’s voice. Is all of this really just the cyclical ebb and flow of political fervor?
Trollhattan
@ranchandsyrup:
SRSLY? Do they have to dig it up and revive it first, before re-killing it or can they just go piss on its grave and call it a day? I don’t understand how these complicated gummint thingies work.
Kay
I’m telling you, the Voting Rights Amendment is great politics.
They should roll it out THE DAY the SCOTUS guts the VRA.
I’m a little mad at them for not waiting. They have no sense of drama.
No one is going to.listen to conservative and libertarians lawyers babbling about “preclearance.” All they’re going to hear is “they overturned the VRA!”
Don’t feel guilty about dramatizing this. Conservatives deserve it. They were too cowardly to gut in Congress. They shouldn’t be able to hide behind Scalia’s robes. They should take every bit of political pain, ESPECIALLY because they dumped it on a court.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@? Martin: Because, right now, Latinos seriously undervote, unlike blacks. If Latinos in Texas had voted at the same percentage as Latinos in California, Texas could have possibly gone for Obama.
Every Democratic organization in the country (OFA, DNC, DailyKos, etc) should organize drives to come to Texas and help educate Latinos on the importance of voting and helping them register.
Jeremy
Even if Section 5 of the Voting Rights act is struck down Voter ID and other voter suppression tactics can be challenged by the DOJ and other groups in the courts. Section 5 is just the per-clearance part and it doesn’t apply everywhere.
If the republicans go ahead with more voter suppression tactics then blacks and minority voting in general will continue to increase exponentially. Conservatives going after section 5 will lead to a backlash in 2014 and 2016.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Heliopause:
Not really. What the constitution says about voting is that the states have to send Reps to the electoral college. The amendments say that if there is voting, you can’t discriminate on race or gender. Even the 26th amendment gives some room:
Texas, could, for instance, just pick a bunch of people off the street to the convention.
Jeremy
@West of the Rockies: No, we are not waiting. People on the grassroots are working to push states in a liberal direction. The Obama team are working to turn Texas Blue in the next 4-8 years. Which is similar to the efforts that turned Colorado blue and the Nevada state legislature blue.
SatanicPanic
@West of the Rockies: Reagan’s handlers were better at passing off their evil policies than current GOPers. Talk radio and FOX made them think they were invicible.
burnspbesq
@Punchy:
I was getting ready to say something about trolling, but then it occurred to me that you might actually not understand how relatively narrow the issue before the Supreme Court is.
Do you?
Kay
@Jeremy:
But why would one miss such a great opportunity to put them on defense on voting again?
Gutting the VRA is HUGE. Why would we ever downplay it and say “well, we still have Sec. 2”?
They deserve the political consequences of their actions. When they renewed the VRA in Congress they were more than happy to pose for pic with civil rights leaders.
They then immediately started working on a court challenge. Harry Reid said it at the time (bitterly, I might add).
He said they’re going to court because they don’t want their names on this.
burnspbesq
@Kay:
Aww, not you, too.
Gut? I do not think that word means what you think it means.
SatanicPanic
@burnspbesq: OK, I haven’t been following this, what’s going on with the VRA?
ranchandsyrup
@Trollhattan: they at least started putting in there “ACORN and all of its successors and assigns”. Still it is farging annoying. But it plays with the rubes.
Jay C
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
And this would affect the quality of their usual party-convention delegations just HOW?
Kay
@burnspbesq:
Screw that, burns. Conservatives in Congress posed with civil rights leaders when they renewed in 2006.
AT THE SAME TIME they were assembling the lawsuit to go after the VRA.
Maybe elected conservatives should have to show their cards on voting rights. They’re hiding behind that court. I have no intention of helping them do that. Justice Scalia is worried about GOP. Senators in VA? Poor babies! I weep for the poor, poor Senators, who are too cowardly to vote against the VRA.
Midnight Marauder
@burnspbesq:
In what world has an issue being relatively narrow prevented the Roberts’ Supreme Court from gutting landmark precedents?
Honestly, you have to be the most pedantic yet obtuse person to ever grace this blog.
burnspbesq
@SatanicPanic:
The only thing that’s at issue in the Supreme Court this term is the pre-clearance procedure under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. I think it’s a great thing and hope it survives, but the notion that the VRA can’t be enforced without it is, simply put, nonsensical.
Legslation that adversely affects the ability of minorities and women to vote doesn’t just suddenly appear out of nowhere. It proceeds through a legislative process that can be monitored. And if DOJ knows that something is coming, it can have a complaint and a motion for a TRO drafted up and ready to be filed the minute a governor signs the bill into law.
geg6
@Kay:
Yes, this. Completely and utterly.
burnspbesq
@Midnight Marauder:
This one. Are you from a parallel universe?
El Cid
@Tokyokie: You are a clever, evil schemer. Perhaps YOU sold your sold to ACORN!
Midnight Marauder
@burnspbesq:
I’m from the one where the Republican Party has been explicitly clear in their intentions to GUT the Voting Rights Act in the least conspicuous way possible.
You know, this one.
Kay
@burnspbesq:
Go.look at the briefs in the VRA case. Look at the states who flipped their position. All of a sudden, preclearance is an intolerable burden, right as Latinos gain electoral clout.
It’s disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.
Preclearance became a huge intolerable burden between 2006 and 2008?
Come on.
SatanicPanic
What’s pre-clearance?
Kay
@burnspbesq:
Burns, just read the list of states who switched position on preclearance and then look at growth in the Latino vote.
I’d like to know why preclearance became such a burden, when the last time they weighed in it was hunky dory and running like a top. “No problem!”
Now it’s a grave and growing administrative burden, but sort of STRATEGICALLY.
karen
@Cacti:
Don’t forget the proof of the church you belong to. People who belong to mosques and temples and synagogues need not apply.
Tone In DC
@El Cid:
Fuck.
They’re worse than I thought, which is saying something. What are they gonna defund next? The Negro Leagues? Churchill’s Special Operations Executive? The Pony Express? The wine cellar of the Hotel California?
karen
@Jeremy:
What backlash? Only white christian males will be allowed to vote.
SatanicPanic
@SatanicPanic: Nevermind, I looked it up.
Chris
@pokeyblow:
I’ve never placed much faith in the power of Noblesse Oblige, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. The Limgaugh/teabagger hate infested morons are the ones with the votes. The residually-sane-white-Republicans might exist, but they couldn’t get their candidate through the primaries anyway. Best they could hope for is to split the party and let the Democrats win.
And let’s be honest, while they might find the Limbaugh/teabagger hate infested morons a bit embarrassing, nothing these people do matters to them as much as the thought of uppity Democrats trying to raise their taxes from their lowest point in eighty years to their previous lowest point in eighty years.
Kay
@geg6:
This is when you need a shameless bombthrower.
“Republicans have outlawed minority voting!”
Is that too strong? :)
Woodrowfan
but if we have a voting amendment, then we;ll have to have unisex bathrooms!
Shakezula
Has this rat fucking dickblister cried foul for the way the liberal media is misconstruing his words?!
Shakezula
Has this rat fucking dickblister cried foul for the way the liberal media is misconstruing his words?
KG
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): you’re confusing two things. The presidential election is designed differently than other elections. Technically, there’s no right to vote for president in the constitution – mainly because we don’t vote (directly) for president. We vote for electors, who then vote for the president. It is entirely up to the various State Legislatures how the electors will be chosen. The states, in the last 100 years or so, decided the best/easiest way, was to have the public vote on electors. But there really isn’t anything keeping electors from voting for whoever they want at the electoral college – it happens every few election cycles, but is usually symbolic in some way. But really, they’re pretty much just honor-bound to vote for the person they said they would when they qualified as a potential elector.
However, voting for statewide offices, and representation in congress, where there are direct elections, there, the right to vote is pretty plainly secured. Direct election of Representatives is in Article I, direct election of Senators is in the Seventeenth Amendment.
Fifteenth Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
Nineteenth Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Twenty-Sixth Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Heliopause
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The Constitution provides that “the People” select House and Senate members. Again, there is enough fuzziness in the language that this could be interpreted different ways, but it is still an affirmation of a de facto right to vote for “the People”, however you might want to define that. Because of that fuzziness one can concoct arguments for that right being applied narrowly, but I’m still not seeing how similar legalistic procedures can’t be applied to voting laws after the passage of the proposed amendment.
Matt McIrvin
@Woodrowfan: Unisex voting booths! A man could maybe vote while he was dressed as a lady! Next thing you know box turtles will be voting.
Paul in KY
@fuckwit: That’s the one. Hubbard kept most of the Scientology wackiness out of book. It is SF though, with mean aliens & set thousands of years in future, etc. etc.
Paul in KY
@Bruce S: My take too. You stated it more artfully & with less cuss words than I did.
Paul in KY
@Midnight Marauder: I favor your interpretation of their aims & the Roberts Court.