With a hat-tip for the title-variation on my pal, Art Levine’s landmark piece on “The Republican War on Voting” in The Prospect, my column this week at the UK’s Guardian focuses on the latest in the Republican “voter fraud” scam, intended only to keep Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast a legal vote this year.
The launching point for the column: conservative “founding father” Paul Weyrich’s remarkable comments to 15,000 preachers in Dallas in 1980, as seen in the video at right, featuring this Rosetta Stone phrase:
“Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome – good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
Yes, that’s what he actually said. Out loud. And the GOP has been working to make Weyrich’s anti-democracy dreams a reality, at no small cost, ever since. My complete Guardian column is here…
My only question for Paul Weyrich is “What would Jesus do?” It sounds like Paul Weyrich would have kept the money lenders in the Temple and charged them higher rent.
It is too bad that we can’t run swiftboat style ads against them. Remember the crying Native American ad from a few years back. I would love to see ads with a “crying Jesus” set against video of these “Christian” leaders.
“In religion, the term false prophet is a label given to a person who is viewed as illegitimately claiming charismatic authority within a religious group. … en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_prophet”
I love how you spanked that “backfromiraq” faker Brad.
Either that or he lives in his Rush Limbaugh fantasy world I suppose. When that is the only information you can get over there, anything is possible.
Don’t think they’re not going to steal ’08?
Think again:
Spanky Spitovsky strikes again
I wonder how much is costs the wingnuts over at the Gaudian to stock you with their hired posse?
I have been saying this for over 10 years now every chance I get.
The Rethuglican party has been taken over by Reich wing Christian extremist.
They are “Dominionist” and don’t even pretend to deny it, they are open and blatant about it.
http://www.theocracywatch.org/index.html
http://www.theocracywatch.org/a...ty-256kbps.wmv
http://www.theocracywatch.org/a...sm-256kbps.wmv
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dom...gOfAmerica.htm
http://www.rollingstone.com/pol...the_crusaders/
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?757
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dom...hristians.html
All these people are stark raving insane.
Weyrich developed a plan in the 1970s to create a conservative America, by convincing the American people that conservatives can be trusted to take over political structures.
His influence on media consolidation is indisputable. Why are so many citizens so ignorant on the facts about election integrity issues? Arguably, media consolidation is the single reason huge swathes of Americans are so stupid and disconnected from the political process.
Back in November, FCC Chairman Martin, who grew up steeped in Weyrich’s “Daddy Knows Best” authoritarian government b******t, wrote a NYT op-ed in which he made some truly astonishing comments, such as that his decision to lift the 32-year-old ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership would prevent Americans from being “less informed about our communities,” and that if he didn’t allow cross-ownership, America will end up with “fewer outlets for the expression of independent thinking and a diversity of viewpoints.” He also wrote that a “ban on newspapers owning a broadcast station in their local markets may end up hurting the quality of news and the commitment of news organizations to their local communities.”
You can look them up. He actually wrote that. And I think he actually believes it.
This is the “thinking,” “thinking” that was heavily influenced by this Weyrich character and that began way back in the 70s when I was in college, that’s influencing government policy and legislation today. And it doesn’t matter how the majority of Americans feels about progressive policies. It’s of no consequence that we Americans are relatively united on the policies we believe would improve our situation, because when you have a brainwashed robot in a position of influence, like Martin being able to dictate FCC policy, then you can do all the robo-calling and e-mail spamming to policy-makers, and it will make zero difference.
And just as Karl Rove has spawned the likes of people such as Tim Griffin, Weyrich spawned a guy named Eric Heubeck. In 2001, Heubeck co-wrote with Weyrich a re-write of Weyrich’s original 1970s plan called “The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement.” Read it. It’s startling.
Is Stuart Grangers look alike going to be Obama’s veep?
Link