Long Term Strategery

by digby

Rick Perlstein has done a little bit of research on the Republican party as most of you know. Today, he reminds us just how deeply the GOP obsession with voter fraud in embedded in the GOP DNA:

Let me show you. Read this report from 1964, running down all the ways how Barry Goldwater’s Republican Party was working overtime to keep minorities from voting. The document can be found in the LBJ Library, where I researched my book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus:

John M Baley, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charged today that “under the guise of setting up an apparatus to protect the sanctity of the ballot, the Republicans are actually creating the machinery for a carefully organized campaign to intimidate voters and to frighten members of minority groups from casing their ballots on November 3rd.

“‘Let’s get this straight,’ Bailey added, ‘the Democratic Party is just as much opposed to vote frauds as is the Republican party. We will settle for giving all legally registered voters an opportunity to make their choice on November 3rd. We have enough faith in our Party to be confident that the outcome will be a vote of confience in President Johnson and a mandate for the President and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, to continue the programs of the Johnson-Kennedy Administration.

“‘But we have evidence that the Republican program is not really what it purports to be. it is an organized effort to prevent the foreign born, to prevent Negroes, to prevent members of ethnic minorities from casting their votes by frightening and intimidating them at the polling place.

“‘We intend to see to it that the rights of these people are protected. We will have our people at the polling places–not to frighten or threaten anyone–but to protect the right of any eligible voter to cast a secret ballot without threats or intimidation.’

From the moment that the Voting Rights Act passed the Republicans have been working overtime to put roadblocks in front of it. Why they feel they cannot win without cheating is anybody’s guess. My personal theory is that they just believe they should do anything and everything, including cheating and stealing, to ensure that they keep their privileges and prerogatives in American society. That’s the glue that holds the racists, the businessmen and the conservative Christians together.

Read the rest of the post here. The more things change…

.