All The Way To The Top

by digby

This statement should be the basis for serious congressional investigations:

The overblown histrionics about ACORN do not surprise those of us who have been watching the RNC’s election manipulation antics. For eight years White House operatives have been trying to gin up press stories about voter fraud. David Iglesias of New Mexico was one of seven U.S. Attorneys fired by the White House for their refusal to bring voter fraud prosecutions. “We took over 100 complaints,” from the GOP, he told us, “We investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case in the entire state of New Mexico.”

Iglesias, a McCain supporter, has, for the first time, leveled a new and serious charge: Despite finding none of the 200 voters guilty, he says the White House nevertheless ordered him to illegally prosecute baseless cases against innocent citizens, just to gin up voter fraud publicity. His refusal, he says, cost him his job. “They were looking for politicized — for improperly politicized US attorneys to file bogus voter fraud cases.”

There will never be a better opening for the Democrats to fix the electoral system and expose the sophisticated GOP vote suppression and propaganda program than now. The US Attorney scandal was never fully dealt with and it needs to be if we hope to have fair elections in the future.

The Republicans have a very well funded, professional operation, developed over years, to keep Democrats from voting and to brainwash local election officials. If the race isn’t close enough to win it by vote suppression and intimidation, they will have laid the groundwork to call the legitimacy of the outcome into question to justify total obstruction of the mandate. (And they have the nerve to say that ACORN is destroying the fabric of democracy.)

One of the purposes of having political power is to use it to ensure your future political survival. It doesn’t have to be underhanded or illegal — indeed, in this case protecting the franchise protects the Democratic Party. If that weren’t true, the conservatives wouldn’t work so hard to keeping people from voting. The Democrats are suckers if they don’t take the opportunity of an historic win, with no sour grapes involved, to clean this up. This meme about “voter fraud” is taking hold and if they don’t put a stop to it right now they will regret it.

.