Illegitimacy

by digby

Republicans have been working on a theory of voter fraud for decades, which is designed to suppress the vote and call into question the legitimacy of any Democratic victories. We know this. It is documented. I and many others have been writing about this for years. So this should not surprise anyone who follows this issue:

PPP’s newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters
nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack
Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately…

Overall 62% of Americans think Obama legitimately won the election to only 26% who think ACORN stole it for him, as few Democrats or independents buy into that line of thinking.

I had always thought they were gearing up for a full blown assault on “illegal immigrant” voting (and I would imagine that’s in the pipeline as the demographics continue to shift.) But with the election of an African American, the ACORN thing was more salient to the racist base.

The conservative movement has long held that Democrats can never be legitimate office holders because it is an article of faith that a majority of the country believes as they do. The Village agrees — they are always going on about how “this is a conservative country.” So they can’t compute how a person who doesn’t run openly and proudly as a conservative Republican could possibly legitimately win an election.

Policy is irrelevant to all this, by the way. This is about tribal identity and culture, not politics and governance.

Update: Greenwald has more on the assault on ACORN today.

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