Keith Olbermann comments on GOP attempts to suppress votes by attacking ACORN

In 2008, faced with a groundswell of public opinion that should deliver a landslide of disapproval for the Republican party and send it into the political wilderness for years, the poor losers of the GOP are more than ready to prevent that end by any means. Few, if any, of the tactics it is using are illegal - often the result of careful legislation designed to preserve the Republican majority forever - but added together they comprise an assault on democracy which would stun even the cynical and sly politicians of Old Europe.

In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

The GOP and the McCain campaign have been trying to drum up a Bradley Effect, with campaign and party apparatchiks trotting out racist whistles against Obama (and by extension against the party he now leads) at every opportunity while party leaders pretend to be oblivious and unknowing. McCain, Palin and the GOP's Congressional leaders would condemn any overt racism, of course, and attribute it to some bad apples - but they seem remarkably dense in not spotting anything other than utter hate speech racism from their followers (or the candidate himself) when it occurs. The merest veil of deniability conceals their deliberately looking the other way while their supporters run riot.

Nor have their smears stopped at racism. Calling Obama and Dems in general traitors, terrorist abettors, "feminazis" and (oh, horrors) socialists has become a substitute for debating issues. (Actually, Obama's just echoing Lincoln.) From an early stage, the GOP knew it was going to run on personality smears as a substitute for facts. Again, much of the groundswell of hate on the Right is implausibly deniable by the leadership, but since any media attention only fuels their base's paranoia and engenders new smear attacks, "implausible" is all they need to keep the ball rolling independently.

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    I think this might just backfire.

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

The article cited, in the Michigan Messenger, says a full sixty per cent of sub-prime loans in Michigan went to  African American families and that thus they bear a far higher rate of foreclosures. Legal experts think the GOP hasn't got a real case (especially in Michigan where the law allows voters to vote from their last known address) but that doesn't take away from the breathtaking nastiness of even thinking about such a move.

J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm [said,] “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

And then there's the massive conflict of interest:

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

GOP officials elsewhere in Michigan, as well as Ohio, have said they are looking to challenge voter registration based on foreclosure lists - which points to an orchestrated attempt by the McCain campaign to steal the votes of victims of the credit crunch, especially black American victims. This while banks are offered corporate-socialist bailout after bailout and John McCain the 5 Million Dollar Man suggests that common people should miss a holiday or get an extra job to ensure they keep up their payments on a sub-prime loan.

"Welcome to today's Republican Party - FU, you whiners!" (John McCain approved this message)

Crossposted from Newshoggers