Well what do you know. All that fear mongering about the census apparently isn't working out too well for the GOP.
We talked last week about the efforts of prominent right-wing voices, who've argued that the U.S. census is not to be trusted. From strange members of Congress (Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul) to strange media personalities (Glenn Beck and Neal Boortz), there's been an ongoing effort to make conservatives fear the constitutionally-mandated process.
To the consternation of Republicans who know better, the anti-census effort may be having an effect. The party is starting to get more actively concerned about the consequences of right-wing paranoia related to the census spreading. [...]
How worried are Republicans? This worried.
Author and former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove will appear in a new public service announcement from the U.S. Census Bureau designed to convince people to mail back their 2010 census forms by the end of the month.
Think Progress has more -- Amid Reports Of Low Republican Participation, Rove Appears In An Ad Promoting The Census
The Bush administration did all it could to politicize the Census and ensure that it fully represented Republican areas. In 2001, the Commerce Department, led by former 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Donald Evans, “rescinded a regulation issued in October by the Clinton administration that had sought to insulate from political pressure any decision on whether to adjust census figures.”
Here's crazy-eyes Bachmann from last June -- Michelle Bachmann: Census Data Was Used to Put Japanese in Internment Camps
