Opinion: Republicans Finally Admitting To Voter Suppression Efforts
Throughout the election season, The Buck Starts Here followed the New Suppressionist's efforts to disenfranchise voters in an effort to benefit Republican candidates.
A state legislative leader in Pennsylvania boasted that the state's voter ID law would swing the state to Mitt Romney was about the only admission from the GOP about their true goals.
But that is changing.
In Florida, Republicans are finally owning up to their true motivation: to discourage Democrats from participating in the 2012 election by creating as many barriers as possible to vote.
The former head of the Florida Republican Party, Jim Greer, confirmed that Republican efforts were racially motivated and their goal was to suppress likely Democratic voters.
It is not news when Republicans try to block access to the ballot box for poor, minority and elderly voters. That is what passes for strategy these days in what is a completely brain dead party.
What is unusual is that Republicans are admitting it.
Greer called the GOP cover story of reducing voter fraud and saving money a "marketing ploy."
Greer told the Palm Beach Post that "The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates. It’s done for one reason and one reason only...'We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.'"
As anyone who follows the subject of in-person voter fraud that ID laws allegedly target, they know that form of fraud does not exist, except in GOP talking points and talk radio rants.
In Greer's words the Republicans in Florida have an "absolute obsession with retaining power."
But the fact is that the acquisition and exercise of power is the rational for the Republican Party not just in Florida, but across the country.
The Republican Party has no more depth than the paranoid rants of Rush Limbaugh and the alternate reality created by FOX NEWS and other elements of the right wing entertainment media complex.
So rather than compete for votes, Republicans prefer to create a massive system of voter disenfranchisement.
There is no greater slap in the face to the people that have sacrificed so much to preserve our freedoms than for a political party to make a mockery of democracy.
About Bill Buck
Bill Buck is a Democratic strategist, President of the Buck Communications Group, a media relations and new media strategies consulting business based in Washington, DC, and Managing Director of the online ad firm Influence DSP. He has over twenty years of international and national communications experience. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.
