Monday, July 30, 2012

Florida GOP: "We want to suppress black votes"

Florida, Florida, Florida -- as Tim Russert famously lamented:

The state that delivered us Bush/Cheney via a 2000 high-jacked election; Florida, perhaps the nation's most important battleground swing state; Florida; the host of the 2012 GOP convention -- and now our worst suspicions confirmed:

In the debate over new laws meant to curb voter fraud in places like Florida, Democrats always charge that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote of liberal voting blocs like blacks and young people, while Republicans just laugh at such ludicrous and offensive accusations. That is, every Republican except for Florida’s former Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who, scorned by his party and in deep legal trouble, blew the lid off what he claims was a systemic effort to suppress the black vote. In a 630-page deposition recorded over two days in late May, Greer, who is on trial for corruption charges, unloaded a litany of charges against the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” in his party, including the effort to suppress the black vote.
In the deposition, released to the press yesterday, Greer mentioned a December 2009 meeting with party officials. “I was upset because the political consultants and staff were talking about voter suppression and keeping blacks from voting,” he said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. He also said party officials discussed how “minority outreach programs were not fit for the Republican Party,” according to the AP. source
We have long suspected that the GOP's voter fraud crusade is nothing more than a witch-hunt to suppress minority voters. We know how the GOP plays the game -- down and dirty. Now, under sworn oath -- straight from the horses mouth -- is the smoking gun.
The GOP has long abandoned reaching out to black voters and have engaged in voter suppression: keep blacks form voting. This is nothing new. Some of our jack legged deceivers preachers actively -- out of greed -- participated in black vote suppression:
Christine Todd Whitman's campaign made payments to black ministers and Democratic Party workers in exchange for promises not to rally votes for Gov. Jim Florio in the final stages of the New Jersey gubernatorial race, her campaign manager said today.
The manager, Edward J. Rollins, said the campaign funneled about $500,000 in such "walking around money" from the state Republican Party. Those efforts to depress the vote in urban, heavily Democratic areas, he said, were important in Mrs. Whitman's narrow upset victory.
Mr. Rollins said the campaign made donations to pro-Florio ministers who agreed not to press the Governor's cause from the pulpit and payments to Democratic Party workers who sat Election Day out.
A spokesman for one black clergy group in New Jersey said today that he knew of no one who had received money from the Whitman campaign.
Speaking to reporters at a breakfast meeting, Mr. Rollins described the payments to ministers as contributions to their "favorite charities."
He added: "The ministers obviously play a very critical role in the black community, and we attempted to neutralize them. We basically had a dialogue with them." source
And that was in 1993!
The election is in around 100 days and the question is: Are you going to make sure your vote counts? If so, now is the time to make sure your voter registration is valid and up-to-date.

2 comments:

  1. Great post Ben...you are dead-on correct...we can not wait to the last moment only to find our names have been purged.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah you want to vote for 4 more years of that muslim, socialist Kenyan. I get it. American the new 3rd world nation.

    ReplyDelete