The Rolling Stone article below is an essential read. The GOP knows that it is dying. In order to stay alive it must deceive. The fact is the GOP is a party that has been taken over by a select group of the wealthy who believe they know what is best for America. Moreover, they believe that only a privileged few is entitled to govern and dictate our economic direction.
Given that the immoral portion of the wealthy (note that there are many wealthy folks that want everyone to have equal access to success) is a distinct minority in our country, they must mislead and create divisions among everyone else.
America does not have a voting fraud problem. Yet, most Red States have all passed laws to make it difficult for those that are likely to vote for progressive and middle class centric values to vote. It is ironic that inasmuch as they talk freedom constantly it is their policies that are taking away the freedoms of the middle class. From the control of a woman’s body, to the control of access to voting, to the control of science the GOP mantra has evolved into a cult whose intent is to have an oligarchy with the masses in indentured servitude.
The GOP War on Voting
In a campaign supported by the Koch brothers, Republicans are working to prevent millions of Democrats from voting next year
by: Ari Berman
A voter casts his ballot during the primary elections in Virginia
Matt McClain/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
As the nation gears up for the 2012 presidential election, Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. "What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century," says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C.
Republicans have long tried to drive Democratic voters away from the polls. "I don’t want everybody to vote," the influential conservative activist Paul Weyrich told a gathering of evangelical leaders in 1980. "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." But since the 2010 election, thanks to a conservative advocacy group founded by Weyrich, the GOP’s effort to disrupt voting rights has been more widespread and effective than ever. In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.
