This Is How It Happens

This is how it happens.

It’s election season and you’re a candidate. You mobilize armed supporters and tell them to watch polling places in minority neighborhoods because ethnic minorities are rigging the election against you. That’s how it works in the Third World, where elections are violent. In the U.S., voter intimidation is against the law, but one presidential candidate thinks that’s the way to “Make America Great.”

“You’ve gotta go out, and you’ve gotta get your friends, and you’ve gotta get everyone you know and you’ve gotta watch your polling booths, because I hear too many stories about Pennsylvania, certain areas. I hear too many bad stories, and we can’t lose an election because of you know what I’m talking about. So, go and vote and then go check out areas because a lot of bad things happen, and we don’t want to lose for that reason. We don’t wanna lose, but we especially don’t wanna lose for that reason. So go over and watch, and watch carefully. Because we’re gonna win the state of Pennsylvania, and if we win Pennsylvania, we take back the White House.”
— Donald Trump, Manheim PA, October 1, 2016

“So important that you get out and vote. So important that you watch other communities, because we don’t want this election stolen from us.”
— Donald Trump, Ambridge PA, October 10, 2016

More:

“Militia group calls on members to patrol polls on Election Day,” Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post

“Oath Keepers Founder Rallies Members To Watch Polls On Election Day,” Allegra Kirkland, TPM Livewire

“Specter of election day violence looms as Trump spurs vigilante poll watchers,” Lois Beckett and Oliver Laughland, The Guardian

“Roger Stone Group Planned To Send Out Poll Watchers With Fake Credentials,” Allegra Kirkland, TPM Livewire

“What Causes Some Elections to Go Violent?” Olga Khazan, The Atlantic

“Voting under the gun: elections and conflict around the world,” Thomas Flores, SIPRI

Charles Koch: Horrified By His Own Creation

“To the extent that the Tea Party is a centralized movement, it is so because it has been mobilized by the groups Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, both of which are Koch-financed. As it happens, these groups were formerly a single organization, called Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by, you guessed it, the Koch Brothers.

The Tea Party, from the very beginning, was designed for disruption, and it was a pet project of the Koch brothers (they actually created the first national website for the movement). Charles Koch says he’s interested only in advancing ‘free-market, small-government ideals,’ but what he’s done is manufacture a faux-populist movement that has whipped the conservative base into an anti-government frenzy.”

— “Charles Koch’s Frankenstein problem: He created the Tea Party monster — and now he’s horrified with the results,” Sean Illing, Salon

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Image (“Be Careful What You Wish For, after l’atelier de Disney”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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The GOP & The Tea Party

“Since 2010, Republicans have harnessed the anti-establishment energy of the Tea Party movement to win control of Congress and recruit a deep field of candidates for the November 2016 presidential election.

Now that insurgent fervor threatens the party’s ability to govern effectively and win over new voters, strategists warn. While many Americans share Republicans’ skepticism of government, they also need to show they are capable of handling power responsibly – or else face punishment from voters next year.”

— “Tea Party wave that lifted Republicans threatens to engulf them,” Andy Sullivan and Ginger Gibson, Reuters

Yes, Please! Louie Gohmert Offers to Quit.

Earlier this week, right-wing radio ranter Glenn Beck got an email from Tea Party loon and Congress Creature Louie Gohmert (R, TX-1):

‘Last week, I announced to the world if the House and Senate will treat Iran — the Iran treaty as a treaty, I will not run for my congressional seat again.”

Media outlets took this to mean that Mr. Gohmert would skedaddle back to the Piney Woods of East Texas and not run for a 6th term if the Senate didn’t rustle up enough votes to overturn a veto of the Iran nuclear agreement. And when Senate Democrats kept this from transpiring, sane people everywhere started rejoicing.

But hold the weddin,’ Bubba. Rep. Gohmert walked the whole thing back on Wednesday, saying his deal was that if Congress adopted his proposal to treat the multinational agreement as a treaty, that’s when he’d resign.

So don’t worry, DC will have no shortage of lunatic conspiracy theories anytime soon. You can bet that the savvy folks of East Texas are gonna reelect ol’ Louie. They figure to keep Texas safe by making sure Louie Gohmert stays in far away Washington.

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Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-m79

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Ted Cruz & Ham

During his recent Fauxlibuster against affordable health care, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) read Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham in the Senate Chamber. Too bad he doesn’t understand the story, says Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO).

Joe The Plumber, Congressman?

Ohio’s Joe the Plumber may challenge Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9) in the 2012 election. You may remember him. His name isn’t really Joe, and he isn’t really a plumber, but he became famous in 2008 for asking presidential candidate Barack Obama questions about a tax bracket actually much higher than his own. Since then, Samuel Joseph “Joe” Wurzelbacher campaigned for failed presidential candidate John McCain and failed as both author and Internet foreign correspondent.

Joe’s book, like his biography and politics, is fiction. His political aspirations, however, are real — his greatest accomplishment to date is his recent election as one of only 400 Republican Party committee members in Ohio’s Lucas County (37,258 registered Republicans).

DC With Glenn Beck: Tea Party Tourism

Glen Beck and his pals are observing the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech next Saturday (August 28, 2010) by gathering at the Lincoln Memorial with the National Rifle Association. Very fitting, since President Lincoln and Rev. King were assassinated by gunshot.

Beck’s buddies are boldly standing up for something-or-other but, unlike 20 million other tourists each year, they’re scared stiff of Washington DC. Beck blogs warn them to avoid the Green and Yellow Metro lines where they might encounter rampaging hordes of junior high students and other urban horrors.

Sue Lowden’s chickens come home to roost.

Sue Lowden, former state senator and state Republican Party chairwoman, lost the Nevada Republican senatorial primary to the toast of the Tea Party,  Sharron Angle, a former Nevada state assemblywoman. Ms. Angle bucked the trend in other states, where insiders won primary battles. but this was no ordinary race. Nevada is a conservative state with legal prostitution and gambling, the highest percentage of foreclosures in the nation, and massive unemployment. It also had Ms. Lowden, whose idea of health care reform is bartering chickens for medical services, and Ms. Angle, funded by the national Tea Party Express.

Voice in the Desert: Tea Sippin’ Sarah

The Woodstock of the Disgruntled was held last weekend in Searchlight, Nevada. Star of the shindig: former Temp-Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Appropriately, Mrs. Palin sounded quite shrill.

The best coverage of the event was by a media “Odd Couple,” Voice of America and Al Jazeera English.

 

Image (“Sarah’s Tea Party, after Sir John Tenniel”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.