Frank Rich nails it again - two thumbs up for the GOP cockfight

[malaise]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16rich.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
<snip>
ELECTION junkies in acute withdrawal need suffer no longer. Though the exciting Obama-McCain race is over, the cockfight among the losers has only just begun. The conservative crackup may be ugly, but as entertainment, it’s two thumbs up!
On Nov. 4, that’s roughly the sole constituency that remained loyal to the party — minus its wealthiest slice, a previously solid G.O.P. stronghold that turned blue this year (in a whopping swing of 34 percentage points). The Republicans lost every region of the country by double digits except the South, which they won by less than double digits (9 points). They took the South only because McCain, who ran roughly even with Obama among whites in every other region, won Southern whites by 38 percentage points.

Those occasional counties that tilted more Republican in 2008 tended to be not only the least diverse, but also the most rural, least educated and slowest-growing in population. McCain-Palin did score a landslide among white evangelical Christians, though even in that demographic Obama shaved the G.O.P. margin by seven percentage points from 2004.

The Republicans did this to themselves, yet a convenient amnesia can be found in conservatives’ post-Election Day soul searching. There’s endless hand-wringing about Bush and McCain blunders and Abramoff-Stevens corruption, but there’s barely any mention of the nasty cultural brawls that defined the G.O.P. campaign narrative this year as the party clung bitterly once more to its 40-year-old “Southern strategy.”

[lisa58]

1. here is another paragraph....

...

The G.O.P. ran out of steam and ideas well before George W. Bush took office and Tom DeLay ran amok, and it is now more representative of 20th-century South Africa during apartheid than 21st-century America. The proof is in the vanilla pudding. When David Letterman said that the 10 G.O.P. presidential candidates at an early debate looked like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club,” he was the first to correctly call the election.

[malaise]

2. I almost included that paragrqaph in the snip

The GOP has pandered to the worst aspects of humanity - greed, fear, racism, xenophobia and religious extremism. They have nothing else - they haven't had anything else in decades.

[gratuitous]

3. Cockfight?

More like a slap fight on the short bus over three green Skittles.

But the spectacle will be no less enjoyable.

[SpiralHawk]

4. "What, no mention of Republicon Diaper Diatribes. We been short-changed." - Sen. David Vitter (R)

[Peace Patriot]

5. Southern states consistently rank among the worst voting systems in the country

Many of them are still 100% non-transparent, many with entrenched official cultures of vote suppression. This is the result of long standing white bigot wealth and rule, and infestation by Bushwhack Republicans. No question that there are other problems in the South, deep-rooted in slavery. But 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, when it is so locked in, politically, is a huge blockade to change. Take a look at these charts in the Brennan Center report...

http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/is_america_ready_to_vote

I don't much care for the Brennan Center. I think they are into protecting voting machine corporation profits, by trying to "mitigate" an inherently fraudulent election theft system. But their charts are interesting as to who is the worst of the worst.

Political pundits almost always fail to discuss who is counting the votes and how, when they analyze political trends in the country. This is gaping omission in political punditry--and I often see it on the left as well.

The voting system is bad all over. The BC identifies California, for instance, as "good" and "excellent" in various categories, but this is within the confines of narrowly defined parameters of transparency: 1% of the votes audited in California. Not good enough. Not nearly good enough. (Some experts that I regard highly say that we need a MINIMUM of 10% auditing--comparison of electronic tallies with actual ballots--to detect most--not all--most fraud and error. Venezuela does a whopping 55% audit, and they have an OPEN SOURCE code--not 'TRADE SECRET' code--system.) California elections are vulnerable to massive fraud; corrupt county election officials are still in place; and the rightwing dragons who own and control the 'TRADE SECRET' code can use it as a meat cleaver (putting Schwarzenegger in office) or a surgeon's scalpel (Prop 8--which I think passed as the result of fraud, and was intended as one of a number of efforts to fracture the center-left coalition that elected Obama, by a big enough turnout to defeat the machines.)

But it is worst in the south. It is nothing short of a repetition of the poll tax and other forms of suppressing the black vote. The entrenched Republican bigot culture combined with 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting directly results in poor education, black poverty (and in Texas, brown poverty) and a lack of progressive values in government. Count ALL the votes, and I think we will see a dramatic change for the better in the South.

[Stevepol]

6. Exactly PP. I think TX and GA are blue if the votes are counted fairly.

But who knows when these machines count the vote and there's almost no audit, often not even any paper to audit.