Freedom Line Blog

In a recent Freedom Minute video, we chronicled the decline in basic standards of decency and civility amongst America’s political class. And one of the examples we cited was Florida Congresswoman (and newly-installed DNC Chairwoman) Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Here’s one of Wasserman Schultz’s greatest hits, prompted when a television interviewer recently asked her about the Republican push to require photo identification at the polls in order to combat voter fraud:

[I]f you go back to the year 2000, when we had an obvious disaster and – and saw that our voting process needed refinement, and we did that in the America Votes Act and made sure that we could iron out those kinks, now you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally – and very transparently – block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. And it’s nothing short of that blatant.

Even the verbally incontinent chairwoman had to walk this one back, later explaining that “Jim Crow was the wrong analogy to use.” But while such thoughtless mistakes can be expected from the congenitally inept Wasserman Schultz, former President Bill Clinton doesn’t have that excuse. Here’s what Clinton told a group of young liberal activists gathered in the nation’s capital today, according to Politico:

“I can’t help thinking since we just celebrated the Fourth of July and we’re supposed to be a country dedicated to liberty that one of the most pervasive political movements going on outside Washington today is the disciplined, passionate, determined effort of Republican governors and legislators to keep most of you from voting next time,” Clinton said at Campus Progress’s annual conference in Washington.

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,” Clinton added.

If Clinton wants to bask in the adulation of being an elder statesman, he ought to begin acting like one. He knows that saying Republicans across the nation want to suppress the vote is a baseless attack on the character of decent men and women. Republicans want to suppress voter fraud, a goal that Democrats profess to share (in practice, however, they’ve done little to effectuate it).

Debating the means by which we attain that end is an utterly justifiable pursuit. But tarring the opposition to score cheap applause from the Daily Kos’s farm team? That’s just not presidential. Of course, why start now?

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Hillyer:  To Run DNC, Wasserman Schultz Be Illin’
Ellis:  Gunrunner Scandal Beating a Path to AG Holder’s Door
Lee:  U.S. Tipping Point: 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes
Senik:  Bin Laden and “The End of the Beginning”

Freedom Minute Video:  Justice, At Last
Podcast:  Early Predictions on the 2012 Presidential Field
Jester’s Courtroom:  Momentary Baby Switch Not Grounds for Lawsuit

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

After observing the 2008 death-match between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, you would think that any political mandarin in his right mind would want to avoid a similar war of intraparty attrition. But since the Republican National Committee is in the business of failing to meet even the lowest of expectations these days, you’d be wrong.

Hotline profiles the RNC’s recent resolution to change the way the party of Lincoln picks its presidential candidates. The gist:

The proposal will move the earliest nominating contests — in IA, NH, SC and NV — back from early Jan. to Feb. It will also require states that hold nominating contests in March to award delegates based on the proportion of votes candidates win, eliminating the prospect of an early winner-take-all state that would effectively end the nominating process.

Proponents said the measure would avoid the calamity of a national primary. Already, nearly 40 states have primaries scheduled for the first possible day in the nominating calendar.

Let’s stipulate that there’s no such thing as perfect primary process (a point that New Hampshire GOP chairman — and former White House Chief of Staff — John Sununu makes in the Hotline piece). This is a political Rubik’s Cube to rival Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.

That being said, proportional allocation of delegates is one of the worst of many bad ideas. One of the reasons that Republicans had a presidential nominee three months prior to Democrats in 2008 was because the winner-take-all system is centripetal. The proportional model used by Democrats is centrifugal, creating a party that can be just as fractured coming out of a primary season as going in. This is a road to a long and divisive primary season.

2008 should have permanently killed proportional allocation for both parties. But in professional politics, an idea’s worth is ofter inversely proportioned to its recurrence.

The following is a video President Barack Obama issued through the Democratic National Committee to rally support for Democrats in the 2010 mid-terms.

Uniter or Divider?

In response to questions being raised about the justification for President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, a Democratic National Committee official is accusing the GOP of siding with terrorists.

DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse earlier today told Politico:

The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”

Among those praising the surprise decision by the Nobel Committee?  CNN reports:

Praise came from … a senior official from Hamas — the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza.”