Freedom Line Blog

At NRO, former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis tells important truths to conservatives — namely, that we need to learn how to talk to people who aren’t already on our side and who are not of natural cultural affinity with us (not that they are necessarily culturally against us, but just that they aren’t automatically in cultural concert with us either).

Many of them work with their hands, and their backs and legs and feet hurt at the end of the day. They worry not about freedom, but about the depleted state of their savings. They don’t carry around a pocket copy of the Constitution, but they know that too many of their tax dollars go to Washington, and is it such a quaint thought that they want a return on their investment and want government to work for their interests?

What do we have to say to them, the people who work with their hands….?

Davis is right. Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindal are saying similar things, with Ryan naturally recalling the themes of his late, great mentor, Jack Kemp.

I’ll throw out an issue conservatives need to do better at. We, myself definitely included, have made lots of justifiable noise about the dangers of vote fraud. We cannot back down on that issue no matter how many media people spread cheap shots about how our real goal is “vote suppression.” BUT…. BUT…. BUT, we also must show that we are intensely interested in making sure that as many people who legitimately qualify to vote find it as easy as possible to register and vote — and we must particularly try to figure out how to make voting not such a chore, so that nobody is forced to stand in line for hours just to participate in the electoral process. If there are any left-leaning people who seriously want to reach out and find solutions rather than bash us, we should find them, and see if we can find common ground. If they will admit the indisputable fact that vote fraud is a problem, and help us fight against it, we should admit that our voting system is often too complicated or convoluted.

Anyway, that’s going astray from what Davis said. But it’s just one example, admittedly on a second-tier issue (for most people), of how conservatives should try to broaden our reach. More importantly, we should likewise try to broaden our reach on economics, on opportunity, and on health care, among other major topics.

I’ll end with by quoting Davis again:

The world that Obama does not see in his progressive manifesto, the world that he barely acknowledges or address, it is the space that we can occupy as conservatives if we will only claim it.

I don’t think this is James Madison, but it is as wise as the original troika who together were Publius. Anyway, Publius here gives great details on vote fraud — a serious, serious threat, almost all of which comes from the Obamite left.

In the New York Post. Read it here.

Nancy Pelosi today made the risible claim that the contempt citation against Eric Holder is part of an effort at voter suppression. What bunk. But it is true that Holder is heavily involved with the flip side of vote suppression, which is that he is deliberately taking steps that enable vote fraud, via his lawsuits against Texas, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, etcetera, concerning voter ID and cleaning up voter rolls.

Well, here is the little-known background to all this:

It goes back to the Clinton Administration’s very first big battle — which wasn’t about health care, or energy taxes, or spending. The first battle involved the Motor Voter bill, which Democrats in Congress introduced on the very first legislative day in 1993, several weeks before Bill Clinton was inaugurated. Motor Voter was assigned to the House Administration Committee – and Louisiana Congressman Bob Livingston, the committee’s ranking Republican, had the job of deciding whether to object. I happened to be Livingston’s press secretary back then…. Livingston didn’t object to registration at drivers’-license bureaus, but he argued that other bill provisions (too numerous to list here) would promote vote fraud. Livingston’s legislative aide Tripp Funderburk had the brilliant idea to say that “Motor Voter” would better be described as “Auto Fraudo.” Using Tripp’s new catch-phrase, I started a media pushback, including a column in the Washington Times and many radio appearances for Livingston.

The pushback failed to kill the bill – but it did succeed in forcing acceptance of some anti-fraud provisions into the bill’s Section 8…. But, as reported by whistleblowers J. Christian Adams and Christopher Coates, DoJ official Julie Fernandes announced in late 2009 that the department would refuse to enforce Section 8’s anti-fraud provisions because “it has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.” Now that Florida is doing its job to enforce it anyway, DoJ is trying to stop the state’s efforts.

I’m here in Providence, Rhode Island, for a conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, the Franklin Center, and Breitbart, and we’re just minutes away from the Net Roots Nation convention, so John Fund and I and others came on over to hear the other side. John and I just gave a panel presentation this morning at the Heritage event on combating vote fraud; now, here with the Net Roots, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md), among others, is about to give a presentation on the horrid danger that voter-ID laws pose for democracy — or something like that. Gonna be fun. I’ll try not to interrupt with questions, but instead will try to be on my best behavior. Stay tuned.

On a subject near and dear to my heart, protecting the country from massive vote fraud of the sort actively encouraged by the Obamites in and out of government, columnist Thomas Sowell lays it on the line:

When a white man with no identification can go to a voting site, impersonate a black man who lives in that district, and get his ballot offered to him, then it is far too easy to commit voter fraud.

Does not Attorney General Eric Holder understand that? Of course he understands it! The man is not stupid, despite his other failings.

Holder’s pooh-poohing of voter fraud dangers, and hyping the “threat” of denying minorities “access” to the voting booth, are completely consistent with his drive to (1) maximize the number of votes by black Democrats and (2) spread as much fear as possible among minorities that they are under siege, and that the Democrats are their only protection and salvation.

It is a political protection racket, with payoffs in votes.

Sowell also promotes the single most important book released in the past year:

The book is titled “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.” It names names, dates and places around the country where the Department of Justice stopped its own attorneys from pursuing cases of voter fraud and intimidation, when it was blacks who were accused of these crimes.

If Mr. Adams is lying, he has taken a huge risk in citing individuals by name and quoting them directly. Yet, despite the fact that most of those he accuses are lawyers, apparently no one has sued him. Moreover, Adams has also testified under oath before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, on the racial double standard at the Department of Justice, when it comes to voting rights.

Not a single word of Adams’ book has come close to having been refuted. Everybody should read it. It will make you fear for our republic — unless we stop the deliberate lawlessness of Eric Holder’s [In]Justice Department.

As a companion piece to my CFIF column this week on the True the Vote summit held last weekend, here is a stats/examples-filled column for the publication affiliated with the impressive University of Mobile. An excerpt:

More numbers: In Texas, a voter must by law identify a permanent address, but in 2008 alone, 6,178 new registrants were accepted without one. Overall in Texas there are 29,345 names on the rolls with no address. In the town of Nacogdoches, 1,665 are registered from one P.O. Box. Statewide, 74,730 names of dead people remain on the rolls. In Florida, 29,935 dead people are still listed. In the largest county in Wisconsin, only 709,854 people are adults eligible to vote, but a stunning 954,008 names are on the registration lists.

I’ll write more about this locally, because it is a scandal of incompetence, but…. if ANYbody wonders why most Americans don’t want government functionaries controlling access to medical care or insurance, I had a perfect reminder this morning.  Having just relocated back to my wife’s home city of Mobile, AL, I went this morning (with her) to the driver’s license office, run by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, just to transfer my license from Virginia back to Alabama. Since they still had my old Alabama license on file in their computer system from five years ago, and I moved back to the same address, it should have been a snap.

Think again.

Amidst some of the worst-organized, most inefficient, most confusing, most inattentive “service” I have EVER seen in any government office (and boy oh boy, is THAT saying a lot!), I watched as they processed about six people per hour in my little area (simple license transfers rather than new drivers who needed driving tests, etc.) for the first two hours.  Eventually, my wife and I made it out of there after THREE HOURS AND THIRTY-NINE MINUTES.

This is what happens when there is NO incentive for service people to actually provide decent service.  I watched as noly one window of four went unserviced for more than an hour; I watched as “workers” who had sat at their windows for no more than about 90 minutes then picked up their purses and left the building for extended breaks; and I sat there, agape, as the one thing nobody ever asked me was to show any sign of Alabama residency: Just about the only info they SHOULD require (for something that establishes, among other things, voting eligibility) was the one thing they didn’t ask for.  (No wonder we conservatives worry about vote fraud!)

This is what happens when government entities run things. This is why government shouldn’t run much of anything.  It is certainly why government functionaries in far-flung locales shouldn’t be making decisions about whether we do or don’t qualify for certain medical treatments.