First of all I should like to preface this post with a disclaimer. I am not a troll nor am I an alarmist. I am however a realist. In any game or contest if you want to win you have to consider every possible option that your opponent has at their command. Considering the current state of affairs in American politics I offer this possible scenario for your review. IMO the Republicans recovered from the shock of witnessing the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency to immediately start planning for his re-election defeat. This was no secret. Mitch McConnell the minority leader in the U.S. Senate made that famous declaration that his number one job will be to make Barack Obama a one term president. McConnell’s declaration was not simply an outburst of frustration; rather it was a clear national signal for all Republicans to get busy planning new strategies designed to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. Granted this is not news, however I will attempt to connect the subsequent dots to provide a new perspective on the resultant Republican plan which is now stretching out towards its conclusion in November. We start to roll on this in the next paragraph below.
In order to fully understand the actual Republican strategy it is necessary to recognize and filter out the myriad of intentional ridiculous distractions, known as “Red Herrings” ginned up and used by the Republicans to dominate the national conversation. I should like to pause here for a brief digression for those not familiar with the “Red Herring” expression and what it implies.
In the old days distractions created expressly to confuse the public were known as “Red Herrings”. (Webster’s Dictionary defines “Red Herring” as something used to divert attention from the basic issue: derived from the practice of drawing a herring across the trace in hunting to distract the hounds.) The practice originated with 19th century hunters who discovered that dogs could easily follow the scent of smoked herring for long distances, and so the fish was often used as a device for training hounds and to sharpen their tracking ability. Unfortunately, runaway criminals also learned of this training tactic and started using the smelly fish to their advantage when they were on the run. As added to their bag of tricks, the criminals would toss red herrings away in a decidedly different direction from their real escape paths to throw the pursuing police dogs off their scent.) Politically the “Red Herring” expression has come to mean the staging of an event or series of events designed to obscure the real goal of the planned tactic. In recent years this tactic has been used constantly by powerful corporate and political groups to keep the public and the media completely unaware of anything of significance that is planned or in progress.
Returning to the original discourse we find that immediately after Barack Obama was elected the Republicans continuously saturated the public discourse with some of the most ridiculous political clap-trap imaginable. The Republican members of Congress subsequently joined in with their “Just Say No” legislative opposition antics. They were helped out in their effort to create media distractions by the Obama administration’s determined push to pass a far reaching new National Health Care bill. The endless controversy in Congress over the Health Care bill followed afterward by the many Democratic Town Hall media circuses, along with the creation of the rabble rousing Tea Party completely blinded the mainstream media from sensing the slightest hint of any evolving Republican master plan to defeat Obama in 2012.
As a matter of fact it wasn’t until this year when the widespread demonstrations at the capitol in Wisconsin over the Republican anti-union legislation caught the media’s attention that some glimmer of the Republican 2012 strategies began to leak out to the public. Since then it has become clear that the Republican 2012 plan was to emphasize gaining control of as many state governments as possible during the 2010 elections. It is important to point out here that the plan to capture the statehouses was not due to a tea Party side effect in the 2010 elections; rather capturing the statehouses was the Republican “defeat Obama in 2012” plan from 2008 and it was guided by the corporation controlled ALEC lobby group. The ALEC plan was to generate model legislation which was copied and made available to the Republican controlled legislatures around the country. These copied legislative models were then subsequently brought to the floor of the various legislatures, passed and signed into law.
The ALEC models also contained many “Red Herring” pieces of legislation which can simply be classified as “social engineering” models which contain legislative language reflective of the traditional political right wing complaints such as abortion, reverse discrimination, and fraud in government support programs for education and welfare. On the other hand the ALEC catalog also contained legislative models, the intent and language of which is specifically targeted towards stopping Obama’s bid for a second term to be implemented exclusively on the state level. The first category of these anti-Obama legislative models may generally be classified as the “first firewall”, and these are the many variations of the model voter suppression laws now in effect in over 30 statehouses across America. The common primary feature of these laws, as initially modeled, requires voters to present a specific type of state issued photo ID document as identification before being allowed to vote at the polls. Many Republican state legislatures in their zeal to “pile on” their new proposed Voter ID law added many other forms of ID that must be accepted at the polls. Texas for instance will allow gun owners to display their gun licenses as acceptable voter identification. Other states have added various “homespun” wrinkles to the requirement of the Voter ID portion of the new voter laws, so unfortunately there is not a pristine copy of the ALEC model in every one of the 30 plus statehouses. However in my opinion the “Stop Obama in 2012” Republican plan did not rely solely on the ALEC Voter Suppression model legislation. The Republican planners have another “Ace” up their sleeve which they intend to use in the event it appears that President Obama might win in spite of the voter suppression legislation currently on 30 statehouse books. This one is the real “kitchen sink” part of their “Stop Obama in 2012” plan, so grab your socks and read on for this one!
The nation has long endured the endless spectacle of “Birtherism”, which is an unofficial right wing movement where different people of note loudly challenge the fact that Barack Obama is an American citizen. I submit that the “Birther” issue is much, much more than a lot of noise on the part of frustrated right wing racists. It is my proposal that from the start of the entire Obama birth certificate controversy, it has been the Republican’s long term plan to keep this issue alive over the entire period of President Obama’s first term. In this regard the birthers have been successful and this contrived controversy is now posed to possibly become the Republican’s “kitchen sink” issue for President Obama in the 2012 elections. The latest birther flap is being publicized in the national media by Sheriff Joe Arpaio who claims that his “investigation” indicates that the President’s published long form birth certificate is a digitally created forgery.
I submit that Arpaio’s completely unsubstantiated birther argument will be cited as the inspiration for the creation of legislation in the Republican controlled legislatures in 29 states. (I use the count of 29 states here as these are the states the governments of which are completely controlled by the Republicans, e.g., Republican legislature and a sitting Republican Governor). The objective of this birther inspired legislation will be to prohibit the printing of any candidate’s name on official state election ballots or forms wherein proof of American citizenship and certification of place of birth for that individual has not been satisfactorily validated by the presentation of the required certified documentation to the Secretary of State’s office in a timely manner prior to printing of the ballots.
With the foregoing in mind, there is a real scenario that the Republicans in these 29 states can use to keep President Obama’s name off of their state ballots, and it goes like this…
The Republican legislature waits until late September or early October 2012 (depending on their legislative calendar) to pass a law (similar in language to the text above) requiring all candidates for public office to provide proof of American citizenship and place of birth in order to be “named” as candidates on all official state voting ballots. As soon as the legislature passes the bill, the Republican Governor signs it into law. Now once the law is in place some state official will be able to step forward and file a complaint with the Secretary of State’s office that Barack Obama has not provided satisfactory documentation to meet the certified birthplace documentation provisions of the new law, and as such his name must not appear on the ballot for the November election.
Quite frankly if this scenario is enacted in most of the 29 states across the nation; I have absolutely no idea what the White House could possibly do to set aside such laws in time for the election in November in 2012. Obviously such a “kitchen sink” scenario would throw the entire 2012 presidential election into never-before-experienced historic state of legal chaos and confusion. If someone has any realistic suggestions as to how the Republican “kitchen sink” scenario depicted above can be prevented or averted please pass it along, it will be greatly appreciated.