On paper, Kris Kobach is the kind of guy you’d like to marry your daughter. An Eagle Scout who graduated summa cum laude and first in his department at Harvard, went on to get M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Oxford and a law degree from Yale, Kobuch also did missionary work in Uganda, clerked for a federal judge, and obtained a White House Fellowship to work for the Attorney General of the United States.
On the other hand, the Minority Leader of the Kansas Senate Anthony Hensley once stated that Kobach is “the most racist politician in America today,” and with plenty of justification. Kobuch is the brains behind both Arizona SB 1070 and Alabama HB56, the two most notorious anti-immigrant bills to be produced in this country in recent decades. He’s the country’s most famous proponent of bogus voter fraud theories and has boasted of successful efforts to suppress the minority vote both during his time as chairman of the Kansas Republican Party and as Kansas’s Secretary of State.
He’s also a classic John Bircher-style nutcase who has referred to both the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters as “communists.”
Donald Trump seriously considered Kobach to serve as his Attorney General and also as his Secretary of Homeland Security:
It was later reported that Kobach was being considered for Secretary of Homeland Security, and was photographed carrying a document entitled “Department of Homeland Security, Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days” into a meeting with Trump. This plan reportedly included a register of Muslims as part of a suite of proposals, which also included the “extreme vetting” of immigrants.
So, that’s all a prelude to discussing this:
President Trump plans to name Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who has pressed for aggressive measures to crack down on undocumented immigrants, to a long-promised commission to investigate voting fraud in the United States, a White House official said on Thursday.
The commission is the official follow-through on Mr. Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that several million “illegals” voted for his Democratic rival and robbed him of a victory in the national popular vote.
Mr. Kobach, who has championed the strictest voter identification laws in the country, will be the vice chairman of the commission, which is to be led by Vice President Mike Pence and is expected to include about a dozen others, including state officials from both political parties, the official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an announcement expected later on Thursday.
Officials said Mr. Trump would sign an executive order on Thursday creating the commission, which they said would have a broad mandate to review policies and practices that affect Americans’ confidence in the integrity of federal elections. Improper or fraudulent registrations, voting fraud and voter suppression are among the issues the commission will study, they said.
As a former county coordinator for ACORN/Project Vote efforts to boost minority participation in our elections, you can imagine how I feel about Kris Kobach who clearly thinks I should have been prosecuted for my efforts. I’m offended by the very existence of the commission which is an affront to the most minimal grasp of reality, so naming Kobach as the co-chair is little more than confirmation that the whole effort is a fraud on the American public.
No one in American life has less credibility with the left on voting issues than Kobach. And it certainly doesn’t help that he’s not only seen as a racist but as perhaps the most effective racist in the country. Trump doesn’t care about that at all and perhaps even enjoys sending the message that he doesn’t care.
So, here’s what we’ll get:
One adviser said the group would spend about a year drafting a report that would take a comprehensive look at election issues that have preoccupied state officials for many years.
They’ll spend a year looking for ways to justify efforts to curtail minority voting, and they’ll do it based on the delusions and lies of the president:
Civil rights groups also reacted with alarm to the impending creation of the task force, arguing that Mr. Trump’s own comments about illegal voting by immigrants suggested that his intent was to work to restrict the voting rights of minorities.
Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, called the commission “a thinly veiled voter suppression task force,” adding that it was “designed to impugn the integrity of African-American and Latino participation in the political process.”
…There is no evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claims, which have been discredited repeatedly by fact-checkers, that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 contest.
As a candidate, Mr. Trump repeatedly raised doubts about the integrity of the American voting system. After winning the election, he told members of Congress that between three million and five million undocumented immigrants voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, costing him the popular vote.
I don’t worry when some racist at the end of the bar starts spouting off with his conspiracy theories. I worry when the president is a racist and he appoints very effective racists to important positions so that they can do racist things. That’s what has happened here.
Booman, apparently you never got the memo. You are not allowed to use the term “racist” in reference to Mr Trump and his minions. Doing so is just a lazy cover-up for Democratic Party ineptitude.
Memo must have got lost in the mail.
It’s “culturally anxious”.
At least it is this week. I can barely keep up.
I am glad that all these epiphenomena of the prevailing late-capitalist mode of production will be swept away when the present system collapses under the burden of its own internal contradictions.
Somehow I have confidence that racism will rise again from the ashes.
It’s so hard to keep track of all the preferred nomenclature. Now it’s “culturally anxious.” I remember in the good old days when they were known as the alt-right. Ah memories.
On the whole, I agree with the sentiment that you don’t want intelligent, driven people with opinions and ideas antithetical to human decency in positions of power. However, on this issue, I don’t think it makes a damn bit of difference.
The simple fact is that ALL cases of voter fraud in the US in 2017 can be measured in low 1000’s. Probably even lower than that. Just as it is difficult to hide massive fraud of public trust, it is even more difficult to generate evidence of public fraud that doesn’t exist. It requires too many people be suborned, too many records to be changed, and (this is the BIG one) the results have to be internally consistent. The Republicans of NH have already dismissed charges of fraud.
As someone who has seen attempts to generate fradulant records on a large scale … internal consistency is a bitch to achieve.
sorry, should be 2016
Ya don’t need evidence to erect barriers in the name of solving a non-problem. This really is about numbers in the Congress and legislatures and legitimizing election theft.
At least it is now clear what the intentions are–in away that the Help America Vote Act was never accurately understood, nor was the multi-state GOP strategy of rapid gerrymandering after a “surprise” victory in the legislature.
The demographic challenge to the permanent Republican majority is what is the target. That’s why it does not matter who the “furriner” who gets deported is or what they’ve done. Just get the non-whites out of here is the Trump mandate.
And now they are going for the courts to make it permanent and the voting system to make it impossible to change.
Watch for institutionalization in depth at the state and local level.
And watch for moves to make it a fait accompli before a majority of Americans notice.
So the voter fraud commission intends election administration fraud.
Any chance the,idiots will crew the con all up?
Only if they let the White House have any influence in what they are doing.
My guess is that Ryan and McConnell will be standing ready to catch the legislation that the commission is going to propose. And so will GOP legislatures that have absolute control of their states. And possibly NC just to make an issue with Cooper.
I guess this is what you get when you let the criminals and racists take over your government.
There are many instances of voter rolls being wrong. Some people are dead, some have moved away and haven’t been removed from the records. My guess is that in the beginning this is what Trump was after. But in the hands of others with more nefarious purposes, this will most likely turn into voter suppression. What a difference this is between parties!!
North Carolina has seen registration caging occur in the past two cycles under the ruse of protecting the election from voter fraud.
Lists of “ineligible” registrations are drawn up by data firms that use a “names similar to” algorithm for getting as many Democratic names as possible, generally with ethnically tagged first or last names. That list becomes a mailing list for postcards that seem like junk mail. When those post cards are not returned, GOP officials approach election officials with challenges to registrations. If the election officials also are Republicans, names can be removed of eligible voters right before a primary or general election with the the process preventing correction before election day.
When a state prevents felons from voting, this becomes even looser. Non-felons with similar names are tagged as felons and removed from voter lists.
The data company protects itself by requiring customers to do their own validation of its lists, which the GOP rarely does locally.
One party wins when everyone votes; the other party loses when everyone votes. Paul Weyrich of the Heritage Foundation was very upfront with why the GOP does not want everyone to vote.
Jeb Bush succeeded in caging supposed “felons” in Florida in 2000. Since then, each state GOP has tried to take the scam farther.
Answers itself: Because under it, they lose.
Given that the GOP controls so many state legislatures and Governor mansions, why not simply expand this ruse?
When you can force Republican majorities onto states you currently don’t control? National legislation gives national power; the “small government” GOP is not going to give up one inch of that power.
This video need to be seen and shown over and over again, and then it must be explained so it gets through all but the thickest skulls:
Can a commission be created by executive Order? I thought it took an Act of Congress. He’s president, not king.
Yes — Presidential Commission (United States)
Thank you. I meant commissions with delegated legislative power like the FCC and FTC. Don’t they derive their power from Congress? If the President can create a commission able to make binding laws without Congressional approval, he is a king.
Regardless of what Trump names it, it’s still just a task force to study and report on an issue. An issue that’s 99.9999% fake in this instance, but let them work their little butts off to find those 0.0001% instances of voter fraud. Won’t dissuade the believers that voter fraud is rampant but it does move them closer to becoming dead-enders like the remaining birthers, vaxxers, Iraq WMD suckers, flat-earthers, etc.
We do waste a lot of time and money to appease the suckers that buy into fact-free extraordinary concoctions. The alternative, ignoring them, only works when recruitment of new believers dwindles and the believers begin to die out.
An amusing and accurate enough read: The crushing idiocy of Donald Trump– If he’s so dumb, why can’t Democrats outsmart him?. (Like many new billionaire backed publications (in the case Bloomberg), The Outline is going after the “smart reader” by appearing non-partisan and independent. Only time will tell if that is just on introductory offer to get eyeballs or if it is authentic and will hold.)
The answer to the questions is because Democrats love his policies but hate him because he’s wearing the wrong color jersey. If it were blue, we would see a ton of blog entries defending him. Booman would be saying that’s the best we can expect.
What policies? Seriously, he’s gyrating from this to that with the primary objective of becoming the most popular President evah. Wealth and being adored and envied is what his whole life has been and is about. Up through winning the GOP nomination, his world was dominated with people he believed adored/admired/envied him. No objective measures ever existed to challenge his belief. The first one — even though he won the election — was that he got fewer votes, and he went ballistic on that. It’s just as inconceivable to him that he couldn’t possibly have legitimately lost the popular vote as it’s inconceivable to HRC, her team, and partisan Democrats that she couldn’t possibly have legitimately lost. (He also went ballistic over the lower attendance at his inauguration and the big slump in his approval ratings.) So, he’s running with a voter fraud task force and Hillbost are running with Russia-Putin to prove that the impossible didn’t happen.
He (and his daughter) love the pomp, circumstance, and attention of being POTUS. His frustration is that not even a majority view him as great when in his mind that should now be 60+% that support him. Running off to PA and holding a rally for Trumpsters instead of attending the hostile WHCD was a booster shot for his battered ego.
All very true, but doesn’t address the original question. The answer to that, to clarify my original response, is that Democrat’s corporate
backersowners don’t want him stopped. I’m sure they don’t want to play Global Nuclear War, either, but little oil wars and third world takeovers are fine. They want those corporate tax breaks and selling crap insurance across state lines. They don’t want Medicare-for-all, unions, and fair treatment of employees. Just like Reagan and W were convenient excuses for screwing the workingman and seniors. Notice that Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had Democratic majorities, but didn’t overturn the class war laws enacted by their predecessors. Democrats are now fighting (apparently lost the fight) to save a Heritage Foundation private business based national healthcare plan.Why didn’t Obama appoint Merrick Garland and some 600 other Federal judges? Because of the filibuster, which McConnell proved could be thrown out with a flick of his finger. Why didn’t Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer think of that? Because they didn’t want to!
So, Democratic voters, the old core FDR voters, finally wised up and realized that the Democrats are their enemy. So instead of realizing they went too far and promising to better in the future, Democrats create this Russia! Putin! It’s unconstitutional to fire an FBI director! (unless a Clinton does it) nonsense.
Agree. Although I think you’re selling them short on the Garland nomination. A lot of calculations and assumptions went into that. Other than a Scalia clone the GOP wasn’t inclined to confirm any Obama nomination. OTOH, the GOP couldn’t cite any plausible objections to Garland and therefore, the half-loaf Garland had a chance. This put the GOP in the same position as Democrats were with the Roberts nomination and that was different from what the Democrats were handed with the Alito and Myers nominations. However, the GOP doesn’t fold as quickly and easily as Democrats do. And both sides had an escape hatch. If as expected HRC won, the Senate would have moved to confirm Garland because they wouldn’t have done better with an HRC nomination. Yet, if HRC had a “better idea,” Obama would have withdrawn the nomination before the Senate could act.
While the Garland nomination was consistent with practically everything Obama did as POTUS (splitting the baby), it also revealed that he and his team knew there wasn’t a chance to retake the Senate in the ’16 election. But unlike his earlier years, Garland wasn’t acceptable enough to the left side of the aisle to make the GOP Senate’s inaction a major outrage. It was uninspiring in an election year when the DP expected totally uninspiring to carry them to victory.
You are right about Garland. The Senate was in republican hands. However, the federal judge situation started when Democrats held the Senate. Now Trump will appoint those judges.
It’s not how the commission is created that gives it power; it is who is ready to take up the commission’s recommendations and turn it into legislation. Executive orders will not be sufficient for that, but in this case Trump and Congress and the GOP and their legislatures are all on the same page: permanent Republican majority.
I mean commissions will delegated legislative power like the FCC and FTC.
For me, Kris Kobach has long been one of the scariest politicians in the US. I tried to take some comfort from his inability to get on the political fast track even in Kansas. Still, perhaps that was a Koch holding back on this talent for the right time.
“The mask of sanity” has never been better worn by a US politician than Kobach. Fear that Democrats/liberals don’t have enough horsepower left to take him down.
very very interesting, discussion of contemporary culture, creating passive “consumers” in place of active adults, due to current new form of economy.
http://conversationswithbillkristol.org/video/ben-sasse/
for example 20 mins in to part 1
I wish Senator Sasse was entering in this sort of discussion in order to bring some maturity to his Party and political movement. Unfortunately, his movement and Party aren’t even in adolescence; they’re in arrested childhood. With the lies and misleading statements Sasse spouts about the Affordable Care Act, public education and other policies, Ben himself is included in this childishness.
Sasse’s statements in the linked video are far from original thinking by Sasse. Some of the outcomes the Senator highlights in the excerpt after 20:00 is the result of psychologically manipulative marketing, which causes too many to deposit their personal identity into what the marketers working on behalf of powerful interests, including the churches, make them want and need to the exclusion of other character traits.
In the political world, the use of propagandistic marketing intended to manipulate citizens in order to turn voters into atomistic consumers is a concept which has been talked and written about for some time.
Here’s a worthwhile discussion of the phenomenon as it so painfully expressed itself during the 2016 campaign.
Hell, we can see evidence of the extraordinary success of this propaganda here at the Frog Pond.
Senator Sasse certainly isn’t The Last Honest Conservative. Listen to him natter on sanctimoniously here a couple of months ago that “the civic health” required ALL Senate Democrats to vote for a radical right wing judge nominee.
“I don’t want to fight about the politics” of doing away with the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees, Sasse said. Good Lord, what fakery.
disagree. if you insist on everyone agreeing with you before you can have a discussion, then you’ll get nowhere. if you insist on others agreeing with you on policy, that you’re view of policy is correct, then you’ll get nowhere as well. if you can’t engage in dialog with someone who comes from a very different context from yours, well, forget it. that is what is required to have a functioning federal government. I’m interested that Sasse is willing to have a discussion about fundamentals as well as policy and willing to learn from what is happening and he’s on the T Russia committee.
We are not insisting on them agreeing with us. We are simply insisting that they not fucking lie through their teeth about everything to the point where we can’t even agree that the sky is fucking blue because if we say it’s blue they will go so far as to change their previous answer of blue to red just because.
You Appeal to Moderation argument is bullshit.
also: he’s talking about human adolescence people. a party doesn’t have adolescence, a party is a social unit. Sasse is looking below the surface of media manipulation to present day economy. frankly, I agree with him, yes, the media makes $ hand over fist doing what it does, but how is the society as a whole functioning? failing to function, to be more accurate? and good on him that he has some ideas about underlying problems. But he’s trained as a historian (PhD Yale). Have you read Anthony Giddens?