“Private Fears”: How Ryanization Threatens The GOP
There is the idea of having Paul Ryan on the Republican ticket, and then there is the reality.
If conservative ideologues are over the moon at having their favorite conviction politician as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate, many Republican professionals — particularly those running this fall — are petrified. They freely express private fears that Democrats will succeed in Ryanizing the entire GOP.
What’s striking is not just that down-ballot Republican candidates are distancing themselves from Ryan’s proposals, particularly on Medicare, but that Romney won’t take ownership of them either, except in vague terms. Worse, the Romney apparatus is forcing Ryan to distance himself from his own budget. It was sad to watch Ryan dancing around these issues on Fox News Tuesday night and having to say that Romney is the boss. How long before conservatives start producing “Let Ryan Be Ryan” bumper stickers?
Oh, yes, and Ryan could not explain when his fiscal plan would balance the books (presumably because the right answer is somewhere past 2030). “I don’t know exactly when it balances,” Ryan told Brit Hume. So much for specificity.
To understand the elation Democrats feel about the Ryan choice, it’s useful to canvass their reactions in what will be one of the hardest battleground states for President Obama to hang onto. In 2008, Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate in 32 years to carry North Carolina. Now it is, with Indiana, one of the states most likely to move back to the GOP. “We’re at the pink end of the spectrum,” Rep. David Price, a Democrat who represents the Research Triangle area, said in a phone interview.
To Price, Ryan offers a double opportunity for the Democrats. The swing voters in his own district, he says, “are pretty practical and not enamored of the doctrinaire, ideological approach that Ryan exemplifies.” The very reasons that ideologues admire Ryan are the reasons that independents and moderates may be put off by him.
On top of that, Price said, “the issues of Medicare and Social Security are toxic for Ryan.” White voters in the current over-65 generation, more conservative than the New Deal era electoral cohort that has largely passed on, are now the base of the Republican Party. By putting Medicare on the ballot, Ryan threatens to push away core Republican voters.
That’s why Romney went up so quickly with advertisements attacking Obama for reducing spending on Medicare. One longtime Democratic organizer of senior citizens I spoke with here — his organization doesn’t let field staff speak for the record — noted that John McCain defeated Obama by eight points among voters over 65. “If Obama can cut that margin from eight to five, he wins,” the organizer said. “He doesn’t have to win that demographic. Closing the gap is a win.” His analysis is especially apt in North Carolina, where McCain beat Obama by 13 points among seniors.
Already, the North Carolina Democratic Party is out with lots of numbers — in other circumstances, Ryan might appreciate its wonkery — showing how the Ryan budget would hurt certain voter groups in the state. The party says that “1,368,646 North Carolinian seniors would be forced onto vouchers when they retire,” referring to the number of near-elderly citizens who would be affected a decade from now by Ryan’s idea of changing Medicare into a premium-support program. Repeal of the Obama health-care law, the party says, would move “154,884 North Carolina seniors back into the prescription drug ‘donut hole.’ ”
Walton Robinson, the Democrats’ state communications director, has his eye on a very specific demographic group that Ryan might move: older white rural women without college educations. Obama remains competitive in this state because of a large lead among female voters. Shifting this “one holdout group” Obama’s way, Robinson says, “could drive that gender gap even further apart.”
State Sen. Linda Garrou, a pro-business Democrat who has represented Winston-Salem for 14 years, is retiring after a Republican reapportionment broke up her district. She agrees that Ryan will help Democrats among older voters but is especially worried about Republican education cuts at all levels of government. She casts the choice as fundamental.
“The Romney/Ryan plan,” she said, “seems to say, ‘I’ve got mine, you get yours the best you can, the heck with you.’”
Americans often oppose government in the abstract but actually want it to do quite a lot. Thanks to Paul Ryan, this year’s debate will be anything but abstract.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 15, 2012
“A Whole New Form Of Voter Suppression”: Do We Need A New Voting Rights Act?
Ten states have enacted voter-ID laws that will discriminate against minorities and seniors. But the Department of Justice can do little to stop the discrimination in five of them.
On Friday, two counties in Southern states requested that the Supreme Court reconsider a key element of the Voting Rights Act. Both Kinston, North Carolina and Shelby County, Alabama hope the Court will find that Section 5 of the Act—the one that requires states and counties with a history of voter suppression to get permission from the feds before implementing changes to election law—is unconstitutional. The government has previously justified Section 5 under the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote and prohibits discrimination based on race. The counties—both in states with new voter-ID laws—argue that the provision violates the Tenth Amendment, which gives states the right to regulate elections. Furthermore, they claim it unfairly gives states different levels of sovereignty by treating some differently than others.
With voter-ID laws proliferating around the country, the Voting Rights Act has been in the national conversation for months now, and Section 5 has played a major role in the debate. Voter-ID laws create barriers to voting, particularly for poor and non-white voters who are more likely to lack the necessary photo ID. The effort to suppress the vote is exactly what the Voting Rights Act sought to prevent, and it’s come in handy. While the Bush administration’s Department of Justice approved Georgia’s strict voter-ID law—which became a national model—under Obama, the DOJ has blocked Texas and South Carolina from implementing theirs, finding them to have a discriminatory effect. (Decisions on Mississippi and Alabama’s laws are still pending.) Thanks to the proceedings, we’ve learned a lot more about the impact of these laws. Documents from Texas revealed that Hispanic registered voters were between 47 and 120 percent more likely to lack the necessary ID, while in South Carolina, minorities were almost 20 percent more likely to have no government-issued identification.
Because of Section 5, the Department of Justice has been able to stop voter-ID laws from going into effect in four states. The trouble is, Section 5 only applies to nine list states, based largely on what those states were doing 50 years ago. And with the voter ID frenzy that began after Republicans swept into power in 2010, the states working to suppress the vote don’t totally align with those that require preclearance. In recent years, ten states have passed strict voter-ID laws which require a voter to show government-issued identification to vote and will likely prevent hundreds of thousands from voting. But of those ten, only five require preclearance. Indiana, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Wisconsin all got to enact their versions of these laws without any say from the feds. Across all of them, the impacts are similarly devastating for poor and non-white populations.
As more and more states pass laws that functionally disenfranchise poor and nonwhite voters, it’s increasingly clear that Section 5 is no longer sufficient. The Department of Justice needs a broader ability to be proactive in preventing voter discrimination. When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, Congress authorized Section 5 for only five years, with the idea that it might not be necessary after that. Since then, however, the section has been reauthorized several times—most recently in 2006, when Congress renewed it for another 25 years. But the section no longer reflects the voting landscape. It seems logical that the Department of Justice’s role should be expanded, so that states not listed in Section 5 cannot implement laws that infringe on voters’ rights.
The right to vote is integral to our political system, one of the defining acts of citizenship, and we should ensure it’s protected. Furthermore, who votes often determines which candidate wins. In 2012, the stakes could hardly be higher. Not including Alabama, where the law is not scheduled to take effect until 2013, the states with strict voter-ID laws comprise 127 electoral votes—almost half the number needed to win.
A report by the Brennan Center for Justice last week offered a devastating look at just how difficult getting ID actually is, and how many people are impacted. Nationwide, 11 percent of eligible voters lack the required ID; among African Americans, that number skyrockets to one in four eligible voters. Hispanics and seniors also disproportionately lack a government-issued photo ID. The Center’s report focuses on two key factors: the cost of acquiring the necessary documents, and the difficulties of getting to an office that issues IDs. Even in states that offer free IDs for voting, most still charge people to obtain the documents necessary to get that ID—and the costs are not insignificant. Birth certificates can run anywhere from $8 to $25. In Mississippi, there’s a special Catch-22: You need a birth certificate to get a government-issued ID, but you need a government-issued ID to get a birth certificate. Meanwhile, 10 million eligible voters live more than 10 miles away from a government office that can issue an ID—and in Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Wisconsin, those ID issuing offices are closed on weekends.
While many of the most egregious examples are in Section 5 states, many are not. In Wisconsin, which does not have to preclear its election laws, more than 30 percent of the voting-age population lives more than 10 miles from an ID office. In Kansas, which also isn’t listed in Section 5, the voter-ID law shows similar problems with discrimination. Outside of Wichita, there’s one office that issues IDs for every 22,000 eligible voters; in downtown Wichita, there is one office for every 160,000. Twenty-two percent of Kansas’ black population lives in downtown Wichita where, in order to get their free IDs, they must wait much longer than their neighbors outside the city. In Tennessee, another state that doesn’t need preclearance, three rural regions have large populations but no offices that issue IDs.
Perhaps the best argument for expanding the Voting Rights Act is unfolding in Pennsylvania. Only a few months ago, the state legislature passed a strict voter-ID law that required a government-issued ID that included an expiration date. The state’s House majority leader, Republican Mike Turzai, openly touted it as a law that will guarantee that Mitt Romney wins the state. There’s reason for his confidence: A recent study from the Secretary of the Commonwealth in Pennsylvania showed that as many as 9 percent of state voters may lack necessary identification. In Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold with a high number of African-American voters, it could be as high as 18 percent. Yet the DOJ cannot block the law.
For those states not listed in Section 5, challenges must be fought in the courts, where the bar is much higher. The DOJ or others can claim that voter-ID laws violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination either in practice or procedure. But Section 2 cases are difficult. “In order to bring a Section 2 case, you’d have to show two things. One, that there’s a significant racial disparity and two, that the burden of getting an ID is significant enough for us to care about,” Samuel Bagenstos, former deputy assistant attorney general, told Talking Points Memo. That means the DOJ will have a harder time winning a case against a voter-ID state before the November elections. Instead, the department may have to wait until the election is over and voters can testify to the discrimination. The DOJ may have to spend the 2012 election collecting evidence of discrimination—cold comfort for those whose votes are suppressed, particularly when their votes could change the outcome of a close presidential election.
Civic groups can also sue states for violating their constitutions. The ACLU has already brought suit against the Pennsylvania law on those grounds. In Wisconsin, a court found the voter-ID law violated the state constitution, and has granted a permanent injunction, though that decision is being appealed. These lawsuits require funding from civic groups that can afford and endure lengthy legal fights, of course, and the constitutional protections vary state to state.
The Voting Rights Act was passed at a time when certain states adamantly and openly refused non-white citizens the right to vote. These new laws are less obvious and more insidious, and have been implemented in states without voter-supression histories of Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia. But regardless of a state’s history, the result of voter-ID laws is still the same: Many, particularly those who are poor and not white, will lose their right to vote.
With a whole new form of voter supression spreading, it’s imperative that we look at new ways to safeguard that right. Norman Ornstein, among others, has called for an expanded Voting Rights Act. At the very least, the Department of Justice should have broader authority to examine discriminatory laws and at least hold up implementation as officials examine the potential impact. States like Pennsylvania should not be able to take away minority rights so easily, and with so little scrutiny. Unfortunately, as so many states move to make it harder for poor and nonwhite citizens to vote, the momentum is on the other side, with states and counties pushing to knock down Section 5 entirely and take away the procedural protections we do have in place, incomplete though they are.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, July 23, 2012
“Look Out For Thunderbolts”: The President Dares To Defy Franklin Graham
We still don’t know for sure who if anyone is responsible for shoving 93-year-old Billy Graham back into the harness of right-wing politics after so many years of devoting himself to loftier causes, in order to marginally boost the numbers for North Carolina’s Amendment One. But this statement from his son in response to the president’s announcement of support for same-sex marriage is certainly a pretty big hint:
On Tuesday my state of North Carolina became the 31st state to approve a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. While the move to pass amendments defining marriage is relatively new, the definition of marriage is 8,000 years old and was defined not by man, but by God Himself.
In changing his position from that of Senator/candidate Obama, President Obama has, in my view, shaken his fist at the same God who created and defined marriage. It grieves me that our president would now affirm same-sex marriage, though I believe it grieves God even more.
The institution of marriage should not be defined by presidents or polls, governors or the media. The definition was set long ago and changing legislation or policy will never change God’s definition. This is a sad day for America. May God help us.”
A swift response to Franklin Graham from a fellow North Carolina minister, the Rev. Murdoch Smith, pastor of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, said it all for me: “I am always suspect when someone says that they know the mind of God.”
I understand that many sincere Christians fundamentalists believe they are submitting themselves to God and subordinating their own egos and their own self-interest by simply following in their lives what they understand to be infallible divine revelation of the Bible. Many of them, indeed, are so humble it would not occur to them to impose their views on other people, much less force them to live as they do.
If there is anything humble or self-effacing or ego-immolating about Franklin Graham, I certainly don’t see it. As Rev. Smith says, he doesn’t follow God; he knows God and speaks for him, the God that not only fully reveals his Will to Franklin Graham via Franklin Graham’s infallible interpretation of scripture, but through God’s great and characteristic conservatism, his deep and manifest satisfaction with people like Franklin Graham who defend the ways things used to be before women and gay people and other lesser breeds got all uppity.
When people like Graham presume to accuse the President of the United States of “shaking his fist at God,” they are assuming the Prophetic Stance, the Hebrew tradition of calling down divine wrath on a depraved society. Ask yourselves: what kind of prophet would look at today’s world, with its poverty and violence and gross inequality, its environmental brinksmanship, its intolerance, its sheer wastefulness and lack of charity—and decide that what merits divine wrath is gay marriage? What sort of man of God could look at all the grievous occurrences on earth, and declare, with absolutely no indication of self-doubt, that God is grieving over gay people deciding to commit themselves to each other in love?
I’m sorry, I just do not get it. Graham has confused himself with God to an extent that when Barack Obama dares take a position he doesn’t like, he’s shaking his fist at God. I think Franklin Graham’s the one who’d better look out for thunderbolts.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 11, 2012
“The Bigots Win”: North Carolina Passes Constitutional Amendment Bannig Marriage Equality
Sadly, as predicted, voters in North Carolina passed Amendment One, the law that bans already-banned same-sex marriage and tacks on a gratuitous “and no civil unions, either.” As Joan McCarter explained:
There would be no more legal unions between unmarried people, gay or straight. It could take health care benefits away from families, it could take away domestic violence protections, hospital visitation rights, and all the very basic protections of civil unions.
That’s why just about everyone—including North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, former President Bill Clinton (and his daughter), Episcopal bishops, hundreds of business leaders, religious leaders, and members of both parties—opposed it. Because it’s hateful and wrong. But apparently, the state’s voters disagreed.
Way to go, North Carolina. You must be so proud.
By: Kaili Joy Gray, Daily Kos, May 8, 2012
Half Of North Carolina Concealed Carry Permit Holders With Felony Convictions Keep Their Permit
North Carolina is one of the few states in the country with public records of who has a permit to carry a concealed firearm, so it provides a rare window into how such permits are handled once their holder’s criminal record proves them unfit to carry a hidden gun. The results are not pretty:
More than 2,400 permit holders were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors, excluding traffic-related crimes, over the five-year period, The Times found when it compared databases of recent criminal court cases and licensees. While the figure represents a small percentage of those with permits, more than 200 were convicted of felonies, including at least 10 who committed murder or manslaughter. All but two of the killers used a gun. […]
The review also raises concerns about how well government officials police the permit process. In about half of the felony convictions, the authorities failed to revoke or suspend the holder’s permit, including for cases of murder, rape and kidnapping. The apparent oversights are especially worrisome in North Carolina, one of about 20 states where anyone with a valid concealed handgun permit can buy firearms without the federally mandated criminal background check. (Under federal law, felons lose the right to own guns.)
Violent criminals who were allowed to keep their concealed carry permits include Ricky Wills, who “terroriz[ed] his estranged wife and their daughter with a pair of guns and then sho[t] at their house while they, along with a sheriff’s deputy who had responded to a 911 call, were inside,” and Charles Dowdle, who “was convicted of multiple felonies in 2006 for threatening to kill his girlfriend and chasing her to her sister’s house, where he fired a shotgun round through a closed door.” Indeed, violent individuals convicted of domestic violence-related crimes are the most likely to be allowed to keep their concealed carry permits. Nearly two-thirds of individuals convicted of “assault on a female” in the state of North Carolina did not have their concealed carry permits suspended.
The state’s failures to suspend these licenses appears to be a series of oversights, not a deliberate effort to place concealed firearms in the hands of violent criminals — indeed, Mr. Willis’ permit was revoked after New York Times reporters informed the state that he still had it. Nevertheless, these oversights could soon have consequences for the safety of Americans in all fifty states. The National Right To Carry Reciprocity Act, which recently passed the House of Representatives, would give holders of concealed carry permits from any one state the ability to carry a concealed weapon while than were visiting any other state — even if the state they were visiting banned concealed carry or would not allow them to obtain a carry permit.
In other words, should this bill become law, it would mean that a violent felon from North Carolina could keep his permit solely because of an oversight, and then travel to any state he chooses with a concealed gun tucked under his jacket.
By: Ian Millhiser, Think Progress, December 27, 2011
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