Editor’s note: The following is a reprint from The New Yorker magazine by Hendrik Hertzberg. Fe notes:
When you feel doubt about something like this, its always better to raise a red flag rather than ignore it and hope it will go away. Ignoring it is what those who are looking to distract us with ACORN want. The less we care, the more they succeed. Maybe its time to retire this type of Jim Crow politicking forever. A letter to your editor, local network affiliate may help, or even supporting House Judiciary Chair Michigan Congressman John Conyers by writing to his office encouraging his challenge of these efforts to discredit ACORN’s registration of new minority voters.
This election doesn’t have to be a re-configured version of Florida recount 2000 that led to the selection of George W. Bush for the Presidency. We’re awake, and that’s a powerful thing.
The idea that Democrats try to win elections by arranging for hordes of nonexistent people with improbable names to vote for them has long been a favorite theme of Rove-era Republicans. Now it’s become a desperate obsession.
Consider today’s fund-raising e-mail from Robert M. (Mike) Duncan, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Some snippets: