By the middle of the first decade of this century,
Karl Rove was dreaming of what he called "The Permanent Republican Majority."
That is he thought that he could achieve a majority vote among the 50% or so of
US eligible voters who actually vote, for the Republican candidates for the
Presidency, on a permanent basis. In the 2000 election (1) he had achieved less
than a majority of the popular vote (47.9% to Gore's 48.4%, the rest going to
minor candidates [mainly the spoiler Ralph Nader]), and had managed a majority
of the electoral vote only by getting, as is very known, a one vote majority on
the Supreme Court. But Karl had a big dream. For 2004 he would construct a true
majority, among those actually voting that is, by pulling "his people" to the
polls in numbers out of proportion to their proportion among the eligible.
He did that that year by getting anti-gay marriage
initiatives of one sort of another onto the ballots in 12 states where pulling
homophobes to the polls in numbers out-of-proportion to their numbers in
the general population would boost the vote total for George Bush. The strategy
did work in one sense. Bush did get 50.7% of the popular vote (2). But John
Kerry actually won the electoral vote, except that Ohio had been rigged by the
Republican Secretary of State, who just happened to also be the Ohio chair for
Bush-Cheney(!) (3).
(In fact, Kerry had anticipated such a possible
outcome and had prepared a $15,000,000 war chest for legal action. For unknown
reasons he chose not to use it [leaving John Edwards, to whom he had promised
he would, in a rage. Of course, Edwards was not a paragon of ethical behavior
either, as it turned out, but that's another story.] But Rove knew which end
was up. And the full Ohio vote-count rigging story would have come out a couple
of years later if the man at the technical center of it had not somehow been
killed in a light plane crash on his way to testify at a hearing on the matter,
for which he had indicated that he was going to tell the truth (3). [It is
interesting to note that Senators Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan had some
years earlier died the same way.])
At any rate, Rove is anything but dumb. Given the
closeness of both the popular and electoral vote totals, following the 2004
election it became very apparent that he was no longer focusing on a Permanent
Republican Majority. It was too risky if one wanted to keep GOP control of the
Federal government. For the one thing, the proportion of eligible voters
actually voting could go up, and they might go to the other side. That was the
lesson of 2008. For another, how many times could one put homophobe-philic
initiatives or similar ones on state ballots? No, another strategy had to be
developed. And so instead of the Permanent Republican Majority, Rove and his
cohorts came up with the concept of the Permanent Republican Presidency.
The strategy has six major components, built up over
time. And if one has been watching GOP actions since the middle of the last
decade one can discern them fairly easily. First is the cementing of the vote
of the Religious Rightists without going to the lengths of coming up with
ballot initiatives and similar. You simply convert the GOP into what Howard
Fineman of MSNBC and The Huffington Post has called "The American Faith Party"
(4). Second, you fake stories of sex and corruption which manage to take down
the principal organization whose principal focus is on registering low-income
voters, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) (5).
Third, following the 2008 election (which you hardly minded losing, given the
economic pit into which the country was falling due to the policies enacted by
your party --- let the other guy take the blame for the outcomes, which blame
the GOP is shovelling on him by the truckload this year) you focus on
organizing the right-wing vote at the state level through the very well-funded
so-called "Tea Party" movement.
Fourth, once having taken over both Executive and
Legislative branches of a number of state governments, with the very active
help of the Fox"News"Channel you make the non-existent practice of "voter
fraud" the tool through which you enact a series of state laws designed to
achieve wide-spread voter suppression. Since there have been a series of
successful court challenges to those laws, it remains to be seen just how
successful they will be this time around. But Rove and his people are on for
the long haul. Then (fifth) of course there is "Citizens United" and the
"Super-PACs." Thom Hartmann to the contrary notwithstanding, they have not made
a qualitative difference in the owning-class control of the state apparatus in
the United States which goes back to the days of the Slave Power. But they
surely have made a quantitative difference in the amount of money the Right-wing
has to spend on assuring electoral outcomes to their liking. Finally (sixth)
there is the widespread cheating which began in earnest in 2004 with the
substitution of electronic voting, run by GOP corporate allies, for paper or
manual machine voting (3).
It remains to be seen how this will play out in this
year's election. Until the first Presidential debate, Romney had been far
enough behind so that cheating in such states under GOP control as Ohio and
Florida would have become fairly obvious. Following the President's miserable
performance in the first debate, Romney started to catch up and gave himself a
chance to win even without cheating and with limited voter suppression. With
Obama's strong performance in the second and third debates, the GOP may have to fall back
on cheating to secure victory. But one can be sure, if they are within striking
distance of victory for Romney, and cheating will seal the deal they will
surely do what it takes, for them (3).
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1. 2000 General Election Results, http://uselectionatlas.org/ RESULTS/national.php?year=2000
2. 2004 General Election Results, http://uselectionatlas.org/ RESULTS/national.php?year=2004
3. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman , The Free Press | News Analysis, Tuesday , 16 October 2012, "Will
Bain-Linked E-Voting Machines Give Romney the White House?" Republished on Truthout,
Oct. 16, 2012, http://truth-out.org/news/ item/12130-will-hig-owned-e-voting-machines-give-romney-the-white-house.
4. Fineman, H., "Rise of Faith within the GOP has
created America's First Religious
Party," The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2012/03/05/republican-
party-religion-first-religious-party_n_1322132.html.
5. Association of Community Organizations for Reform
Now (ACORN), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now.
