The voters in Georgia decided to stop Ralph Reed in his tracks.
Going into Tuesday the quiet consensus was that Reed's famed ground game would deliver and thousands of his Christian Coalition Zombies who would (once again) put Ralph and the GOP ahead of the teachings of Jesus and elect a little weasel.
Last night, the Truth turned out to be more powerful than the Word of Ralph.
And that must have dozens of GOP Candidates and operatives depositing bricks in their pants.
Georgia has proven that the Abramoff connection to gambling and human trafficking is a potent wedge issue. The forced prostitution and forced abortions that the GOP protected for their Hong Kong based Chinese patrons has demonstrated the ability to impact voter turnout and support for the GOP.
Not only was Reed defeated, but GOP turnout in Georgia was behind Democratic turnout in almost every category.
Casey Cagle, who defeated Ralph, has left the DCCC and any Democratic candidate a roadmap of how to use this issue to drive a wedge into GOP "values" voters.
The lesson of Reed's defeat can be applied Nationally.
More on the jump...
It has been
11 Years since Jack Abramoff began his work to protect a system of sweatshops, human trafficking, force prostitution and forced abortion on the Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands (CNMI).
I have been advocating for greater attention to CNMI and the GOP's exposure to this aspect of the Abramoff scandal for a long time.
Ralph Reed's campaign for Lt. Governor of Georgia was the first campaign where this issue was front and center. Going into Tuesday all the polls had Reed neck and neck with his GOP opponent Casey Cagle. Most folks thought Reed would pull it out despite his connections to Abramoff. He didn't.
In fact, he lost by a wide margin.
A big part of his defeat was his work to protect sweatshops, human trafficking, force prostitution and forced abortion on the Mariana Islands.
Casey Cagle hit him hard on the issue. His Don't Gamble on Ralph website was a template of how to attack the GOP using this issue. It has already been taken down by Cagle's GOP pr firm, but I saved a copy of the site as well as the supporting PDFs. (I do not have a place to post these and would be happy to send them to anybody who could get them back online).
I have placed online the mailer that Cagle used to attack Reed so effectively over Ralph's CNMI connections. When paired with the supporting PDF that details the abuse on CNMI it is an effective one-two punch.
And Ralph wasn't only taking fire from his GOP opponent on CNMI, Campaign Money Watch, was in this fight.
They knew that the CNMI issue could be a great wedge issue for GOP values voters and that Reed's race was a great place to road test the message.
Their work over the weekend with direct mail, TV, radio and voter outreach made a difference.
Here is the statement of David Donnelly, CMW's director on the Reed Upset (emphasis added):
"Ralph Reed's loss has national implications because he is the first casualty of the Abramoff scandals. And this judgment is delivered by conservative voters -- voters which many of those who are implicated in Washington's scandal will depend on this November. The lesson is this: politicians who place political money before morals ought to be very worried about meeting the same fate Ralph Reed met tonight."
Those politicians who put money before morals include virtually all Republicans. And some must be very, very worried this evening.
As Jack Abramoff told Vanity Fair:
"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn't know me is almost certainly lying," he says.
And there are quite a few of these GOP liars running for office in November. Most are running for Congress, but some (like Conrad Burns) are running for the Senate.
And all these liars have a connection to Abramoff and the human trafficking on CNMI. They took Jack's money. They took Ralph's money. They took Tom's money.
And they all took funds from the GOP slush fund that Jack ran. We need to hit them hard on this fact.
The abuse the Republican Party protected on CNMI is a wedge issue that will divide "values voters" from the GOP. As their base learns about the sweatshops, labor abuse, forced prostitution and forced abortions that the GOP used to fund the growth of the their Party, many of these "values voters" will either stay home or vote Democrat out of disgust.
That seems to be part of the story in Reed's defeat.
Earlier today Sevah posted a good Diary analyzing the numbers from yesterday's primary:
There were 61,969 more Democrats who cast a ballot for a Democratic Governor, or 15% more Dem voters than GOP! [snip]
And the news as been chock full of stories about "cross-over" voters seeking to rid the world of the evil influence of Ralph Reed. How'd that race turn out?
Lt Gov: Dem - 442906 GOP - 402187
And even the GOP in Georgia is talking about the sad state of their GOTV effort. Here is a post from GA RW blog Peach Pundit:
Pathetic turnout
Pretty pathetic turnout all around. Early numbers indicate that 477,771 people voted in the Democratic Primary and 416,749 voted in the Republican Primary. (Based on the number who voted in the top ticket race)
This shocks me, quite frankly, given that in the 2004 Primary, there were 651,282 Republican Primary voters and 625,154 Democratic Primary voters. I just assummed that the Democrats decline would continue.
While participation for both parties primaries was way down, more people voted in the Democratic Primary this year than people who voted in the Republican Primary. And that is with the hotly contested Reed-Cagle race on the Republican side.
GOP Primary participation declined 36% from 2004 while Democratic Primary participation declined 23%.
Do Republicans have anything to worry about in November based on these numbers?
And one comment added:
"There were 61,969 more Democrats who cast a ballot for a Democratic Governor, or 15% more Dem voters than GOP!" as quoted by Daily KOS.
The national statistcs show that the country is starting to lean a little more to the left.
It's a constant swing back and forth and it's now the dems time.
It is our time. If we are willing to fight.
2006 is not a triangulation exercise. It is about standing up for Democratic values. It is about taking the fight to the GOP and forcing them to defend their record of lies, bullshit and failure.
Karl Rove is the GOP Architect because he attacks. He never triangulates. He never gives ground. Rove always attacks his opponent on their perceived strength. If the facts don't work, he just makes shit up and says it over and over again until it becomes conventional "wisdom".
Fortunately we do not have to make shit up. The truth of the last eleven years of Republican power is bad enough. All the facts are out there, waiting for some Democrats to have the brains (and backbone) to use them.
We need to hit every GOP candidate hard on national security. As anybody outside of the DLC or the DC chattering class can see the GOP is actually very weak on this issue. GOP security prowess is a thin veneer of spin over a reality of failure and incompetence. We need to point out that they have already failed.
And the other issue is values. And this is where Jack Abramoff and the Mariana Islands come into the campaign narrative.
It is not an accident that for the last eleven years that the GOP has protected a system rooted in human trafficking, prostitution and money laundering. It was intentional. It was part of a plan to fund a One-Party-State in America.
The Republican Party has some explaining to do. They put the interests of their Hong Kong patrons ahead of justice and America.
They used their offices and positions to protect abuse and promote injustice. They put the Government of the United States of America in the business of supporting sweatshops, human trafficking, force prostitution and forced abortion. And they did it for money and power.
We need to talk about this. This needs to be a National campaign issue. Georgia has proven that it has legs. The CNMI/Abramoff issue can divide the GOP from the "Values voters" they've bamboozled for decades.
You can help.
Today there are calls to donate to Democrats through the Act Blue Netroots Page. Quite a few of these candidates are running against a Republican with an Abramoff problem every bit as large as the one that dragged Ralph Reed down to defeat.
Please donate to the candidates of your choice. And when you do, add 11 cents for the 11 years of justice denied to the workers on CNMI because of the Republican party.
And then ask the candidate to support H.R. 5550, the Human Dignity Act and to use the CNMI issue as a wedge issue to go after their GOP opponent.
As i look over the Act Blue Netroots list, Jon Tester (Burns) and Jerry McNerney (Pombo) jump off the page.
And there are other Democrats fighting Abramoff connected GOP weasels, like:
Charlie Brown (Doolittle)
Zach Space (Ney)
Nick Lampson (DeLay)
John Laesch (Hastert)
Heath Shuler (Taylor)
Francine Busby (Bilbray)
Harry Mitchell (JD Hayworth)
Kirsten Gillibrand (Sweeney)
Andrew Hurst (Tom Davis)
Rev. Jim Nelson (Kingston)
John Rinaldi (Duncan Hunter)
TJ Cox (Radanovich)
There are many other races that could be on this list. Please add them to the comments.
One is Jim Brandt running against Abramoff's long-time pal and partner in many crimes over the decades: Dana Rohrbacher (perhaps the evilest man in the GOP caucus).
Speaking of evil, Democrat Glenn Melancon is running an uphill campaign against Ralph Hall, a man so evil that he worked with Dana and Jack to place an attack on a rape victim into the Congressional Record.
And no discussion of evil would be complete without Abramoff's CNMI hero, Don Young. There are several Democrats running in an Alaskan primary for the opportunity to defeat this Abramoff connected GOP slimeball. Some of them should take a page out of the Casey Cagle playbook and hit Young hard on his efforts to protect human trafficking.
The point is that nearly every GOP candidates is exposed to the Abramoff Scandal.
And H.R. 5550, the Human Dignity Act provides a good challenge for debates and to introduce the Abramoff connection into all these races.
We need to make this an issue for every House race in 2006.
Every member of the GOP Caucus who worked to block legislation extending US labor, immigration and custom laws to CNMI should be put on the defensive. The crimes were real and the evidence has been presented to Congress since before 1994. And the abuse continues to this very day. It is time to hold these folks accountable: both as co-conspirators and at the ballot box.
Georgia has shown that this can be a potent issue for Democrats this fall. It divides the GOP from their "values" voters. It underscores GOP hypocrisy and corruption.
Please talk this issue up. Add 11 cents to your donations.
We had a great victory last night. Now we can spread the lessons learned from Reed's defeat to other races around the Nation.
2006 is now.
Let's do this.