I propose a theory for further investigation, as follows:
- The underlying purpose of dismissing the US Attorneys was to intensify "voter fraud" investigations leading up to and after the 2008 elections.
- Far from being a simple tactical decision, the attempt to force prosecutions for "voter fraud" is part of a long-term strategy by Karl Rove to shore up the crumbling Permanent Republican Majority.
- The political, economic, and social elites who set the agenda of the Republican Party, and consider themselves to be the sole legitimate rulers of the United States, fear the demographic changes that may eat away at their electoral advantage.
- They are trying to restore the electoral advantage through the time-tested and venerable US tradition of depriving racial and ethnic minorities of their rights of citizenship.
As Randy Newman suggested,
Let’s turn history’s pages, shall we?
The original US Constitution assured the power of white slave owners by granting them disproportionate power in the House of Representatives and hence the electoral college for the President. The mechanism for doing so was the compromise that counted each enslaved person as three fifths of a human being for purposes of calculating the number of representatives (and hence electoral votes) that a state would have, while simultaneously denying all human and civil rights, including the right to vote, to those enslaved African people.
This institutionalized racism of the electoral system was briefly overturned during Radical Reconstruction, but the Hayes-Tilden compromise of 1876 restored white supremacy (American apartheid) to the former slave states. For the next 90 years, the formerly enslaved people and their descendants were counted as full human beings for purposes of calculating the number of representatives and electoral votes that would be chosen by all-white electorates. Hence the more racist the state, the more each (white) voter counted.
The Republicans countered the threat brought about by the Civil Rights movement through the "Southern Strategy," further refined into the "Southern White Male Strategy." They benefited by exploiting the social and economic anxieties of whites in states with signifcant black populations.
But it's getting old. The generations that grew up under institutionalized racism and belief that R&B was the devil's music is being replaced by the Obama generation. The politics of backlash have already outlived their shelf life. Though the quest for new groups to hate (gays, powerful women or "feminazis", secular humanist baby killers) has temporarily refreshed the backlash vote, Republicans now confront yet another threat:
The Sunbelt is turning brown....
Caramba! They can no longer play black against white, as the US becomes more of a rainbow nation. And the attempt to expand the nucleus of right-wing Cuban exiles into a bloc of Hispanic Republicans has collapsed in the face of White Republican nativism.
The strategic solution? Disenfranchise African-Americans and, especially, Hispanics (and Native Americans). Stir up anxiety and fear of illegal immigrants, impose new poll taxes and literacy tests in the form of document requirements for proof of citizenship. And use the Department of Justice as a primary tool in this campaign of disenfranchisement.
But then how can Alberto Gonzales lead this effort? No problem. The people carrying out this policy are not even sincere in their racism, any more than Dick Cheney hates gay people. It's not personal, just business.