I keep saying that "I can't make this stuff up," and really, I don't have to. The self-destruction of the Republican party continues, and it has gotten so bad that the axiom about, "when your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil," would simply be a waste of anvils at this time.
Now the UK Times Online covers the latest in Voter Fraud stories, and again, it's bad for Republicans:
John McCain paid $175,000 of campaign money to a Republican operative accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states, it has emerged.
As the McCain camp attempts to tie Barack Obama to claims of registration irregularities by the activist group ACORN, campaign finance records detailing the payment to the firm of Nathan Sproul, investigated several times for fraud, threatens to derail that argument.
The documents show that a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the Republican National Committee and the California Republican Party, made the payment to Lincoln Strategy, of which Mr Sproul is the managing partner, for the purposes of "voter registration".
Mr Sproul has been investigated on numerous occasions for preventing Democrats from voting, destroying registration forms and leading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to leach the Democratic vote.
Sproul was infamous last election for his fraud, mostly because he was good at it, and very proud of his work, and just didn't hide it very well. So naturally, he is brought on the McCain campaign. It is really amazing to see that in almost every case, the Republicans are guilty of exactly what they accuse the Democrats of doing. Each and every time.
I see this as just another symptom of not taking what you are doing seriously. If you hate Government, and see it as simply a way to enrich yourself, then naturally things like this happen.
One former worker testified that "fooling people was key to the job" and that "canvassers were told to act as if they were non-partisan, to hide that they were working for the RNC, especially if approached by the media," according to the committee’s letter. It also cited reports from public libraries across the country that the firm had asked to set up voter registration tables claiming it was working on behalf of the non-partisan group America Votes, though in fact no such link existed.
Such activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law", wrote John Conyers, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The letter suggested that the Judiciary Department had failed to take sufficient action on the allegations because of the politicisation of the department under the then-attorney general, John Ashcroft.
The career of Mr Sproul, a former leader of the Arizona Republican Party, is littered with accusations of foul play. In Minnesota in 2004, his firm was accused of sacking workers who submitted Democratic registration forms, while other canvassers were allegedly paid bonuses for registering Bush voters. There were similar charges in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oregon and Nevada.
There is no rule out there that says that those who have conservative beliefs cannot govern effectively, it's just that the current crop of conservatives just aren't interested in doing that. And so time and time again we will see the rank hypocrisy in these allegations of wrongdoing. And recently it seems to be with more and more criminal overtones.
As has been said, some time in the political wilderness might do Republicans some good.
McCain campaign paid Republican operative accused of voter fraud - Times Online