According to Rachel Maddow, some Republicans are learning the lessons of 2012 better than others. The absolutely mind boggling part of this revelation is who Rachel cited as examples of both sides of the spectrum on last night's The Rachel Maddow Show.
If you are drinking something, please swallow and place your beverage on the table away from you before reading further; otherwise you might need to clean off your computer screen. The example of a Republican who has not learned the lessons from the election that Rachel presented last night was Wisconsin State Senator Alberta Darling who now famously said in an interview that she believed that Mitt Romney would have won the State of Wisconsin if Voter I.D. laws had it been in place in Wisconsin for the 2012 election. As a regular reader here at Daily Kos, you are probably already aware of how ridiculous that position is. We have all come to understand that these Voter I.D. laws that Republicans have been pushing in states around the country have more to do with voter suppression than voter protection.
Who did Rachel use as an example of a Republican who has learned the lessons from the campaign? Erick Erickson at the conservative blog RedState. Rachel came to this conclusion by reading a post by Erickson yesterday where he considers who should be allowed to be a member of his community.
Barack Obama won. He won by turning out the most people in a well run campaign. In other words, he won fair and square.
We here at RedState are American citizens. We have no plans to secede from the union. If you do, good luck with that, but this is not the place for you.
We have a place for you here if you wish to continue the fight against Republicans in Washington like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell who’d be happy to sell us down the river to keep their power, no matter how devoid of principle or sound policy. You have a place here if you’d like to keep fighting the Democrats who are intent on further stifling economic growth, pushing forward with Obamacare, bankrupting the nation, and siding with teachers unions against kids who deserve better.
Too many people have spent the past four years obsessed with birth certificates. Now they are obsessed with voter fraud conspiracies, talk of secession, and supposed election changing news stories if only we had known.
Is It Time to Roll Up the Welcome Mat Here?
On the surface, yes I have to agree with Rachel about who understands that President Obama won the election
fair and square. What's frightening about this observation though is that an elected official is the one who is taking the side of crazy conspiracy theories, while a conservative blogger is the one who is seeing reality. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't somebody elected by the people to serve be the one living in reality? However, when taking Erick Erickson's post in its entirety, I have to say he is still arguing for policies that would be detrimental to our country.
While it's comforting to know that one conservative blogger sees that the conspiracy theories about voter fraud aren't based in realty, it does not mean we should sit back and relax. There are still too many Republicans who have been elected to state legislative bodies that are determined to continue to enact laws designed to suppress Democratic voter turnout in future elections because they know if Republicans run solely on their own policies, they will continue to lose elections. Rachel often uses the graph on the left to demonstrate the large spike in abortion legislation that was passed in 2011 after Republicans won control of so many state legislatures in 2010. We can not let the same thing happen to voting laws in states around the country. We need uniform election laws on a national basis. That's why I've started a new group, Do You Know Why We Vote On Tuesday? to work towards fixing our broken election system. Please consider joining. More about the group in this diary and this diary.
The video and transcript of The Rachel Maddow Show segment, as well as the follow-up interview with Dan Rather, are below the fleur-de-orange.
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stranger?
President George W. Bush got re-elected in ’04, right? But in the midterm election that happened after that in ’06, the Republicans lost really badly. Republicans lost control of the House and control of the Senate. And then in the next election, 2008, Barack Obama got elected and the Republicans lost even more seats in the House and in the Senate. And with George W. Bush long gone and John McCain beaten really badly and with the Republicans reduced to minorities this small in Congress [Senate 59 D - 41 S; House 257 D, 178 R], there was a really pressing question after the ’08 election, after the last presidential election, of how and whether the Republican Party would be able to rebuild itself. And obviously, they did, right? They did great in the 2010 elections, even after doing pretty badly in this current election, they still hold on to the House. But it's starting to feel like those segments that we did on this show after the ’08 presidential election, those segments GOP in Exile, it's starting to feel like maybe they are still relevant to understanding what the Republican Party is now going through. My favorite part about those was we did these animations to make visual metaphors out of the Republican Party's sad lossness. Those were kind of great.
[Plays video clips of animations to popular songs]
#1 One is the loneliest number that you'll ever know.
#2 You can go your own way go your own way. Go your own way.
#3 Cold, cold, as, as, ice, as cold as ice ...
I don't know why we don't do stuff like that anymore. We ought to. I hereby resolve. But the basic idea was it matters to the country how one of our two major parties rebuilds itself. Not just in terms of who they pick as their new leaders and their new candidates, but the way they rebuild themselves is an important part of how we're going to define the acceptable range of policy that gets debated in America. And also, how substantiative the policy debate is, versus how crazy and nonsensical it might be. I mean, in a two-party state, the health of both parties is an important thing. And even though the Republican Party is not as bad a position now as it was in '08, we still don't know who their leader is, we still don't exactly know what they stand for, we still don't know how they're handling their Party's particular issue with craziness, with the appeal of conspiracy theories and nonsense, among their own most enthusiastic adherents. We're going to have Dan Rather here in just a moment to weigh in on the Republican Party's challenge in historical context, previous experience with the Republican Party and the Democratic Party building themselves back up after existentially challenging losses. But today's data on how the Republicans are dealing with the challenge right now, sort of a good news/bad news thing. I'll give you a bad news first. End on a high note, right?
The bad news is related to the State of Wisconsin. President Obama won the State of Wisconsin. He won the state by seven points; more than 200,000 votes. And when Wisconsin State Senator Alberta Darling, who's a Republican and a co-chair of the Romney campaign in Wisconsin, when she was asked just after the election whether a photo I.D. law in that state might have affected the results of the election, this is how she responded.
Interviewer: Do you think photo I.D. would have made any difference to the outcome of this election?
State Senator Alberta Darling: Absolutely.
Interviewer: Really? Of this election?
Yes, I think so. We're looking at all sorts of different precincts and all sorts of same-day registrations. I know people will go, we won't have fraud and abuse in our election, but why can't we have Voter I.D. when the majority of our people in Wisconsin want it, we passed it, the Governor signed it. Why should one judge in Dane County be able to hold it up?
The absence of a Voter I.D. law, the Romney campaign co-chair in Wisconsin says is why Mitt Romney lost the election in that state. Do you think the photo I.D. would have made any difference in the outcome? Absolutely. Really? Of this election? Yes, I think so. She's saying one of two things here. She's either saying the only reason President Obama was elected in Wisconsin this year is because of voter fraud, from these people who were showing up and registering and voting, and they shouldn't have been allowed to vote, more than 200,000 of them in Wisconsin, and this Voter I.D. bill would have stopped that from happening and thereby giving the state to Mitt Romney. She's either saying that, or she's saying that Voter I.D. would keep enough legal voters from voting; that Republicans could win the election just by keeping people who have a legal right to vote from exercising that right to vote. I mean, either way it's a remarkable assertion by a Republican State Senator and by the Romney campaign chair in Wisconsin, right? So that's the bad news. Obama only won Wisconsin because of voter fraud; we're sure of it. That's the bad news in terms of how conspiratorial and nonsensical America's conservative major political party may be staying, even in the light of this defeat.
But on the other hand, there is some good news. You ever heard of the blog RedState? RedState is a well-known, well-read conservative blog, one of the more influential ones. I try to read it pretty regularly. Yesterday the editor in chief of RedState wrote this. Is it time to roll up the welcome mat here? Quote, Barack Obama won. He won by turning out the most people in a well run campaign. In other words, he won fair and square. We here at RedState are American citizens. We have no plans to secede from the union. If you do, good luck with that, but this is not the place for you. Too many people have spent the last four years obsessed with birth certificates. Now they're obsessed with voter fraud conspiracies, talk of secession and supposed election changing news stories if only we have known. so let's add dabblers this latest nuttiness to the birthers as a category of people we do not welcome here at RedState. Even here at RedState, while we may not much care for him, President Obama is still our president and we are still quite happily citizen of the United States [See Is It Time to Roll Up the Welcome Mat Here? by Erick Erickson, RedState, 14 Nov 2012]. So, on the one hand, the Romney campaign chair in Wisconsin says it was massive voter fraud that swung the State of Wisconsin to President Obama, and if it weren't for that, Wisconsin would be Romney territory this year. But the right is also starting to self-police itself, against nonsense like that in a publicly shaming way. And that is good news for the Republican Party and therefore, for the country that needs both parties to function if we are to be a two-party state. Dan Rather joins us next.
Here is the
direct link to the video at MSNBC for those who can not view embedded video on the iPad or other device.
The Interview
Video of John Boehner: I do think that the spirit of cooperation that you've seen over the last week from myself and my team, from Democrats aisle, from the President, have created an atmosphere where I think that; I remain optimistic.
Rachel Maddow (RM): I too want to remain optimistic, but I don't know if that just means I'm being naive. Joining us now for some much welcome perspective for the interview tonight is Dan Rather, the anchor and managing editor of Dan Rather Reports on AXS T.V. Mr. Rather thank you for being here.
Dan Rather (DR): Always a pleasure.
RM: Am I being naive to be optimistic that the rebuilding process in the Republican Party might actually result in a change in their idea about obstruction and cooperation?
DR: Well, hope is father to the belief. I am optimist by experience and by nature, but I do think it's odds against. I hope I'm wrong about that. I've been wrong about a lot this last election year, and I may be wrong about that. But the Republicans, their number one need is to get in touch with a fact-based world. That they are now in the position of being pictured like a man who wears spats to the office or something; so far out of touch that it's unrealistic. And they did run four years of straight-out Dr. No obstructionism. And with candidate Mitt Romney's comments today, saying, Well, you know, it's because Obama gave things to all kinds of people. In denial.
And we should have some compassion, it's tough to lose. Losers’ locker-rooms are always tough. And I'd like to believe that Governor Romney, once he reviews those remarks, will start to regret having said them. He doesn't want to become Vice President in charge of excuses. And that's what the Republicans; but until and unless they get in touch of the fact-based world on particularly science, global warming comes to mind, evolution comes to mind. Until they get in touch with this, it's very hard to see how your optimism and my hopes are going to be fulfilled. But hope springs eternal. And with Mitch McConnell, who I think is the key for the Republicans, their leader in the Senate; that he was ungracious in the first hours after the election results were known. He has been the lead preacher of the gospel of obstructionism and if he continues with that not only will the Republican Party find I think the Capital Dome; sort of they'll be in a Temple of Doom, if they continue to do this. You just can't do it.
With the election itself; this election is going to be studied for a very long time. This is now the 21st Century and what President Obama did, he hired math wizards and so-called stat geeks and they dealt with data, facts, science, went into the census returns. The Republicans didn't learn that lesson. Until they learn that lesson, they are going to have a hard time winning in the future. Now in terms of what can be accomplished for the country, the Good Book says let us come reason together. And if President Obama takes that attitude, which it seems to me he has, and I agree with what you said on the program earlier that you saw a really renewed confidence in President Obama. His body language was there, his statements were there; tough. This is the Obama that people thought they were getting after the 2008 election but didn't see until frankly after the election was over. Two things stand out in my mind recently as to what we expect from the President. And that is when he addressed his young workers, and he teared up, spoke from the heart, no teleprompter, and a very attractive Obama. And then today at his news conference; confident, tough, in effect to use a basketball term, he was saying I'm perfectly prepared to come reason together but in basketball terms I also will take it hard to the hoop if you try this obstructionist thing. On the Republican side, they have openings to be what we desperately need in the country, that is a responsible and loyal opposition. For example, prison and sentencing reform, some Republicans have talked about that; there's an opening. How to save our public schools; what we can learn from Finland and Singapore. These are openings for the Republicans. Will they take them? We'll see.
RM: You know, I wanted to ask whether you see some of that same dynamic at work with the President's, I thought, very, very stern performance today on the issue of Susan Rice as a potential nominee for Secretary of State and the Benghazi attacks. Obviously, she's been attacked from the right with John McCain leading the way. And what they attacked her for is a bunch of stuff she did not do. When he paraphrases what she said, what makes him so upset, he says she never said it was a terrorist attack; that she said it was ... all of this stuff that did not happen. And the President today taking that stern line wasn't just saying, I want to have this fight with you. He was saying, This is not the right fight to have. You are picking the wrong fight, at the wrong time with the wrong guy. The election is over. Was that sort of a call to put the sort of nonsense stuff, the fact-free stuff, behind us?
DR: Absolutely. And it's an example of how the Republicans have to get in touch with the fact-based world. And by the way, with John McCain, it's been said before, it can't be said too much. I admire John McCain. I have not forgotten the years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison camp. When he talks about Susan Rice and these things; this is a man who picked Sarah Palin to be possibly one heartbeat away from Presidency of the United States. You can't have it both ways if you're John McCain.
RM: Dan Rather, it's always such a pleasure to have you here. I don't know why you honor us with your presence, but I'm glad you're here sir.
DR: I'm always glad to be here. Thank you so much.
RM: Thank you. You know the expression Vote with Your Wallet, this election some donors got back more on their investment than others; way more. You've heard a lot about the people who wasted their money? What's next is the people who really did not. That's coming up.
Here is the
direct link to the video at MSNBC for those who can not view embedded video on the iPad or other device.