The GOP Is Already Losing the 2010 Elections

This should be filed under the "Duh! What did you think was going to happen?" file. Andy McCarthy of National Review Online is in a blather because the Obama administration has withdrawn approval for the state of Georgia's vote suppression policies.

In the heated imaginations of people like Andy McCarthy, vote suppression was one of the Rove-era tactics that was going to bring about 1,000 years of conservative political domination. The general idea of vote suppression was to use the immigration issue as a wedge to lower the voting rates of less affluent Democratic constituencies like African-Americans, legal Hispanics, and poor whites. Under the cover of keeping illegal immigrants out of the voting booth, vote suppression gurus like Hans von Spakovsky sought to load up poorer Democratic constituencies with identification requirements that a certain percentage of them would not be able to meet. Lower voting rates among these groups means fewer votes for Democrats, more victories for Republicans, and a better life for the Andy McCarthy's and Michelle Malkins of the world.

Georgia was the state that bought into vote suppression in a big way and enacted a voter ID policy that withstood a number of court challenges. But it looks like the Georgia system is going to go the way of the dinosaurs, slavery, and segregation because the Obama administration is reversing the Bush administration's vote surpression policies. No surprise here! The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed precisley to end vote suppression in Southern states like Georgia. Andy McCarthy calls the Voting Rights Act an "anachronism," but the fact that Georgia was pursuing an onerous voter ID policy is strong evidence that the state still needs to be supervised under the Voting Rights Act. As a result, the Obama Department of Justice has withdrawn approval for Georgia's voter ID requirement. Hopefully, the Obama DOJ will be promoting policies that make it easier for minorities and poor people to vote.

Andy McCarthy claims that the end of the vote suppression era means that the Democrats are "already winning the elections of 2010." That's absurd. If McCarthy wants to know why the Democrats are going to win in 2010, all he has to do is look at Republican behavior in states like Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Whether it's pushing Republican senators like Arlen Specter into switching parties or ruining the chances of Republican incumbents like Jim Bunning to win re-election, the Republican Party is acting like its no.1 priority is electing more Democrats.