Repugs Seek GA House Seat by Supporting Hate Crimes

[ignatzmouse]

A Voter Guide that is being distributed to churches and through targeted mailings in Georgia makes overt appeals to racism, homophobia, and misogyny in an attempt to sway two House races targeted by the White House as possible Republican pick-ups. Georgia's 8th and 12th Congressional seats received special gerrymandering treatment by the newly installed Republican state legislature and have received repeated stump appearances by Bush in support of Republicans trying to unseat the Democratic incumbents, a ploy that recalls Tom DeLay's tactics in Texas.

Accompanying the special attention from the White House, a Voter Guide that focuses on the races (actually more of a condescending cattle prod) has been produced and distributed to evangelical churches by the "Georgia Christian Alliance." The Georgia Christian Alliance is a recent makeover of the Christian Coalition of Georgia, complete with same Chairperson, offices, and phone number, that they believe allows them to by-pass an IRS ruling that found their previous guides partisan and misleading and required them to allow Democrats to write up to 25 words on their positions in the guides. This year's Voter Guides conveniently offer no Democratic responses. This is like a seedy furniture store renaming itself after bankruptcy to avoid customer lawsuits, except this is moral bankruptcy with intimate ties to the RNC. Around one million of the voters guides have been distributed at Sunday Services in predominately white evangelical churches this past week and are now being mailed to targeted homes in the state -- I've little doubt with the help of the RNC's Voter Vault demographic data.

What "moral issues" do the Republicans and the Georgia Christian Alliance tout as important to evangelicals in their voter guide? (in pdf at http://www.gachristianalliance.org/) For one, they object to increased penalties for hate crimes. For another, they are angry about affirmative action that assists minorities. Adoption of children by homosexuals is another miff. And support for a new measure that would require any woman having an abortion to be forced to undergo and view an ultrasound picture of the fetus before the procedure is done is explicitly important to the Christian-Republican agenda. These are their "moral" issues, specific appeals to racism, homophobia, and hatred of women. Nothing new, eh?

In particular, the gerrymandered 8th District which is targeted as a Republican pick-up has received special attention in co-ordination with Bush's three visits on behalf of former House Republican and trucking company owner Mac Collins. The five moral issues listed in the Voter Guide for this district include the prohibition of abortion, repeal of the "death tax," abolition of foreign language ballots, "defense" of the Ten Commandments, and (drum roll) opposition to "increased penalties for crimes based on bias or prejudice."

So the Rove strategy to gain a Republican House seat in Georgia is to support hate crimes? And to force women to have ultrasound images rubbed in their faces by Right-to-Lifers? I expected some kind of smirking allusion to affirmative action and the gay bashing and the school voucher stuff, but these guys are not only going into the sewer, they are breeding e coli and infecting churches with it and calling it a moral duty. "We won't let those liberals outlaw hate crimes! How dare they! Vote Republican!"

Vote your conscience on November 7th. In Georgia, they're going to church and being cleansed of it by the party machine.

[Maraya1969]

1. I notice that the Repubs want to stop allowing voting in Spanish

So I guess that means Hispanic citizens who do not speak English are not deemed worthy to vote. Of course the fact that they tend to vote Democratic is right up there also. I am sure there are provisions for blind and illiterate persons.

It is hard to believe that they can be so hateful toward minorities. I bet if they could they'd stop black people from voting also.

[AndyTiedye]

2. Is It Working?

[ignatzmouse]

3. A long-time tool that has been fundamental to Repug Southern strategy

The Voter Guides have a strong effect on evangelical voters, and this is a tight race. The guides have been part of their Southern strategy for years as have helped turn the South red. I don't know why there has not been a progressive Christian effort to counter these thinly disguised party propaganda sheets with their own guides outlining poverty issues and exposing the immoral tack Republicans have been pushing on the churches, especially the race baiting. If the Democrats want to make a stand to recover the South, this would go a long way to initiating the process. As it stands now, every time they read a Democratic "no response" in the Coalition guides on issues dictated by the Republicans, it both reinforces the evangelical voters sense of Democrats disguising something and also that they don't care about them or their issues.

Jim Marshall should flip this on them this year, however, and call Collins out for favoring hate crimes. It's a tag that will hurt Collins even in the rural South. It's a dishonorable association.

[AndyTiedye]

4. Collins Thinks Supporting Hate Crimes Will Help Him With His Constituancy

Hopefully it will backfire on him