StateWrek: The Next Generation
by Tom Sullivan
Just a quick thought or two about tactics. I ran across yet another Koch-funded astroturf website this week aimed at Millennials. It was a spinoff of Generation Opportunity. Plus, there was an article featuring an eighteen year-old Republican legislator from West Virginia. It's StateWrek: The Next Generation.
I have written extensively on the right's push to promote photo identity cards by hyping the threat of fraud at the polls. The GOP "plowed cash into state legislative efforts in 2010" to wrest control of redistricting. We've seen the results of the Republican State Leadership Committee's (RSLC) REDMAP efforts up close and personal here. The result is, as Charlie Pierce calls it, the newly insane state of North Carolina.
And if you really want to get into the weeds, there is the continuing saga of the RNC's efforts to void the 1982 consent decree forbidding it from engaging in election protection efforts in the states without preclearance from a federal judge. They apparently want, you know, FREEDOM to use caging lists and to place off-duty cops wearing armbands reading “National Ballot Security Task Force" outside polling places in minority precincts.
With an aging base and facing unfavorable demographics, Republicans aren't looking for a silver bullet to keep them politically viable. They know there isn't one. They're investing in a scattershot of initiatives that buy them a fraction of a point here, a couple of percentage points there, a slice of this demographic, a judgeship or two, etc. Pretty soon any demographic or coalition advantage Democrats think they have going forward is gone.
They're not looking for a silver bullet. They're using silver buckshot.