GOP Voter Registration Scandal Widens

At Salon.

The GOP is trying to steal the election. That much is clear--and, for that matter, was clear independently of the registration scandals enumerated by Salon. Mass suppression efforts in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin would be grounds for outrage even if not for the new revelations about voter-registration fraud in Virginia and elsewhere.

You know as well as I know that, if Republicans manage to get one vote more than Obama, then, no matter how they got it, no matter what scandals and shenanigans are revealed, they will argue that democratic principles demand that Romney be inaugurated...and, sure, those problems will be looked into later. The maniacal dogmatism they displayed in Florida in 2000 would be deployed once again to deny any efforts to rectify a stolen election. We already know that they have a two-phase strategy: steal the election no matter how blatantly, then deploy pseudo-patriotic outrage to prevent the result from being overturned.

It's rather difficult to get one's head around the fact that we are dealing with dangerous extremists here. You, like me, probably think of yourself as a centrist, and you, like me, are probably averse to saying or thinking the kinds of things I've written above. But we cannot allow a mere desire to sound reasonable to prevent us from actually being reasonable. One of the two parties is currently pouring massive resources into trying to steal the election. If they succeed, the theft simply cannot be rolled back.