Presidential Campaigns Are About So Much More Than the Candidates. Republicans Again Preparing to Skew the Elections with Initiatives in Swing States

Think presidential elections are about the content of the candidates' characters?

Oh that is so 20th century!  (Or maybe not even then.) 

The Republican party has been busy setting up initiatives in swing states that will draw in swarms of evangelicals to vote for extreme measures for the state, and, most likely, John McCain, too  according to LA Times' Tim Rutten in "To defeat Obama, conservatives take the initiative ".

Some think that even California could be in play according to Mr. Rutten.  

 I agree on that point.  Any normal year that wouldn't be a factor, but this isn't a normal year.  In fact, it's not even like other years with initiatives promoted with heavy evangelical money (from across the nation) that we've seen before. That's because of  the overturn on the law banning same sex marriage by our supreme court which has given rise to a amendment on the ballot to the state constitution.  (This took lots of outside money, and could help McCain win as the howling creationist pack the polls to stop gay rights that they hate so much.)

Mr. Rutten notes this is right out of Karl Rove's playbook (Does anyone doubt Bush's former 'brain' is getting money to set this up?  I know I don't.)

You can read the Times' piece to see what other kinds of initiatives were put on the ballots in other states.  Beautiful strikes against gay and lesbian rights, women's rights, and affirmative action.

To mention a few that I know history about:

South Dakota also will be asked (for the third time) to vote to ban abortions.  This time there are exemptions for the rape, incest, and mother's health, which I think were missing from earlier measures.  (I could be wrong, but that's how my memory serves.)  Can the exemptions get this measure passed?  BTW, how can a state do this after Roe V. Wade?  Or are they waiting for the Supreme Court to overturn RvW as it will surely do under McCain if anyone on the court dies or retires. (The two oldest associates are liberals who McCain has promised to replace with justices in the vein of Roberts and Alito.) But, I'm sure those South Dakota exemptions will disappear under the Republican state administration.  Also, remember that now the most effective forms of birth control (pills, IUD, emergency) have been declared to be forms of abortion by the Bush administration.  Wow Ireland could have effective contraception before the US does after Roe V Wade is made to disappear.

But, no matter!  We need those kids for the Republican war machine!  Exxon needs oil!  GE needs copper, zinc, aluminum, etc. and "by God"  John "Theodore Roosevelt" McCain can find a nation to invade to help supply those businesses, cheap.  That's the way Teddy was. (Though John McCain hopes you don't understand the message he sent to multinational companies with deep pockets to contribute to his campaign fund with his proclaimed affiliation.)  If T.R. couldn't bully  a country into economic and political colonialism by moving around military forces (aka gunboat diplomacy) he'd find a reason to invade. That went on until America decided they were tired of paying for that game an refused to re-elect him to the presidency.  Since we've already had our economy damaged by 8 years of war, our prospects are even more grim.  

Colorado has an anti-abortion initiative and an anti affirmative action initiative, sponsored by California's Ward Connerly who successfully used the measure in (the sponsorship info is from a recent CA radio program) CA in 1996 (according to MS Magazine estimation of 12 years having passed since proposition 209 was approved) to get affirmative action banned in the state, though it might also have been targeted at helping Bob Dole in the presidential race. As you can read at the Ms. Magazine linked in this paragraph there are other states with anti affirmative pushes though the article was published last winter and I am not sure how many measures have qualified for the November election. Now I'm guessing that anti affirmative action measures are particularly a favorite of bigoted voters who (between the two presidential candidates) are more likely to vote for  ---  well, you figure it out. English as the official language measures also attract voters sensitive to race.

And I see that my state, California, gets a measure for the third time too.  The twice failed measure to require parental notification before an abortion was voted down (at least during one election) even by the most conservative county in the state.  But paired with the gay hate initiative, who knows what magic can be created.  Now that birth control pills and IUDS are abortions, teens won't be able to get birth control pills without permission, even in California if Roe v Wade is done in by a McCain enhanced SCOTUS.  

tags: initiative abuse  dirty tricks politics  evangelicals  john mccain  mccain  barack  obama  

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