The Unholy Trinity of Voter Suppression Is Having a No Good, Very Bad Week
In the universe of voter-suppressing goons, they are the Trinity—Kris Kobach, J. Christian Adams, and Hans von Spakovsky. All three of them were appointed to the administration*'s farcical "ballot security" commission, which collapsed under combined weight of its own bad faith arguments and produced nothing but embarrassment. Since then Kobach has lost a race—to a Democrat—for governor of Kansas. The other two have continued in their careers as evangelists for the new Jim Crow. However, it has not been a good week thus far for the Trinity.
On Wednesday, Kobach went on CNN and tried to defend-not-defend the president*'s episode of manic racism over the weekend. Kobach is neither the brightest bulb in the Kansas chandelier nor the shrewdest Kansas politician since Alf Landon. Things with Chris Cuomo did not go well, as brother Jack pointed out elsewhere in the shebeen on Wednesday.
Cuomo: "What would you do if the President said, 'I am a racist'?"
Kobach: "Then I would not defend him because there's no excuse for racism in America."
Cuomo: "Would you still support him as President?"
Kobach: "Um, I don't know. That'd be a really tough question."
Actually, it's not. It's an easy question and the answer is always no. Small wonder that the Republican National Committee has tossed Kobach's potential U.S. Senate candidacy into the same dumpster fire into which it has tossed Roy Moore's.
At least Kobach left his CNN hit with his legal situation intact. His running buddy, J. Christian Adams, wasn't so lucky in a Virginia courtroom. From Talking Points Memo:
J. Christian Adams and his group the Public Interest Legal Foundation were sued last year over the “Aliens Invasion” reports they released in 2016 and 2017. The reports — which included names, phone numbers, addresses and social security numbers of individuals removed from voter rolls allegedly because they were noncitizens — amounted to defamation and voter intimidation, the lawsuit alleged. Under the terms of the freshly announced agreement, PILF will have to remove from its website the report exhibits containing the individuals’ personal information, according to a press release Wednesday from the groups that brought the suit.
According to the press release, PILF will also have to add a statement in front of the reports that says, “PILF recognizes that individuals in [the removed exhibits] were in fact citizens and that these citizens did not commit felonies. PILF profoundly regrets any characterization of those registrants as felons or instances of registration or voting as felonies.”
Von Spakovsky, meanwhile, is out there spreading his customary manure across various wingnut welfare idea terrariums. The conservative grift is truly immortal.
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