The Newest Obamican

Last week Abigail Thernstrom, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, wrote a piece on NRO on the Obama Department of Injustice & Revenge-New Black Panther Party voter intimidation alliance that dissented from the view of her two Republican-appointees on the Commission. She herself summarized thusly: "Never mind this one-off stunt by fringe radicals; the DOJ is engaged in much more important voting-rights mischief."

I noted the article, skimmed it, but passed on writing about it. Honest differences of opinion can always arise even amongst ideologically sympatico colleagues, and this appeared to be nothing different or out of the ordinary. A cursory search of the rightosphere indicates that my reaction was pretty common.

Evidently that was not the reaction Ms. Thernstrom was after. So she decided to up the PR ante:

“This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers, this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims “in the initial discussions” of the Panther case last year.

“My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president,” Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.

I guess the $64 question for me is did she seek out Politico or did Politico seek out her? Sure sounds like the former, doesn't it? Publishing "a conservative dissent" from her two rightie colleagues made not a ripple, so she took the next step to guarantee that her dissent received big splash attention by shitting on them as partisan axe-grinders. Annnnnnd sounding an awful lot like a treader of the well-trod path of leftward perfidy that backstabbers like David Brock, Andrew Sullivan, David Frum, David Brooks, and Kathleen Parker fellow-traveled before her.

To Thernstrom's charge, my gut reaction is.....so what? What's wrong with hanging Red Barry and Eric The Red on their own "post-racial" petard using their own tactics against them? One of the things that Republicans have had the most difficult time adjusting to is the new reality that in politics, there are no rules. As long as GOPers continue languishing in the fantasy world that politics isn't bloodsport, isn't war by other means, and the other side is merely "opponents" rather than enemies, they will continue to flounder, continue to be cheated, screwed, rooked, noogied, and robbed, and continue to lose every close election regardless of which candidate actually earned more votes.

The Panthers case is devastatingly noteworthy not because the NBPP was all over the country beating white voters unconscious before they could cast their ballots, but because it is symptomatic of the "much more important voting rights mischief" she plays up in the NRO piece. That's how you draw public attention to the otherwise dry esoterica that makes laymen's eyes glaze over - or, to put it baldly, how you sell the fight against voter fraud and intimidation.

Besides which, how is it possible to pursue such a mission in a "non-partisan" fashion when all the voter fraud and intimidation comes from one party and/or its supporters?

Not that it matters much now. As DrewM laments:

Given the new liberal friendly storyline that's now on the table, I imagine a lot of people who get their news from the MFM and have never heard of this case are about to get an earful of it....

[I]t's going to fall to the Republicans on the Commission and whistle-blower J. Christian Adams to come up with something more.

Ideally, that would be crap, because substantively, they don't NEED to come up with "more". In reality, there's no way for them to come up with enough "more," because of the self-serving, well-calculated taint that Ms. Thernstrom has cast on not just the Panthers' case, but the entire effort to combat the voter fraud corruption that the Left is using to meltdown the integrity of our entire democratic system, including those "much more important" cases about which she purported to be so deeply concerned.

So congratulations, Abbie. You've passed your Obamican initiation. Just don't get trampled by the mass voter stampede in the opposite direction that's already thunderingly on its way.

UPDATE: Forgot Charlie "LGF" Johnson....