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No moratorium on dumb and dangerous ideas from the left

No moratorium on dumb and dangerous ideas from the left

Newsweek editor Tom Rogers penned an editorial providing his suggestion to protect our elections from … whatever.

Keep in mind that Rogers is among the east coast elitist media mavens who criticizes Republican legislation to safeguard our elections.  He claims that we do not suffer from any vote fraud or irregularities.  Regardless, he is proposing how HE would protect elections from what he says does not happen.  At least when Republicans want to protect the franchise, they do not claim that vote fraud does not exist.

Rogers has an idea … a very dumb idea.  Maybe even a dangerous idea if President Biden were to take him seriously.  I say Biden, because Rogers wants the President to take action on his own – you know, like he did in Afghanistan.

He wants Biden to form a “commission” – a permanent body of distinguished Americans to oversee our elective process.  First of all, MOST commissions are bad ideas.  They basically serve as opportunities to appoint political supporters.  Some actually pay rather handsomely.

Rogers wants to keep his commission independent of politics.  Uh huh!  A presidential commission is devoid of politics.  That would be like having the Pope create a commission that had nothing to do with religion.

But Rogers does not want Biden to actually appoint the members of the commission – except maybe the co-chairmen.  In the interest of keeping the Rogers Commission on Elections out of politics, he would want Biden to appoint former Presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter to head it up.  

Personally, I would not appoint either of those gentlemen.  Of course, I would not even have the commission.  But Jimmy Carter?  They guy is 97 years old.  I admire his seeming vitality and wish him well – but he IS 97 years old.  This is a guy who said 80 is too old to be President.  Then it is arguable that 97 seven is too old to be … almost anything that requires more than an hour of activity each day.

Rogers did say the members would come from the pantheon of people with impeccable integrity and sterling reputations.  While Rogers did not propose any other names for his Commission, I had the impression that he was thinking of a lot of elitist east coast establishmentarians like … uh … him.

While he did not get into a lot of detail of what his Commission would do, he gave vague references to combating any effort to corrupt the electoral process – which he has said in the past is not corrupt.

Of course, the Rogers Commission would run smack dab into the Constitutional rights of the states to run their own elections.  His would be yet another effort to federalize the electoral process – and put it in the hands of establishment bureaucrats.  Yikes!  THAT is scary.  This goes along with some of the election legislation that Democrats are trying to push through Congress.  We just cannot trust the locals to manage their own elections – no matter what the Constitution says.

And what is really scary is what Rogers would have the Commission do if they were unhappy with how the states were handling the elections on their turfs.  If the states were to exercise their legal and constitutional right to run local elections – and if they did not comport with the opinion of the Commission – Rogers said the Commission could organize and promote protest across the country – what he called “massive protests.”

Isn’t that ass backwards.  To the extend commissions perform any useful service, shouldn’t they be investigating massive protests to see what went wrong and how they can be avoided?  Is this any different than President Trump encouraging people to protest the 2020 presidential election?

What bothers me most about Rogers’ idiotic idea is that it just might appeal to Biden and all those left-leaning Progressives.  Let us hope that Biden was napping when Rogers was spewing out this nonsense on CNN.

So, there ‘tis

About The Author

Larry Horist

So, there ‘tis… The opinions, perspectives and analyses of businessman, conservative writer and political strategist Larry Horist. Larry has an extensive background in economics and public policy. For more than 40 years, he ran his own Chicago based consulting firm. His clients included such conservative icons as Steve Forbes and Milton Friedman. He has served as a consultant to the Nixon White House and travelled the country as a spokesman for President Reagan’s economic reforms. Larry professional emphasis has been on civil rights and education. He was consultant to both the Chicago and the Detroit boards of education, the Educational Choice Foundation, the Chicago Teachers Academy and the Chicago Academy for the Performing Arts. Larry has testified as an expert witness before numerous legislative bodies, including the U. S. Congress, and has lectured at colleges and universities, including Harvard, Northwestern and DePaul. He served as Executive Director of the City Club of Chicago, where he led a successful two-year campaign to save the historic Chicago Theatre from the wrecking ball. Larry has been a guest on hundreds of public affairs talk shows, and hosted his own program, “Chicago In Sight,” on WIND radio. An award-winning debater, his insightful and sometimes controversial commentaries have appeared on the editorial pages of newspapers across the nation. He is praised by audiences for his style, substance and sense of humor. Larry retired from his consulting business to devote his time to writing. His books include a humorous look at collecting, “The Acrapulators’ Guide”, and a more serious history of the Democratic Party’s role in de facto institutional racism, “Who Put Blacks in That PLACE? -- The Long Sad History of the Democratic Party’s Oppression of Black Americans ... to This Day”. Larry currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida.

6 Comments

  1. frank stetson

    Elections are still run by the States. The best the Fed can do is monitor, assess, and suggest “best of class” solutions, perhaps incentivizing them too. Unless Congress moves to make federal guidelines, which again, would be minimum bar, not a “one size fits all.” Sort of like ObamaCare sets the bar for minimal insurance (or any state sets these bars as well, but really can only set the bar higher than ObamaCare, not lower.).

    Given there is very little proven fraud, this is really pandering. Better we spend the money on getting lobotomies for any Republican swearing fraud is rampant, the election was rigged, and we need to continue these ridiculous recounts and make the preparators pay for expenses and damages for unfounded frivolous fraud accusations. Either that or let’s go back and recount so we can put President Al Gore in his rightful chair. You know he won…..hands down…..Florida too. And you know Florida cheats; heck, they can’t even count dead people correctly, how hard is that? They don’t even move……

    • Dan Tyree

      I believe that elections will be watched more closely next time. I hope so. Win or lose, we must have faith in our elections. It’s one of the freedoms that we have left Being a staunch Republican I never questioned Obama’s win. Or Clinton. But this last election smells to high Heaven

    • larry Horist

      The fed can step in where there is a constitutional question — as they did when the Democrat racists were in control of the southland. The civil rights laws that expired — and the left wants to reimpose — were designed to sunset after the guilty states improved and no longer needed ongoing federal oversight. Ironically, the left wants to re-instate those laws even as THEY are arguing that elections are fair. There real purpose is to control elections from Washington — and the two bills Dems support in Congress are just steps to that goal. And this Commission is the nuttiest — and potentially most dangerous — idea of all.

      I am sure you are be facetious, but there are a lot of those on the left who still maintain that the 2000 election was stolen. Hell … historians are still fighting over who won in 1876 — and over the evidence of vote fraud in Illinois and Texas that gave the 1960 election to Kennedy. The 2020 election will (not) soon enough be another political parlor game for aging pundits.

      • frank stetson

        Larry, being a Chicago guy, I am sure you feel dirty tricks just part of the game. Legal cheating, gerrymandering, etc. always been with us. Fraudulent voters, that’s another thing that conservatives seem to feel runs rampant, can’t find it, can’t prosecute it , but feel it’s all around us. Most Republicans even feel it’s at the point where Trump won, Biden lost.

        So yes, I think Gore’s vote came down to 7 people who mattered in a nation of hundreds of millions. But as much as I think the Supreme Court was in NO POSITION to even make a determination, it’s over, he lost.

        Likewise, after almost 12 months of trying, with zero success, not even a scintilla, this one should be over. But apparently someone is changing the rules, Trump, and, for some reason, keeping this alive as long as he can. As always, just follow the money and you have your answer; it’s making him richer.

        No, I do not have a problem with Federal benchmarks for elections. To me, Federal simply means “the people,” and states mean “less than the people.” To that end, I am still for states rights, but more for the 50 potential experiments, not dominion beyond that, IMO. So, a commission to discover “best practices,” seems relevant, and root-cause-analysis would be the beginning of that — no need to fix it if it ain’t broken. And setting a bar for the minimum the states need to do to assure security, that’s part of that, and certainly would be based on the results of our 50 experiments thus far.

        That said, yeah Jimmy Carter has worked elections across the globe, but perhaps at this point an “emeritus” type advisor status might be more appropriate. But I think setting a minimum bar would be a great Federal thing to do.

        But the bottom line is probably the well is so poisoned that nothing will make 50% of the population ever believe 2022 is fair. And the Republicans aren’t improving things with witch hunts, restrictive voting laws, and now —- active replacement of experience election officials with zealots, nuts, and folks with absolutely no experience whatsoever. When these assholes jump into action in 2022, the lawsuits will fall from the sky. But unlike the Republican ones, these will probably stick.

        Those who are feeding disinformation into the US are currently winning and I don’t really know what it will take to stop the feeding frenzy that questions our institutions, if not our national vision. This “commission” seems to be an unintended consequence of that and I am sure it makes those seeding US divisions very happy. We be putin on the ritz.

      • Joseph S. Bruder

        Larry, I’m truly astonished that you think the Civil Rights Act “expired” and that it was designed to sunset. Instead, it was crippled by right-wing SCOTUS justices. They took away the ability for courts to prevent changes to state and local voting laws – pre-emptive enforcement before the elections took place. It’s precisely this change that is allowing Republican-led legislatures to gerrymander districts and pass voter suppression laws.

        From the American Constitution Society:

        In Shelby County, AL v. Holder, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision split on ideological lines, declared unconstitutional the formula used under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to determine which states and localities must receive pre-approval of their voting rights laws. This decision, which effectively ends the preclearance practice meant to preserve minority voting rights, will transform the right to vote for years to come. Once again, relying on the myth of racial progress, the Supreme Court failed to confront the racial balkanization in voting that exists, and it ultimately crippled the role that Voting Rights Act has in limiting it.

  2. Joseph S. Bruder

    So, some guy has a “suggestion to protect our elections from … whatever.” Sounds an awful lot like Republicans restricting voting access because of some unspecified… “something”… Some sort of fraud, that they “prove” by saying there’s no proof the election isn’t rigged… except they lost and THAT can’t be right, so there must be fraud. And after 60-odd lawsuits and a dozen or two recounts, they still haven’t found any. Except they still keep doing it, because every shrede of doubt funnels cash into Trump’s “election” fund (and we all know he’s not going to run again – first, he’d have to run from a jail cell, second he has no support, and third it turns the money stream into a closely monitored and controlled liability that he can’t do what he wants with anymore).

    But let Democrats propose voting rights protections, in the face of state Republicans reducing the number of polling stations and voting hours in poor, minority, or just heavily Democratic-leaning districts, making registration harder, cancelling registrations just before an election, limiting mail-in voting, even preventing volunteers from providing water and snacks to people stuck in lines for hours… in a country founded on Democracy, the will of the people, Republicans howl in agony at the prospect of protecting voting rights or God forbid making it easier for people to vote. They seem to be trying to limit voting to rich white landowners.

    Larry, it’s also a little rich for you to say “Rogers is among the east coast elitist media mavens”… You’re on the East Coast, and you tout your speaking engagements at Harvard and your service to kings and all the rest of the bullshit in your bio (praised for your sense of humor? Mostly you come off as an angry old man ranting and shaking his fist and yelling “get off my lawn!”). And you’re working for a wannabe Newsmax media mogul. I guess Rogers is an elitist because you consider him left-wing… personally, I never heard of him before this.

    So, as usual, you set up your straw man by saying this is the opinion of the “left”, when it is no such thing and nobody except this one guy has even expressed an opinion on it. Democrats can recognize and ignore a bad idea, but that doesn’t stop you from using it to scare your meager readership. Eventually, one side or the other would have a majority, and then it’s just another Federal Election Commission that is powerless to overcome the blockade of extremists. And to tell the truth, the Civil Rights Act was pretty effective until it got gutted by McConnell packing SCOTUS with a bunch of right-wing extremists. Maybe a better solution would be for Biden to “go there”, i.e. add 3-4 more Justices and bring in updated civil rights legislation. Republicans are pushing pretty far-right extremist legislation with a Court packed in their favor, and it might be the only recourse that Biden has.

    And since you felt the need to comment on the elections in 2000, you’re right on the mark about “aging pundits”.