Ilyse Hogue and Ari Melber: The GOP’s Unabashedly Partisan Voter ID Laws
  • June 27, 2012

Ilyse Hogue and Ari Melber: The GOP’s Unabashedly Partisan Voter ID Laws

Ilyse Hogue and Ari Melber: The GOP’s Unabashedly Partisan Voter ID Laws

GOP Representative Mike Turzai’s casual acknowledgement that voter ID laws would “allow Governor Romney to win” is much more than a political gaffe. 

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This weekend, Pennsylvania GOP Representative Mike Turzai was cheerily going down a list of achievements made by his party in the state congress this session when he dropped this line: “Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” It’s been bouncing around the news media ever since. 

Gaffe or otherwise, Representative Turzai seemed to have finally laid out plain the GOP’s motives for the rollback of voting rights.

“We’re looking at a party where the ends justify the means,” said Nation writer Ilyse Hogue, speaking on The Ed Show last night. “This is positively anti-American.”

Hogue and Nation writer Ari Melber sat down with Republican strategist Susan Del Percio, who didn’t hesitate to concede her party has, “in certain circumstances,” gone too far.

—Zoë Schlanger

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With the midterm elections now firmly upon us, the question is whether Democratic candidates will do more than merely occupy ballot lines as mild alternatives to the red-hot crisis that is Donald Trump.

As Trump spends over $1 billion a day on a globally destabilizing war on Iran and admits that he doesn’t “think about Americans’ financial situation,” millions across the country are struggling with the surging costs of essentials. Democrats must seize this moment and advance bold, small-“d” populist ideas—not settle for cynical caution that once again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.

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Onward,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation

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