House of Eratosthenes

Back in March, I came to the defense of some half-wit senator in Canada who indulged in some kind of half-wit change-the-subject type of attack on American policy and on President Bush, a change-of-subject that was completely unwarranted and, in the context of what she was being asked, unneeded on her part. She was being asked by a concerned Minnesota family about seal-hunting, and instead of replying the way a rational, red-blooded earthling would reply — “I’m in the Canadian Senate, we don’t decide that stuff” — she went on a tear about the United States foreign policy. A family in Minnesota, which went blue in the last election, has about as much to do with the Bush administration’s foreign policy as a Canadian senator has to do with seal hunting, so she answered air-headed goo-gooderness with more of the same.

My defense of her was that this was no accident. She was making a subtle comment.

I don’t really believe that’s the case; I was being sarcastic.

Well, this time there’s not so much irony here.

Democratic candidate for Congress Francine Busby was asked Thursday night about volunteer efforts in her campaign. She was making a speech to a Latino group, and toward the end of the session a man asked how he could help when he didn’t have papers. After the question was translated into English for her, she replied:

Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can all help. You don’t need papers for voting, you don’t need to be a registered voter to help.

Power Line has more context & comment, and an audio clip. Washington Post has more.

Bottom-lining it real quick: Sorry, conservatives, I’m having a real tough time hopping on this bandwagon. Yes, Democrats have a vested interest in getting illegal aliens to vote, and yes from time to time it becomes demonstrable that they have this interest, and take aggressive action in pursuing it. But this is not the smoking gun.

Or what I should say is it would be the smoking gun, if and only if you proceed from the premise that the only way to “help” with a campaign is to personally vote for the candidate promoted by that campaign. I can’t sign on to that. Looking over the whole exchange, as much of it as I can get ahold of, it seems likely the subject was all the other stuff that has to be coordinated: The canvassing, the envelope-stuffing, the copy-making, all that jazz.

Does it look fishy that you don’t need voting papers to help with that? In my opinion, yes it does. Should it be allowed? Probably not. Is this evidence that Democrats want illegal aliens to vote? Honestly, no…not in the slightest.

They do, though. And I’m sure the evidence is out there. Wait for it. Jumping at stupid stuff like this, is the equivalent of lowering the conservative baseline to the level of the Jason Leopold and Truthout folks — it’s exactly the same practice. You’re frustrated that nobody ever gets nailed on this stuff, so you jump on the anecdote that is only marginally compelling and is logically unsustainable; the appearance you give, is that you aren’t personally invested in the premise that stronger evidence is out there.

Well, I am so personally invested. Democrats will get popped on something sooner or later, and that they’ll get popped this year, seems all-but-assured. I’ll even lay better-than-even odds that Busby will be among the ones popped. I just don’t think it has happened, here, and attempts to exploit this particular event will ultimately backfire. Throw that fish back, get some better bait, and confine your fishing to the posted limits.

Update: Rush has some interesting things to say about this. Where he’s essentially going with this, it seems, is that there is a perception out there that Francine Busby is going to try to win this thing on the strength of the illegal vote. As I said above, my opinion about what’s going on here, is consistent with this perception, although I dsagree with using her notorious quote as a foundation for drawing this.

She’s out there saying she misspoke. She says that she didn’t mean what she was trying to say out there, but she said it. The latest poll on this from Taegan Goddard‘s website is that Bilbray has now moved ahead by a couple points, and this appears to be one of the reasons. This is the final poll before the special election tomorrow for California 50. Survey USA finds that Brian Bilbray has a two-point lead over Busby 47 to 45%. The previous poll survey USA took had both candidates tied…When she says what she meant to say was, “You don’t have to vote for me to help. You can do a lot of things besides vote for me, and I just misspoke,” so she’s trying to slither out of that. But it’s too late. It’s out there, and on the weekend before the election…Remember, the Democrats are already setting this up for her to lose by saying, “She’s going to win anyway. I mean, we win anyway if we’re this close in this Republican a district,” and they did this before this gaffe.

Interesting. Hey I have a radical idea. This will fix the whole problem, and I can’t think of a single reason not to do it. My idea is exactly one word long: NO.

We go back and make Busby’s answer NO. What she meant when she used the word “help,” doesn’t matter. Make it so the answer is NO. If that’s not the correct answer, pass whatever federal laws we have to pass, to make it the right answer. No, you may not stuff envelopes. You may not answer phones. You may not go door-to-door on our behalf. You may not erect yard signs. You have to have voting papers to do any of that stuff, to even think about doing it. If you can’t prove you’re legally here, then you can’t do squat.

Now, what is the best possible argument for opposing that? We have bazillions of real, live, registered, legitimate voters who don’t have the slightest clue what to do in the voting booth and have little-to-no interest in finding out. People on both sides, for the most part, will agree with that. Can we not all sign up to the idea that it is a situation ripe for abuse, when people who aren’t legally allowed to vote, but are passionate about one candidate or another — are allowed to, in some way, “help” the legitimate-but-apathetic voters vote a certain way? Can we not all agree that something should be done about this before something bad happens? Regardless of your ideology or your priorities, how can you disagree with that?

What are you gonna say — these are law abiding people (after they hop the turnstyle) who want to make a better life for themselves and their children by coming here and stuffing envelopes as a volunteer?

Go ahead. Make the argument. I’d love to see that.

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Supporting FrancineTuesday, June 6th, 2006

Supporting Francine
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006