As we already discussed here, President Obama floated the idea of mandatory voting in the United States while speaking to a civic group in Cleveland on Wednesday, which of course had the right wing heads over at Faux "news" exploding everywhere.
The panel on Bret Baier's Special Report which included hate-talk radio host Laura Ingraham, Swanson heir and Fox weekend host Tucker Carlson and The Washington Post's Charles Lane was no exception, and after playing a clip of President Obama discussing whether voting ought to be mandatory -- and of Senator Big Gulp, a.k.a. Marco Rubio of Florida insisting that “not voting is a legitimate choice" on Hannity's show this week, Tucker Carlson was asked to weigh in on President Obama's remarks.
CARLSON: Well, he's making the classic liberal mistake of assuming that everything that's virtuous ought to be mandatory, you know, brushing your teeth, putting the seat down... there ought to be a law! In fact voting only works because it is voluntary. You wouldn't want to be governed by people who are too uninformed or lazy to make it to the polls on Tuesday. I mean, that's the whole beauty of it. I would say there was a troubling part in his comments at the end of what you just played, where he muttered darkly about how unseen forces were trying to prevent lower income and minority voters from voting.
That's racial demagoguery. That's what it looks like. In fact in the last election, 2012, African American voters voted in a larger proportion to white voters. That's just a flat out lie and it's designed to make people afraid and move them on the basis of fear and it's wrong.
I think if you look up the word "projection" in the English dictionary you might just see a picture of Tucker Carlson's head in the entry. Fox would have nothing left to offer their viewers if they didn't constantly keep them afraid of their own shadow at any and all times.
Next up was Laura Ingraham with a big massive dose of projection of her own. It's not conservatives who want to rig our elections to make sure they win by hook or crook. It's the Democrats!
INGRAHAM: In November 2010, Hillary Clinton came out and advocated for an end to the Electoral College. Of course Republicans threatened a victory with the “tea party.” And when the left loses, the left wants to change the rules, so get rid of the Electoral College, all these states that have some influence should be basically thrown out of the equation and now mandatory voting.
This is so typical. They always do this and again, this supposedly “freedom loving” you know, liberals, really aren't for freedom. They want to control your choices. Remember, Obama's famous saying, can't have your thermostat at 72. You shouldn't be going out and driving your SUVs, probably don't like big families. There are a lot of things they don't like us to do, but they're the “freedom people.” They're all tolerant. Not really.
Yes, those horrible intolerant liberals. They all hate America. Just ask Laura Ingraham and she'll tell you.
What happened next was fairly hilarious because Fox regular Charles Lane went completely off script and actually advocated for making it easier for all of those lazy people who work jobs moochers to make it to the polls and have a chance to vote.
LANE: Well, we're spending a lot of time on something that's never going to happen...
INGRAHAM: Oh really?
LANE: … but what the heck.
INGRAHAM: Really? We thought a lot of things weren't going to happen and they happened Chuck.
LANE: What the heck. So I'm going to say, first of all, I agree with my colleagues to this extent, he says it's low income people who aren't voting, and then threatens them with a fine, right, if they continue to not vote and that seems a little strange to impose further burdens on the... whatever.
But actually, there is a problem in this country with voter participation. We do vote at a much lower rate than a lot of other democracies, but there's so many other things we could do to make voting easier and cheaper, starting with putting it on a Sunday, or making it a national holiday, increasing direct mail voting, a whole lot of other... automatic registration... a whole lot of other measures which may not be popular at this table, but would increase participation before you start threatening people with compulsory voting.
Charles had better be careful or Fox is going to quit inviting to have him on. Naturally Carlson and Ingraham continued beating the drums on how we should not have uninformed voters going to the polls and mucking up our elections (unless of course it's Faux "news" that's been doing the misinforming, then it's perfectly alright) and both of them got terribly upset when Lane made a comment suggesting that what they were talking about might be akin to a literacy test.
I hate to break it to Tucker, but it's not just an "allusion to ugly historical episodes" that Lane was talking about. As we all know, voter suppression is alive and well right now regardless of the spin Tucker tried to put on it.
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