Gotta love this story from Daily Kos, originally reported by The Daily Dot, an online newspaper based who knows where — everywhere, I guess.
This story contains all the delectable elements of rightwing psychosis that make conservatives so much fun: Paranoia, delusion, racism, love of violence, a near-religious belief that only people like them should be allowed to vote, and of course a strong sense of victimhood.
Ben Marine is a Hispanic GOTV volunteer who was recorded by a security camera dropping off a cardboard box full of absentee ballots at an auditor’s office or wherever ballots go to be counted in Arizona. He works for a group calling itself “Citizens for a Better Arizona” and is wearing one of their T-shirts in the video. They encourage Hispanic voter turnout by collecting filled-out and sealed absentee ballots from Hispanic voters and turning them in, saving the voters a trip to a drop-
off location. This is legal in Arizona.
But the video got posted on Glenn Beck’s website, migrated from there to You Tube, and went viral in the rightwing blogosphere. Some of the commenters on You Tube called for Marine’s death: “’This is a high crime, it is treason to this country and a betrayal of democracy,’ one writes. ‘This should be a crime punishable by death.’ ‘I am going to find this illegal-loving scumbag and kill him,’ writes another.”
Now for the good part:
“A.J. LaFaro, the chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee, told the Arizona Daily Independent that Marine’s behavior was suspicious, and complained that Marine was ‘a vulgar, disrespectful, violent thug that has no respect for our laws. I would have followed him to the parking lot to take down his tag number but I feared for my life.'”
Now for the better part — Daily Kos’s oh-so-articulate (and hilarious) take:
“What’s suspicious? Being brownish? Where was the violence? Did he crush a bug setting the box down? Is the vulgar and the thug part just because the chairman of the Maricopa County Republicans ran out of ways to say brown …? As a capper, the aforementioned Republican official who is so concerned about the vulgar (brown) disrespectful (brown) violent (brown) thug (brooooooown guy) delivering ballots? He knows perfectly well it’s legal. He was part of a far-right movement to make it illegal, … but it was so widely condemned that the legislature (yes, even the crackpot Arizona legislature) caved in and repealed it.
“A.J. LaFaro is part of the Russell Pearce hard-right xenophobe racist monster wing of the Arizona Republican Party, which in Arizona has no other wings, and was trying to start a freakout over a legal thing because he’s been part of the effort to make Arizona conservatives soil their pants over the brown people for years. The conservative internets took him up on it because, and I repeat myself for emphasis, they are the stupidest damn jackasses to ever put themselves behind a keyboard.”
Hmm. Well, that’s pretty strong language, but maybe the situation calls for it. More than anything, though, I think this episode illustrates that conservatives don’t want anyone but Republicans to vote.