WSJ: Michigan Meets Malcolm X - intellectual void among Democrats creates a vacuum for extremists

Wall Street Journal ^ | August 11, 2005 | S.D. MELZER

[OESY]

Liberals have been beating their collective breast in recent years over the Bush administration's post-9/11 assault on civil liberties. But Michigan Democrats-- from Gov. Jennifer Granholm to the State Board of Canvassers-- have joined ranks with a radical, 1960s-style Trotskyite group to deny state residents the most basic of all rights: the right to vote.

The group, which... calls itself By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), has been engaged in a long guerilla campaign to prevent the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) from getting on the state ballot.

This initiative, backed by Ward Connerly, ...seeks to end, once and for all, racial preferences in public universities and state government.

Polls have repeatedly shown that over 60% of Michigan voters oppose preferences....

[I]nstead of doing the hard work required in a democracy to convince voters, BAMN has been using its patented formula of political intimidation and legal harassment in an attempt to strangle the initiative in the crib. Last year, it disrupted initiative meetings on college campuses and tailed initiative signature-seekers, denouncing through bullhorns any student who approached them.

At the same time, it mounted a legal challenge questioning the language of the petition. Even though it lost twice, including in the Michigan Supreme Court, the delay made it impossible for MCRI to gather enough signatures for the 2004 ballot deadline....

Undeterred, BAMN is now trying to invalidate the signatures. And, unfortunately, instead of distancing itself from BAMN's thuggish tactics, the Democratic establishment in Michigan is backing them with its political muscle....

But what's more troubling is the Michigan Democrats' willingness to ally themselves with BAMN despite its contempt for the democratic process. As at the national level, there is an intellectual void, a lack of vision, among mainstream Democratic leaders in the state-- a vacuum that extremist fringe groups are filling.

[OESY]

Ms. Melzer is a writer in Detroit.

[goldstategop]

In a Ronald Brownstein article about Democrats' challenging Republicans' turf in House races in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, there was not one word about the Democrats' lack of a message that appeals to Red State voters. The Democrats and the MSM think its all about process. They can't inspire people to go vote FOR them. They have no ideas and that's the essence of their problem.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[junta]

Yugoslavia was held together first by the force of Tito then by selling off favors to increasingly radical ethnic groups at the expense of the majority Serbs, and then the cabinet was bare and war became a legimate option. Our elite is banking on two things a growing economy and that the word "racist" has the social stigma that "witch" had in Salem, but if either of these two fail to impress it will get ugly and the center will not hold.

[wizardoz]

I hate excerpts. I can never remember my logins or passwords to all these various news websites.

[OESY]

Me too. Let's sue those MSM bastards!

[leoncaruthers]

I remember these guys from when I was at UofM. I credit them with my conversion from sometime-liberal to staunch conservative.

So, they have accomplished one good thing :)

[sergeantdave]

Our favorite one-term governor, Jennifer Granholm, nearly fell to the vapors after two antagonists accused her of what she does best - tax everything in sight.

Granholm, just before jetting off to Japan in practice for her escape back to Canada in 2006, blasted state legislator Rick Baxter and Hillsdale College Professor Gary Wolfram for writing a wicked editorial in a major newspaper that was “treasonous for the state of Michigan.” The two pointed out that her penchant for confiscating the wealth of anything that moves isn’t “cool.”

The French-loving female further fumed that the Wall Street Journal was “bad-mouthing the state.” Granholm faces the daunting task of not destroying what’s left of Michigan. Her trip to Japan with buddhist begging bowl in hand is designed to persuade companies that the waters in the Michigan financial swamp are just fine.

The bets, though, are that she won’t win the Michigan jackpot in Japan. However, if the Berkely babe returns with a doggie bag brimming with fresh sushi, we know one group that will be happy: Here, kitty, kitty!

[Dan from Michigan]

BAMN's so far left it's crazy. I've seem them in action.

[George W. Bush]

I hate excerpts. I can never remember my logins or passwords to all these various news websites.

Try using BugMeNot.com

They post regularly updated user/passes for major news sites. If you use the Firefox browser, there is an extension you can install which automatically invokes BugMeNot to fetch a user/pass for these sites. Very clever.

Quite often, you can also raid Google's cache to get the articles very quickly after publication. It seems that they allow Google to index the articles to increase their hits. But since Google retains a cached copy, you can always click the Cached link for a hit and thereby read the article without password.

Unfortunately, neither BugMeNot nor the Google cache scored any hits for this particular article. WSJ is pretty cagy, more so than LAT or NYT or New York Post.

[Alia]

May I refer you to a website devoted to exposing BAMN (www.no-bamn.com)?

ARCHIVED DOCS EXPOSING BAMN

[absolootezer0]

you can't entirely accuse the government of not allowing us to vote.. election day is not an official state holiday.