After the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected his
lawsuit today, Republican
Norm Coleman graciously conceded the bitterly disputed
contest over the second U.S. Senate seat for Minnesota.
None of this changes the fact that as a senator Al
Franken is not legitimate. The election was stolen at the
precinct level, during the recount, and during the post-election
litigation.
Never forget the role that ACORN
played in this.
As ACORN-aligned Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a former
community organizer, presided over the vote-counting process,
Coleman’s original lead dwindled. The morning after the election,
Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. Over the next five
days, Coleman’s lead had dwindled to just 221. Election officials
claimed they had to correct typos on vote tally sheets and that
these corrections gave Franken 435 votes and took 69 away from
Coleman.
There were mountains of other irregularities which I’m not going
to bother detailing here and somehow in the end Franken came
out on top.
Ritchie was elected Minnesota secretary of state in part because
of outside help. He defeated two-term incumbent Republican
Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006 after receiving an endorsement and
financial assistance for his run from a below-the-radar
non-federal “527” group called the Secretary
of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial
contributions and doesn’t have to disclose them publicly until
well after the election.
The founders of the Secretary of State Project, which claims to
advance “election protection” but only backs Democrats,
religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state
helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in
2000 (Katherine Harris) and in Ohio in 2004 (Ken Blackwell).
The secretary of state candidates the group endorses sing the
same familiar song about electoral integrity issues: Voter fraud
is largely a myth, vote suppression is used widely by
Republicans, cleansing the dead and fictional characters from
voter rolls should be avoided until embarrassing media reports
emerge, and anyone who demands that a voter produce photo
identification before pulling the lever is a racist,
democracy-hating Fascist.
In 2006, the Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee endorsed
Ritchie and donated to his campaign. According to the Minnesota
Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, contributors to
Ritchie’s campaign included liberal philanthropists George Soros,
Drummond Pike, and Deborah Rappaport, along with veteran
community organizer Heather Booth, a Saul Alinsky disciple who
co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical ACORN clone. One
article on Ritchie’s 2006 campaign website bragged about the fine
work ACORN did in Florida to pass a constitutional amendment to
raise that state’s minimum wage.
It was revealed during a panel
discussion at the Democratic Party’s convention in Denver
last summer that the Democracy
Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and
insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State
Project as a grantee. The Democracy Alliance aspires to create a
permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks,
media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups-a kind of
“vast left-wing conspiracy” to compete with the conservative
movement. It has brokered more than $100 million in grants to
liberal nonprofits including ACORN. The aforementioned Pike and
Rappaport, who gave money to Ritchie’s campaign, are members of
the Democracy Alliance.
According to IRS 8872 disclosure forms, the Secretary of State
Project received donations from Democracy Alliance members
including Soros, Rob Stein, Gail Furman, and Susie Tompkins
Buell.
Meanwhile, for conservatives, it hardly needs to be pointed out
that this Frankenstein is a fundamentally unserious and
untested figure worthy of ridicule. After being isolated in the
echo chamber of the entertainment-media-academia complex where he
got nothing but praise for decades, Franken is quite unsuited for
the world outside. He cannot tolerate criticism and
characteristically responds to it with over-the-top vitriolic
attacks. He is the living embodiment of all the horrible things
that conservatives fairly or unfairly impute to DailyKos
bloggers.
A professional comedian originally, Al Franken remains a joke.
