Gerrymandering, voter fraud and tax cut lies: the GOP campaign strategy for 2018

by Tom Maertens

Tom Maertens served as National Security Council director for nonproliferation and homeland defense under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and as deputy coordinator for counter-terrorism in the State Department during and after 9/11.

Remember when Donald Trump promised to pay off the national debt in eight years?

Instead, the debt-to-GDP ratio has reached its highest level since after World War II, according to the Congressional Budget Office; under current law, the national debt will equal the size of the economy by 2028. Servicing the debt cost $500 billion in 2018 and, as interest rates rise, could surpass our military budget.

The October CBO report makes clear that Trump’s 2017 tax cut is the cause.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin described the supply-side con last year: “Not only will this tax cut pay for itself, but it will pay down the debt.”

Those tax cuts will never pay for themselves. Republicans know it but run up the deficit in order to reward their rich donors and justify cutting social programs.

For 60 years, every Republican president has increased the debt/GDP ratio, and every Democrat has decreased it. Reagan tripled the national debt from $95 billion to $290 billion. When Bill Clinton left office the CBO projected a 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Bush’s wars and tax cuts destroyed that projection and resulted in $11 trillion more debt and a $1.4 trillion yearly deficit. Obama cut the deficit by two-thirds. Now Republicans are running up the debt/deficit again and lying about it.

House Republicans passed a second round of tax cuts last month that would add $3.8 trillion to the federal debt over a decade, according to the Tax Policy Center.

In addition, Mnuchin is considering a plan to cut $100 billion in taxes by indexing capital gains to inflation, a move benefiting largely the rich. CNBC calls it a stealth tax cut.

Despite GOP claims about tax cuts, the reality, as the Washington Post reported, is that because of inflation, “In real terms, the weekly earnings of a typical working American fell $16.80, or 1.9 percent, during Donald Trump’s first 18 months as president.”

Republicans blame “entitlements,” Social Security and Medicare, for the deficit; but they are not entitlements; you pay for them with FICA taxes.

In order to pass Trump’s tax cuts, Republicans depend on racial resentment and culture war issues to mobilize voters, like kneeling for the national anthem, immigration, crime, and guns.

Voter suppression and gerrymandering are also essential to maintaining congressional majorities.

The GOP has falsely claimed widespread voting fraud for years to justify strict ID laws that disproportionately affect minority voters.

Republicans took control of 26 state legislatures in 2010; 22 of those states subsequently passed more restrictive voting laws — despite the fact that in-person voter fraud is virtually non-existent.

Those same states purged millions of voters using “Interstate Crosscheck,” a voter suppression system instituted by Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach, which is used to eliminate “duplicate” minority-sounding names from state voter rolls. Researchers at both Harvard and Stanford found that Crosscheck makes it 99 percent more likely that a legitimate voter gets purged rather than an illegitimate one.

The AP recently reported that Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, who is running for governor against Stacey Abrams, a black woman, is refusing to register 53,000 mostly black voters. Kemp’s office has canceled more than 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012, and nearly 670,000 registrations in 2017 alone; official vote fraud ostensibly to prevent vote fraud.

Indiana recently removed at least 20,000 registered voters from state rolls in violation of a federal court order, and purged 469,000 in past years, according to investigative journalist Greg Palast.

North Dakota Republicans, in their zeal to suppress native American votes for Heidi Heitkamp, just rejected a U.S. passport as a valid ID — no street address.

The GAO found that new ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee had decreased turnout by 2 to 3 percent, principally among black, young, and new voters, who mostly vote Democratic.

Since Scott Walker was elected governor in Wisconsin, the state has passed 33 new election laws which make voting more difficult, especially for minorities.

Gerrymandering is also a part of the Republican playbook. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled against Republican-controlled Texas’ districting for discriminating against minorities; courts in several other states, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, have done the same. In 2012, Republican candidates in Pennsylvania won only 49 percent of the congressional vote, but gained 72 percent of the seats.

Because of gerrymandering, the Democrats need to win the mid-terms by 11 points to take the House, says the Brennan Center.

Gerrymandering, vote fraud and tax cut lies: the GOP campaign strategy for 2018.

This article was also published in the Mankato Free Press under the title "Debt runup, tax cut deception, voter repression part of GOP campaign" on Wednesday, October 24, 2018.