Establishment Republicans Suppressing Trump Voters in Alabama

My prediction that voter suppression would be directed against Trump voters has come true. Establishment Republicans in Alabama are trying to purge Trump supporters from the voter rolls.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill; a Republican, wants 674 Democrats that voted in a September 26 GOP primary prosecuted for a felony, Think Progress reported. Merrill did not say it but the individuals’ real crime was to vote for anti-establishment Republican; and Steve Bannon ally, Roy Moore rather than U.S. Senator Luther (R-Alabama).

“I want every one of them that meets that criteria to be sentenced to five years in the penitentiary and to pay a $15,000 fine for restitution,” Merrill said of those voters in a Think Progress interview. “That’s what I want.”

The people Merrill wants to be prosecuted apparently registered as Democrats – but voted in the Republican primary. He accused them of “voter fraud” even though there’s no evidence of that. Instead, he admitted that their only crime was probably failing to read a poster on the walls of the polling place.

Is Alabama Trying to Suppress Trump voters?

Crossover voting; in which people can vote in any primary they want even they already voted in the other party’s contest, was previously allowed in Alabama. The practice was banned by a new state law passed by the Republican State Legislature; and signed by Governor Kay Ivey (R), in May.

The law’s passage less than a year after Donald J. Trump’s surprise victory in the Republican primaries hardly seems a coincidence. Merrill’s threat is not coincidental. It looks as if there is a deliberate plot to keep Trump supporters from voting in the next round of Republican primaries.

After all the Democrats; or former Democrats, most likely to vote in a Republican primary are the kind of working-class voters that love Trump. Merrill’s contention that a horde of perfidious Democrats is trying to sabotage GOP primaries; is almost as imbecilic as the fake charges of vote fraud some Republicans keep leveling.

Nor is it coincidence, that Merrill’s threat came less than a month after radical Christian-nationalist Roy Moore upset establishment Republican Luther Strange in the 26-September GOP primary runoff. Some observers think Moore will have a harder chance of beating Democrat Doug Jones in the general election scheduled for December 12, 2017. The purpose of that race is to fill the U.S. Senate seat Jeff Sessions vacated to become U.S. Attorney General.

Strange had the backing of the GOP establishment; including President Donald J. Trump (R-New York) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). Moore received strong support from white nationalists; including Breitbart mastermind and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, and working-class Christians, The Washington Post reported.

Is Republican Establishment Trying to Suppress Christian Votes?

Bannon himself made a prophetic statement shortly after Moore’s victory that demonstrates the real struggle in Alabama.

“Who’s sovereign; the people or the money,” former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon asked at Moore’s victory party in Montgomery? “The people of Alabama just answered: the people.”

It looks as if the plutocracy just answered Bannon – and fired a disturbing shot at Christians, traditionalists, and white nationalists. Their response seems to be “vote the party line or go to prison;” an attitude that comes straight out of the Jim Crow heyday of voter suppression.

Needed a New Coalition against Voter Suppression

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,” William Shakespeare – The Tempest.  This quote is believed to be the source of the American truism “politics makes strange bedfellows.”

Left-wing foes of voter suppression will soon find themselves with some unlikely new allies: Steve Bannon and the Alt-Right. Such an alliance will be uncomfortable but it will be politically expedient.

Expect to see this alliance become official if voter suppressors take their loathsome tactics to other states where Bannon and Company are planning to oppose the GOP establishment. Bannon declared war on the GOP establishment with plans to challenge pro-business Republicans in several states in September, The Washington Post reported.

“It’s shaping up to be McConnell, the Senate Leadership Fund and the Chamber against Bannon,” Scott Reed; the senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told The Post. “And we will take that fight.”

It is time for progressives to rethink their demonization of Bannon because he might be a powerful ally. Bannon is likely to reach out to the Left for help if the plutocrats keep turning voter suppression against working-class whites. This might be the birth of a bizarre but potent political coalition.

A powerful political alliance against voter suppression is needed and the plutocrats might create it with their attempts to keep the alt-right out of office. Progressives, Christians, and Trump supporters need to take the old proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” to heart.

Voter suppression is now a threat to the freedom of all Americans

Voter suppression is now a threat to the freedom of all Americans regardless of race, religion, class, or color.

The vote suppressors began their war against blacks in states like Wisconsin where an estimated 44,000 voters (mostly minorities) were purged from the rolls, according to Mother Jones. Now they’ve targeted Christians, nationalists, and working-class whites. The real agenda here is clear: it is to keep anybody that questions or opposes the corporate power structure in modern America away from the polls.

Conservative Christians, in particular, should be scared; because it is clear that the plutocrats see them as is big a threat as leftists who back U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). The shrinking number of Christians in America makes them very vulnerable to vote suppression; particularly when they advance positions, such as opposition to abortion and gay rights, that big business dislikes.

Watch out the Plutocrats are Coming for your Vote

Leftists too should get scared because the plutocrats are coming for their votes too.

It is no coincidence that Democratic National Committee Chairman Thomas Perez started purging leftists from leadership positions on October 19. Perez stripped several supporters of Sanders and leftwing Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) of their super-delegate status, Vanity Fair reported. Super-delegates are Democratic officials with the power to override primary voters – they were partially responsible for Hillary’s primary “victory.”

Voter suppression is about to trigger a vicious political war; that is likely to tear both major American political parties apart and make for some very strange alliances. If in a few years; prominent Democrat Stephen K. Bannon is an honored guest at the inauguration of President Keith Ellison, the plutocrats will have only themselves to blame.