Yesterday I posted Finally! WaPo front-pages election-rigging scheme. Plus, glimmers of hope in Virginia, Florida, and it got attention for good reason. Republican dirty tricks have been underway in several GOP-run states that want to circumvent our elections by creating their own version of the electoral college that would result in many more red states... despite the popular vote.
But for days the news media didn't seem to be listening. Most of the corporate media ignored the story until Rachel Maddow literally insisted on her show, “This is going on in the states right now. Hey beltway, wake up!”
Then they woke up.
WaPo finally front paged it:
Republicans in Virginia and a handful of other battleground states are pushing for far-reaching changes to the electoral college in an attempt to counter recent success by Democrats.
In the vast majority of states, the presidential candidate who wins receives all of that state’s electoral votes. The proposed changes would instead apportion electoral votes by congressional district, a setup far more favorable to Republicans. Under such a system in Virginia, for instance, President Obama would have claimed four of the state’s 13 electoral votes in the 2012 election, rather than all of them.
That lovely little dirty trick would have changed the outcome of the election had it been in place.
Today, per TPM, Scott Walker is now entertaining the idea:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) said on Saturday that his state may join an RNC-backed plan currently being contemplated in four other states that voted for President Obama in 2012 to rig blue state electoral votes in favor of future Republican presidential candidates.
There was some encouraging news, though. A few states appeared to have been embarrassed into rejecting that model, at least for now. But not Michigan:
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Brian Williams:
"Seeing red: A push by Republicans to change the way we elect a president. If these had been the rules across the map in November, we'd have President Romney."
Rachel Maddow:
"In Michigan they appear to be just warming up. Michigan is my bet for actually doing this thing that most of Republican America is now too embarrassed to go ahead with. Michigan is not like the other states any more. What will not work anywhere else, they think works there."
Kinda scary, huh? But that didn't appear to faze two MSNBC pundits that T.J. Holmes interviewed today. I didn't catch their names, but when Holmes prodded them, neither seemed concerned and literally blew him off with (paraphrased), "Meh. The states you mentioned have already pretty much rejected the idea. No biggie. Next."
The fact that so many states, that so many Republican governors and legislators considered stomping all over our democracy as seriously as they did-- so seriously that it made the front page of the Washington Post and caught the eye of NBC's Brian Williams-- makes it a huge story.
And to make it worse, nobody on the broadcast, not even Holmes, brought up Michigan... which, again, is Rachel Maddow's "bet for actually doing this thing that most of Republican America is now too embarrassed to go ahead with. Michigan is not like the other states any more. What will not work anywhere else, they think works there."
Yet, at least today, MSNBC ignored that part of the story.
Liberal media my ass.
The post VIDEO: "If these had been the rules... we'd have Pres. Romney." Pundits blow story off; Scott Walker mulls scheme. appeared first on The Political Carnival.