Things are not good on the right and they don't like to lose. Who knows to what lengths they will go to try to win.
Since the 2000 election, the general consensus has been that not only that election, but 2004 as well were thefts by the Republicans of legitimate Democratic wins. While I do think the post-election-night carryings-on of both parties in 2000 was bad, and the Supreme Court's intervention was wrong-headed - they should have sent US Marshals to protect the election judges and just allowed the vote count to carry on - I doubt the election result would have changed all that much under Florida's rules of the road. I also do not believe for one minute that Republicans somehow "stole" Ohio from John Kerry in 2004. He lost fair and square and we should content ourselves with that sad fact.
There has been an awful lot written about Diebold, etc., and it is all conspiracy mongering, and I refuse to take any of it seriously.
Yet, in 2006, there was still a palpable fear among liberals that the Repulicans would somehow defy the odds and the polls and use all sorts of dirty tricks to keep their Congressional majority. I remember well the weekend before that election, when Karl Rove went on TV and talked about "the math" that predicted a Republican victory. Against all evidence to the contrary, liberals and Democrats still considered him some kind of Rasputin/Svengali, rather than, at that point, a gambler on a losing streak trying to bluff his way through one more hand. He didn't have any math that could have given the Republicans a victory.
This year is no different. The Republicans are so far behind on so many fronts, and the drag of the Presidential ticket is pulling the coattails of down-ticket races even further, the recriminations, the blame-game - in short, the wonderful specter of Republicans and conservatives eating their own - has begun. It does has a familiar ring, however (circa December, 2006) as right-wingers insist the problem was that Republicans were somehow not conservative enough. Expect the ugliness to get even worse as the Republicans begin the task of reassembling their party from the wreckage George W. Bush and his Congressional cohorts have wrought.
In short, while I fully expect all sorts of nasty attempts to suppress voting among minority voters - it has, in fact, already begun - for the most part, they will not only be unsuccessful, I think the Democratic lead across the board is so big that no amount of funny business and rat-fucking will change the ultimate result.
As to the specifics of DCup's comment, I would only point out that someone as nutty as Riehl is only a danger to himself.
