In what may be the most pathetic villain campaign since the War on Christmas, Republicans have picked a new bad guy: the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. You may know them as ACORN. As you can see in the name, they are community organizers, those horrible people Sarah Palin mocks for trying to help the poor. I’m sure Jesus would hate them, too. ACORN has been busy signing up new voters, which means they are largely poor, minority voters. That means Democrats. That means Republicans have to portray another group working to better our country via democracy as evil.

This recent hate barrage against ACORN started when the press began writing about the huge number of people the group was registering.

So, what to do? Accept that your party is quickly becoming the second fiddle of American politics and adapt to the situation by changing your platform, or attack the people taking part in democracy? Well, if you’re a Republican, the answer is obvious.



Yes, attack the community organizers! And tie in Obama, even though his connection is tenuous at best. So tenuous that it is not even worth discussing.

This isn’t new; Republicans have been after ACORN for years. It’s kind of like watching a CEO beat up a homeless woman. Expect the next month to be filled with attacks from sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly, drug addict Rush Limbaugh and anti-Semite Sean Hannity. Maybe when they are done, they can kick a nun in the face.

ACORN hires low-income people to register other low-income people. They get paid per registration, so you can see how the operation would be susceptible to scumbags looking to make a few bucks without doing any work. It’s the nature of the beast. But, here’s the exciting thing: Fraud such as this does not in anyway effect elections. Why? Because filling out a fake registration cards to make a few bucks does not mean that someone will be voting. It means that person does not exist and therefore cannot vote. You actually have to exist to vote. There have been zero instances of this type of “voter fraud” occurring. This is what the Attorney General scandal is about. The Bush Administration wanted US Attorneys to go after these people, but the prosecutors found zero evidence of fraud and those who refused to prosecute because of the lack of evidence were fired.

That being said, ACORN does everything it can to stop this type of criminal activity. The organization attempts to authenticate every registration submitted by workers but our laws force them to turn in every registration form, whether fraudulent or not. See a problem there? ACORN flags the registration forms they believe are fraudulent, but still, they must turn them in. Then Republicans scream their asses off like a bunch of douchebags, “ACORN is committing voter fraud! They've turned in thousands of fraudulent registration forms!”

John Curley is a douchebag. Deep down he knows that and it causes him internal pain. Hopefully he works that out before he dies. It’s really wretched stupidity and an affront to Democracy. Our system was set up to deal with these sorts of occurrences.

No shit? Who would have known? This is exactly what happened in Nevada this week. The Vegas chapter of ACORN was about to have a potluck dinner (elitists) to celebrate signing up 80,000 new voters, when they were raided.

Let’s see. Getting my calculator out here. 80,000, 300, uh…that’s .3%. Holy shit! Put them in jail! And ignore the fact that the system is set up to catch problems like this! And ignore the fact that 79,700 people were legally registered by this group. And ignore the fact that ACORN was forced to submit those forms BY LAW and flagged them as fraudulent!

Yes, raid a community organization that is cooperating with you. That’s some quality law enforcement. And, hey, as a by-product, there’s no good news in the papers about 80,000 new registrants. What a shock. But there are a few tidbits indicating law enforcement officials knew this was a case of individual fraud and not the entire organization.

Now, Republicans will explain this was not a partisan attack because the Nevada Secretary of State and Attorney General are Democrats. Uh huh.

The US Attorney’s Office –– here we are, back at the Republican machine and the root cause of the Attorney General Scandal. The scandal in which employees of the White House still refuse to honor Congressional subpoenas.

This vilifying of community organizations has led to heinous voter ID laws in states like Indiana and massive Republican intimidation at the polls. Republicans will use ACORN to cause chaos at the polls and challenge voters when they show up. Because what ACORN has done is reprehensible, while Republicans around the country do what is right.

Thank God they care, or those .003% of registration cards flagged by ACORN would have gotten through and people who lost their homes in Michigan would be able to vote.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for more from FearTheReaper and read his blog, Stop All Monsters.