Liberals who admire the Democratic Party’s tradition of inclusiveness and civil rights should be troubled by what happened last week in Florida. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has served as the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee since last April, was until then scheduled to speak Saturday at the annual dinner event of the nonprofit group Empowering Motivating Educating Resourceful Grassroots Entities, or EMERGE USA.
EMERGE is a grass-roots group that works primarily with South Asians, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans to empower young people to take part in community service projects, local government and other forms of civic leadership. “Our broad goals are to incorporate minorities generally, Muslim or non-Muslim, into the political system,” EMERGE board member Imran Siddiqui says. Whether it’s running a get-out-the-vote drive or petitioning a city council to stop the construction of an industrial waste dump site next to a mosque, the group’s activities are little different than those of any other classic grass-roots American organization – the only difference being that a large portion of EMERGE’s members are from Muslim communities. Last year, former governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., keynoted their event.
Yet Wasserman Schultz decided to abruptly pull out of speaking at EMERGE’s annual dinner last week. “We never agreed to do a fundraiser, nor an event,” claimed Wasserman Schultz spokesman Jonathan Beeton. Yet EMERGE had previously widely advertised Wasserman Schultz’s participation at the fundraising dinner without apparent complaint from the congresswoman’s staff. “We were interfacing with congresswoman Wasserman Schultz’s people for about a year to try to get something together,” said Siddiqui. “So when she agreed to the banquet, we were elated.” There’s a much more likely explanation for her abrupt refusal to attend the event than a simple miscommunication. For months, Islamophobic websites and a far-right congressional candidate waged a smear campaign against EMERGE, pressuring Wasserman Schultz to back out of the event. With her withdrawal, it appears that they won.
The smears can be traced back to an article in right-wing McCarthyist David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine. In a February article, Joe Kaufman – who is vying in a Republican primary to challenge Wasserman Schultz for her seat in Congress – teamed up with Militant Islam Monitor’s Beila Rabinowitz to claim that EMERGE was part of a “nefarious agenda of placing Islamists into positions of American power and influence.”
Based on that absurd premise that the community service volunteers and voter registration gurus of EMERGE were out to install an Islamist government in the United States, the bulk of the article’s allegations focused on Khurrum Wahid, one of the group’s founders. Kaufman and Rabinowitz note that Wahid, a civil rights lawyer, represented individuals accused by the U.S. government of terrorism-related crimes. This line of attack was similar to one waged in 2010 against Department of Justice lawyers who represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The group Keep America Safe referred to these lawyers as the “Al Qaeda 7,” a charge so incendiary that even a former Bush official rebuked it, noting that “there is a long-standing and very honorable tradition of lawyers representing unpopular or even uncontroversial clients.”
But it’s not surprising that Kaufman would engage in such outlandish smears. They help distract from his own past of espousing extreme ideas and outlandish rhetoric. Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he endorsed using nuclear weapons against the Muslim world to retaliate, writing, “If the decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right thing to do, in response to Pearl Harbor, then why the heck are we saving our nuclear weapons now?” He was even skewered by “The Daily Show” for his crusade to stop a Muslim Republican from getting the acceptance of the Broward County GOP. (Kaufman was at the time ironically leading a group called Americans Against Hate).
So how did a fringe congressional candidate, whose greatest feats have been getting mocked by “The Daily Show” and speaking out against Muslim Family Day at Six Flags on Fox News, cow one of the most powerful Democrats in the country? Unfortunately, he had some help running the smear campaign against EMERGE. His attacks were uncritically picked up by local news bloggers before making their way into larger right-wing publications. The Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo sensationally wrote an article titled “Debbie’s Date With Radicalism,” playing a bizarre game of six degrees to claim that Wahid was associating himself with groups connected to the financing of al-Qaida because he once spoke at a conference of the mainstream Islamic Circle of North America. (Full disclosure: I attended one of its conferences as an elementary schooler, and so has one of Obama’s faith advisors, which may lead to claims that both Obama and I are secretly associated with al-Qaida.)
The article wondered aloud why a “proud Jewess” like Wasserman Schultz would appear with the Muslim-dominated EMERGE, clearly trying to stoke a racial and religious divide. It also quoted a “prominent Jewish Democrat,” who hid behind anomynity to claim that EMERGE’s leaders have a “soft spot for terrorism.” The Free Beacon topped off all of this reporting with a memo titled, “DNC BOSS TO RAISE MONEY FOR TERRORIST LAWYER.”
It’s easy to play this ridiculous guilt by association game with anyone, of course. Take the Washington Free Beacon, for example. It is run by Michael Goldfarb, a former McCain campaign flack who is also a senior vice president at Orion Strategies, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm. Orion Strategies has had as one of its clients none other than George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center. Goldfarb has also worked for the Emergency Committee for Israel, which has a board member who said Palestinians should be thrown into the sea to be “food for sharks” and whose executive director called on the Israeli Defense Forces to use protesters as “target practice.” By their own logic, the Free Beacon is on the payroll of George Soros and has troubling associations with would-be genocidal anti-Arab activists.
The smear campaign against EMERGE should be more comical than respectable – it was led by hysterical Islamophobes and third-rate bloggers – and it would have been, if not for the fact that Wasserman Schultz appeared to give in to it. “Unless the Muslim community has somebody stand up to this,” reflects Siddiqui on the smear campaign, “this is just going to keep happening. And it needs to stop.”
When the state of Arizona enacted a draconian anti-immigrant law — which gave the police wide powers to detain individuals they believed to be undocumented immigrants — nearly two years ago, the national media took notice. Activists campaigned against the law and tried to shame the state into submission, with Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha even getting dozens of musicians to sign on to a boycott of performances in the state.
Yet soon after Arizona’s law passed, similar anti-immigrant legislation began appearing in legislatures across the nation. Partially coordinated by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative advocacy group funded in part by private prisons, states from coast to coast initiated their own crackdowns.
In Georgia, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal signed a copycat bill into law in 2011, making his state the third to give police such wide powers to investigate the immigration status of suspected undocumented immigrants. “This legislation I believe is a responsible step forward in the absence of federal action,” said Deal.
The Arizona-like law had a decidedly detrimental effect on the state’s economy. One survey conducted during the summer of 2011 found that there was a shortage of at least 11,000 farmworkers in Georgia. The Georgia Agribusiness Council said that the state’s farms were left “with 30 percent fewer workers on average.” “We don’t need to stall the largest economic engine in this state and we don’t need to scare off our workforce,” warned Zippy Duvall of the Georgia Farm Bureau.
Yet Georgia went much further than many other red states in making the lives of undocumented immigrants uncomfortable. In 2010, the state’s major public universities were ordered to do an audit of all their students to identify undocumented immigrants. Then in October, the state’s board of regents voted 14-2 to effectively ban undocumented immigrants from attending Georgia’s five major public universities, citing concerns about space not being available for documented students. This policy was enacted on top of the fact that Georgia already barred undocumented students from getting in-state tuition.
The policy ended up harming one of the state’s treasured institutions — college football — in a way that the board of regents likely did not expect. Last month, high school football star Chester Brown of Hinesville, Ga., had a rude awakening. For months, he was courted by the University of Georgia football team to join its legendary football program. He even got a UGA tattoo on his left forearm. But the October 2010 vote made it so that the Samoan-born athlete would automatically be denied admission to UGA. Now Brown is likely to be recruited by big-name schools out of state.
A group of five professors at the University of Georgia decided that they weren’t going to take part in the state’s process of immiserating the lives of undocumented students. Shortly after the closed-door policy began, they started what they called “Freedom University,” where they secretly offered these students courses. “This is not a substitute for letting these students into UGA, Georgia State or the other schools,” said Pam Voekel, a history professor. “It is designed for people who, right now, don’t have another option.”
Some of Georgia’s far-right lawmaker want to go even further. Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers is sponsoring a bill, S.B. 458, that would ban undocumented immigrants from attending all public Georgia colleges and universities.
In one sense, the bill is itself targeting a supposed problem — undocumented immigrants taking up space in classrooms that legal residents can’t have — that really doesn’t exist. According to an audit conducted by the University System of Georgia, which oversees the state’s public universities, there are only 300 undocumented students out of the system’s 318,000 total population. And there is little evidence that allowing undocumented immigrants to go to college would be a drain on taxpayers. After all, college graduates earn more money than non-graduates, and thus are much more likely to contribute more in taxes and be a boon, not a burden, to the public treasury.
That’s why looking at S.B. 458 as a flawed policy solution would be a mistake. The state Legislature has already proved that it has little concern with guaranteeing equity in education to Georgia’s residents. In early 2011 it enacted a series of major cuts to the state’s widely praised tuition subsidy program. The result has been a dramatic reduction in public aid to students across the state, with African-American students facing some of the worst cutbacks.
S.B. 458 does not seek to improve higher education in Georgia but rather to deflect attention from those who seek to harm it. By attacking undocumented immigrants and falsely portraying them as a drain on the system and taking the slots that legal residents deserve, the state Legislature is trying to distract the public from looking at the real culprits of Georgia’s educational and social welfare woes: politicians who have been gutting education spending.
On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed S.B. 458, and it will now move on to the full Senate. It is still unclear as to whether the radical legislation will make it into law. Deal is signaling that he is undecided about the bill.
The day after the bill was passed out of committee, the Georgia Latino Elected Officials organization sought out civil rights legend Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., to comment about the bill GALEO is calling the “Anti-DREAM” Act. Lewis, of course, is no stranger to the politics of hate and political distraction that are underlying the push for the bill.
“I would say to the students and to all of the young people, not to give up,” replied Lewis. “Another generation of young people, another generation of young people stood up. We created a mass movement … I think it’s a shame and a disgrace for the state of Georgia to move down that road.”
If Georgians don’t want to continue to see their state’s undocumented population turned into political punching bags, with even students simply seeking a decent education being stripped of their rights and liberties, it may be time for them to take Lewis’ advice, and, as he put it, “make some trouble. Good trouble.”
“Inside Media Matters,” declares a Daily Caller headline on an article written by right-wing icon Tucker Carlson and journalist Vince Coglianese earlier this month, which claims that “Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior close coordination with White House and news organizations.” The article launched a series aimed at attacking and undermining the popular progressive media watchdog group.
The Daily Caller paints a picture of a nefarious organization founded by an egomaniacal leader operating in the cover of darkness, working to prop up Democratic Party politicians. Boasting of their access to internal Media Matters memos and interviews with “current and former” employees of Media Matters, Carlson and Coglianese breathlessly report about some admittedly strange antics of founder David Brock and of the organization’s success in achieving “its central goal of influencing the national media.”
The Daily Caller pieces have served as a sort of a bat signal for foes of Media Matters, with attacks on the organization now coming from all direction. Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow claimed Brock is “dangerous” because he was adopted, and Alan Dershowitz — a hard-line supporter of Israel’s government who once advocated for bulldozing entire Palestinian villages –thoughtfully likened the group to “Neo-Nazis” who could cost Obama the election due to publishing blog posts critical of Israel.
Among the more than half-dozen articles and blog posts the Daily Caller has written in its “Inside Media Matters” series, there is little in the way of actual substance. From Carlson and Coglianese’s original piece we learn that Brock regularly staffs himself with bodyguards, even at social events. A later piece focuses on the fact that Media Matters contributor Karl Frisch once suggested hiring personal investigators to “look into the personal lives of Fox News” staff. Yet most of the content of the articles is hardly surprising or shocking. On the contrary, it points to an important fact: Media Matters matters.
Take, for example, one admission by a former Media Matters employee that “virtually all the mainstream media was using [their] stuff.” The Daily Caller portrays this fact as shocking, evidence of a secret and ominous level of coordination between Media Matters and the mainstream media. Another former Media Matters staffer notes that certain journalists at the Huffington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other outlets were receptive to Media Matters stories and regularly published articles based on their material.
What the Daily Caller ultimately fails to articulate about this high level of coordination between Media Matters and the mainstream press is what makes it so scandalous. It would be one thing if the group were providing secret payments to journalists in order to get its stories covered, or if journalists were shown to be intentionally fudging facts or skewing the truth to toe Media Matters’ line. The most notable omission from the Daily Caller “exposé” is that it does not allege any inaccuracies in Media Matters steady stream of denunciations and corrections.
Rather, what the interviews and memos obtained by the Daily Caller show is that it’s doing something that’s perhaps even more threatening to the right-wing: its job. Media Matters was expressly launched with the purpose of providing a response to right-wing misinformation and to reshape the mainstream media narrative in a way that benefits progressives. Readers of Media Matters don’t have to guess that its staff will regularly be in touch with major journalists to help shape the media narrative — it’s actually something the group informs people of on its website.
Since its launch, the organization has rapidly grown. In 2011, the organization spent $15 million, increasing its budget by five times since it began in 2004. Meanwhile, it employed around 90 people, nine times the size of its original staff of 10. Its comprehensive reports — like one landmark 2006 study of Sunday talk show guests that found that they overwhelmingly lean conservative – have helped reshape the media’s dialogue and empower progressive critics of the mainstream press.
The group doesn’t hide its agenda.
“Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits and the general public about instances of misinformation,” reads its “About Us” page, “providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions.”
That last part — the taking “direct action against offending media institutions” — is also portrayed as shocking by the Daily Caller articles. Carlson and Coglianese write about a Media Matters memo detailing how the organization pressured CNN to take Lou Dobbs’ show off the air. The memo lists tactics such as running Spanish language advertisements and working with civil rights groups to target CNN. Yet the campaign against Dobbs was far from secret — it was widely covered in the media — and not particularly shocking, either. After all, Media Matters simply used Dobbs’ own words against him, something its massive media monitoring apparatus has perfected.
The Dobbs memo and other pressure campaign materials revealed by the Daily Caller prove little else than that Media Matters thinks and behaves the same way in private as it does in public. The organization meticulously monitors the media and highlights behavior by the press and politicians that are against progressive values. The Daily Caller published one article containing what it calls Brock’s “enemies list” – a phrase most famously used to describe President Nixon’s list of dissident Americans he vilified — yet the list maintained by Brock simply listed “targets” for research scrutiny including conservative media like Fox News and right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation.
What’s so surprising about that? Of course Media Matters is targeting right-wing figures for scrutiny and opposition research. That’s why it exists. Would it be surprising if the Media Research Center and Newsbusters — which act as right-wing equivalents to Media Matters — had research files on the Center for American Progress and the Nation?
Perhaps the most ominous tone in the Daily Caller articles is saved for reporting about meetings between Media Matters and Obama administration officials. The articles report about “regular contact” between administration officials like Anita Dunn and Media Matters. But this, too, is completely unsurprising. The Obama administration regularly invites progressive media figures to White House meetings, and has spearheaded the Common Purpose Project to conduct meetings with allied progressive organizations. If Media Matters was portraying itself as being stridently non-ideological, this level of coordination may indeed have been problematic. But Media Matters is openly part of the progressive umbrella.
There may indeed be a real problem that progressive groups may be too cozy to the Obama White House, muzzling themselves about Obama’s progressive failings in order to win access. Yet the Daily Caller isn’t concerned about co-optation. Rather, it is criticizing Media Matters for doing what all political groups on all parts of the ideological spectrum try to do: successfully influence policymakers and the media.
Ultimately, Media Matters is being targeted for what it has accomplished. In just the eight short years of its existence, the organization has created a powerful watchdog hub for countering right-wing misinformation and pushing the progressive message to the press and policymakers. The group is ultimately being attacked for doing the very things that it publicly set out to do, and that is likely making the right wing much angrier than David Brock’s eccentricities.
Protesters in the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday. (Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
As I sat there with my laptop in a hallway of the Cannon House Office Building of the U.S. Capitol, I saw the gaping eyes of Rep. Joe Walsh, Republican of Illinois and leader of the Tea Party. “I think that’s him,” I murmured to Micah Uetricht, a Chicago-based journalist. The congressman stared at us — about a dozen activists, journalists and unemployed constituents encamped outside his congressional office — for all of a second, and then took off in the opposite direction, his aide in tow.
It’s not every day you see unemployed constituents and economic justice activists in the halls of congressional office buildings in Washington, D.C. — corridors typically reserved for their most common inhabitants: politicians, staffers and, of course, lobbyists. But a real live unemployed person? The sight scared Rep. Walsh right down the stairwell.
Yesterday was no ordinary day in the nation’s capital. More than a thousand activists and constituents came together for a “Take Back the Capitol” action, as 99 or more delegations descended on congressional offices, demanding meetings with members of Congress to call on them to support jobs legislation and battle income inequality.
Not all members of Congress fled from these meetings, as Walsh did. At least three were courteous. Rep. Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican — who famously told irate constituents to hold their “own town hall” earlier this year — tweeted that he had a “positive discussion” about the economy with Occupy activists. Duffy even posted a Facebook picture in which he posed smiling with them. Wisconsin’s freshman Republican Sen. Ron Johnson held a meeting that lasted more than half an hour with protesters; Rep. Virginia Foxx of Virginia also met with activists.
Things did not go as smoothly in Walsh’s office. The volatile Walsh, elected in 2010, is perhaps best known for boycotting the State of the Union address and refusing to pay more than $100,000 in child support payments for his four children. His chief of staff Justin Rosh said that the congressman was busy and offered to meet with us instead. The protesters showed no interest in that. Rosh said Walsh could come back to meet with them in the afternoon. “I think we’ll stay,” said one protester. Rosh shrugged. With that, the occupation of Walsh’s office began.
We arranged ourselves so as not to disrupt the office’s normal business. One occupier was Andy Gebel, who had been unemployed for almost two and a half years — a victim of the Great Recession caused largely by the very banks Walsh defends. In an outburst last month, Walsh told constituents, “Don’t blame banks, and don’t blame the marketplace for the mess we’re in right now! I am tired of hearing that crap!”
Gebel was rather calmer.
“I’d like to see some kind of commitment from him to not cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” he told me. “And get some sort of jobs program going and boost the economy.”
One activist, Rebecca Green of Stand Up Chicago, started a lengthy discussion with a Walsh staffer about income inequality. As Green showed her charts of income inequality over the years, the staffer agreed that there was a lot wrong with the economy for people to be angry about.
The 24-year-old Green, who got her start protesting a 32 percent fee hike at the University of California, Berkeley, recently moved out to Illinois to be a professional organizer.
“We wanted to talk to him about our stories so he can have a better idea of what’s going on in the lives of his constituents,” she told me. “So he can start representing the 99 percent instead of the 1 percent.”
Staffers told us that Walsh — who had entered his private office earlier without saying a word — would likely be able to meet us at 3 p.m. Yet as the time passed, he was nowhere to be seen. Finally, at around 3:20, Walsh darted out of a side door. Uetricht, Green and I took chase, hoping to catch the congressman. But as he took off down a set of stairs, we gave up.
“We have decaf coffee!” I shouted after him, referencing another famous outburst by Walsh earlier this year. After haranguing a group of constituents to cease their complaints about Wall Street, the overwrought congressman had suddenly asked for a cup of coffee. “We have decaf,” they replied brightly.
As the day drew to a close, we remained camped both inside and outside Walsh’s office. We were told he might not come back at all. But then he appeared, again quickly rushing by and slamming the door behind him. Activists marched into his office and decided to vote on whether to stay. They decided to leave. Yet as we were about to exit, Gebel met with Rosh and a short private meeting with Walsh was agreed upon.
Afterward, Gebel emerged and explained that Walsh basically did not agree with us – a finding that did not surprise. Green the activist was content to claim a victory in the simple fact of getting a meeting. As the protesters marched out with their heads held high, chanting, “This is what democracy looks like!” it was hard to deny they had won something. They had forced Joe Walsh to do something he obviously preferred not to do: talk face-to-face with a member of the 99 percent.
Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer visits Occupy DC on Nov. 23.
(Credit: Zaid Jilani)
Last month, former Louisiana congressman Buddy Roemer broke with his fellow Republican presidential candidates and visited the Occupy Wall Street protesters with an open mind. He tweeted out their stories of exasperation with the political and economic systems of America, and set himself apart from his colleagues who have scorned the movement.
Today Roemer doubled down on his unorthodox brand of conservative populism by paying a visit to the Occupy DC site in Washington where he blasted lobbyists and called for occupation of their offices.
Roemer is just one small reason why Republican voters are much more excited about voting in 2012 than their Democratic counterparts. Republicans are about to vote in a series of presidential primaries that will allow them to take part in a robust contest of ideas being put forth by a diverse slate of nominees. This contest of ideas will have a lasting impact on the country’s political future.
Democrats appear to have no such opportunity. With no viable primary challenge, there seems no way for Democratic voters to vent their frustrations with the president or send his party a message. Viewing any potential third-party challenge to Obama’s left as all but guaranteeing the election of a right-wing Republican — as the United States lacks a rank-order electoral system– many disaffected Democrats have simply resigned themselves to holding their nose and voting for Obama to prevent a President Romney.
But disappointed voters who would choose Obama as the lesser evil do not have to resign themselves to this choice. They can vote for “uncommitted” in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, as one leading occupation activist there has proposed. Or they can vote for Buddy Roemer in the Republican primaries.
No, Roemer does not register in the national polls and many political reporters ignore him. Not Salon’s Steve Kornacki who reported last month that Roemer
won four races for Congress in the 1980s, was elected governor of Louisiana in 1987, and then after being defeated for reelection (by an ex-Klansman and a future convicted felon) in 1991 went into business, serving as CEO of a midsize bank. He is also running for the Republican presidential nomination — not that you’d ever know it
Yet two states just passed measures to make sure he isn’t on the GOP primary ballot next year. Roemer’s message may not be popular but party leaders aren’t taking any chances on letting people pull the lever for him. That is probably because they don’t want to encourage crossover voting in the Republican primary states.
The crossover option
In 2008, 19.1 million Americans cast votes in the Democratic primary or caucused as Democrats between the start of the nominating process on Jan. 3 and Super Tuesday, on Feb. 5. During the same period of time, only 13.1 million people participated in the nominating process on the Republican side.
If just a fraction of the Democratic primary voters in 2008 were to switch parties and vote in the Republican contest in 2012, they would represent a voting bloc capable of reshaping the Republican primary and elevating certain issues into the national media dialogue that otherwise would not be discussed. Doing so would not significantly threaten Obama’s reelection yet it would enable voters to push both him and the Republicans on a number of issues.
Roemer is in many ways a traditional conservative. He supports expanding some domestic oil drilling. He believes, against the evidence, that allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines will lower the cost of healthcare. He also wants to significantly reduce federal spending and enact more conservative policies on personal income taxation.
Yet at the same time, Roemer is running on a boldly reformist campaign that has earned praise from the likes of Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart. The central theme of his campaign is that he wants to be “free to lead” — free from corporate and special interest money, that is. He is limiting contributions to his campaign to $100 and is calling for campaign finance reforms including banning lobbyists from participating in fundraisers and criminal penalties for violating campaign finance laws.
He wants to stand up to the pharmaceutical industry, endorsing price competition in pharmaceutical drugs — something President Obama bargained away in a backroom deal, breaking a campaign pledge.
Buddy in action
At a campaign event I attended in Washington earlier this year, Roemer explained how he wants to end loopholes in the tax code that reward companies for moving jobs overseas. He sounded less like fellow Republican Mitt Romney and more like old-fashioned trust-busting Republican Teddy Roosevelt.
“Corporations are free to do what’s in their best interests,” he explained. “But I think it’s in their best interests for America to be strengthened.”
Roemer is also a critic of corporate-scripted “free trade” agreements. “Fair trade ought to be a freedom we can count on,” Roemer told Wikinews last month. “A family without work is not happy, not healthy, not free. Our greatest loss of freedom has been loss of jobs.” This is a marked contrast to Obama’s support for NAFTA-like agreements. He also is opposed to Obama’s foreign wars.
Occupying the GOP primaries wouldn’t even necessarily require switching parties in 17 states, where primaries are open or partially open, including Georgia, Virginia and Michigan. In Iowa, you can participate in the GOP caucuses as long as you register as a Republican, which is what former Gov. Terry Branstad has accused Democrats of doing
The Republican Party establishment will surely complain, but that should not worry voters. The presidential primary process is there for Americans to decide the parties’ nominees and to prevent party bosses from controlling the system. Buddy Roemer may not be many people’s first choice for president. But he is a pretty good choice for sending a reminder to the Republican field and the White House of an oft-forgotten fact: The 99 percent includes a lot of Republicans.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar) 
Rep. John Lewis (Credit: AP) 
Media Matters' founder David Brock (Credit: Fox) 
Protesters in the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday. (Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta) 
Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer visits Occupy DC on Nov. 23.
(Credit: Zaid Jilani) 
