How the Republicans Are Preparing for 2014

Nate Silver, the statistics whiz who predicted Barack Obama’s victory last November months in advance, is now saying that the Republicans are close to taking control of the Senate in the 2014 elections. This means that both houses of Congress would be Republican. In short: The 44th can take a vacation. Not one of the changes he wants to implement will see the light of day if Silver’s prediction is accurate.

Currently, the GOP holds 46 out of 100 Senate seats. They must win six to retake the majority and counter the voice of the vice president. That won’t be easy, but Nate Silver estimates that the goal is within reach with the announcement that certain elected Democrats will not run for another term. Furthermore, in this election cycle, Republicans don’t have many risky candidates. They can thus launch a frontal assault against the Democrats. Silver predicts that the Republicans will have 50 or 51 Senate seats after the November elections.

This is especially the case because they are coming up with multiple ways to prevent the Democratic voters from voting, encouraged by the Supreme Court’s recent decision that abolished the majority of provisions in the Voting Rights Act, the purpose of which was to ensure that all voices could be heard. In the most conservative states, the GOP is trying to stop the elderly, youth, blacks and the poor from voting — that 47 percent that Mitt Romney spoke of during his disastrous presidential campaign.

A growing number of states controlled by the GOP have high barriers to voting: limiting early voting, mandating that voters prove their identity with documentation that is difficult for the poor to obtain and making day-of voter registration (which is currently permitted) nearly impossible. Just recently, North Carolina abolished a program permitting teenagers who will be 18 years old on Election Day to register to vote.

Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law, the Southern states had to submit any modification to their voting laws to the U.S. Department of Justice. They are now free to do pretty much whatever they want as a result of the Supreme Court’s recent decision. Since centuries-old habits die hard, these states, most notably Mississippi and Alabama, are ready to submit to their state legislatures plans that will severely restrict voting access to groups that are supposedly more closely aligned with Democrats. Texas proposed a bill a mere two hours after the Supreme Court issued its decision, as if it had nothing more pressing to do than to suppress citizens’ freedom of expression, a fundamental right.

Republicans are all for liberty and the free market, but only when their opponents have their hands tied. This makes it easier for them to win an election.