Card carrying Democrat...

Orson Scott Card has a review of Hugh Hewitt’s new book If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends On It. It’s definitely worth a read. Some excerpts:

[Hewitt] does a thorough job of pointing out that the Democratic Party has a proud tradition of rather openly stealing elections, like the 1960 election (which Nixon, like a mensch, refused to contest even though it was glaringly obvious that Illinois and Texas probably really voted Republican if you counted only existing, living, eligible voters once each) and the attempt in Florida in 2000 and the attempt in California's recall election last year…

Cheating only works when the vote is close, and when you know the other side cheats, you have to make sure the margin of victory is too wide to be overcome that way…

Even if you're a Democrat so loyal that you think Al Franken is sane enough to operate heavy machinery and John Kerry knows how to make facial expressions but merely chooses not to, this book nails exactly what the strengths and weaknesses of both major parties are in coming years; why third-party votes are wasted and harmful; how Democrats have finally succeeded in rigging election funding to benefit them and hurt Republicans, and how Republicans can counter it…

Hewitt's point is this: When the Senate organizes itself at the beginning of each session, there's a head count. People line up as Republicans or Democrats. Whoever has the most, gets to appoint the chairpeople of all the committees, and gets to have a majority on all the committees, and gets to set the calendar and decide which bills make it to the floor.

Now, as a Democrat, what can I say to that except that, because my party has been taken over by an astonishingly self-destructive bunch of lunatics who are so dazzled by Hollywood that they think their ideas make sense, I have to agree that right now, any President but Bush and any Congress but a Republican-dominated one would be disastrous.

Strong words from a Democrat. Card does go on to disagree with Hewitt on the matter of local elections, citing a local race where he believes a Republican must be removed due to corruption.

The rest of Card's column is devoted to more general thoughts and observations, some of which I'll excerpt in a follow-up post. Be sure to read his whole column.