[EL] George Will recycling old William F. Buckley arguments (plus a dash of Jeane Kirkpatrick for fun)

[Douglas R. Hess]

George Will has a really strange (I mean a Glen-Beck-strange kind of
strange) column out today on the NVRA (see link below). As I read it, the
column seemed rather familiar. Took me a while to find it, but the column
largely repeats and amplifies arguments that William F. Buckley, Jr. made
against the NVRA in a column titled "Motor Voter Legislation Vitiates States
Rights" that ran on February 12, 1993 (likely ran several places through
Universal Press Syndicate). 

 

I couldn't find a link to the Buckley column that was free (but I could get
it through the campus LexisNexis subscription where it was stored via The
Buffalo News (City Edition) 02/12/1993). However, the article can be bought,
apparently, through High Beam (the second link below) if you don't have
Lexis/Nexis.

 

Anyway, for good measure Will also tosses in a reference to Nazi electoral
victories as the result of high turnout...which also seemed familiar to me.
Yep, it's been trotted out by folks like Jeane Kirkpatrick whenever they
wanted to argue that elections aren't a guarantee of democracy, or
candidates they backed.  Of course, Kirkpatrick's and Buckley's points are
more nuanced than Will's, but that's not saying much. 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-federal-voting-drive-make
s-a-mountain-out-of-a-molehill/2012/12/19/461e17c4-494c-11e2-ad54-580638ede3
91_story.html

 

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-22492872.html

 

 

Douglas R. Hess, PhD
Washington, DC
202-277-6400
 <mailto:douglasrhess at gmail.com> douglasrhess at gmail.com 

 

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