Kansas City's conservatives come out for Funkhouser in full force

My favorite local conservative blogger LMC has a great take on today's local election that's definitely worth reading.

Even better . . . She pointed me toward a recent piece by my least favorite local Mexican hater Jack Cashill who also seems to be jumping on the Funkhouser bandwagon and decrying Democrat and minority voting blocs.

Of course there are the obvious (and deserved) swipes at local political group ACORN in his column but he typically overlooks Republican "voter harvesting" of the same ilk and would (mis)lead his readers to believe that all those dirty darkies on the Eastside of town are the only people who want to game the system. Clearly, the guy has never heard of Karl Rove, Diebold or many of the same dirty Republican tricks that attempt to sway the vote in their favor as well.

Sad thing is . . . Cashill isn't even being creative in his writing and is instead relying on what has already been labeled as part of "the Republican obsession with voter fraud conspiracies."

And while I'm no fan of the crazy nutjobs at ACORN signing up their dead relatives to vote . . . It's worth noting that so many conservatives are simply crying wolf over what they seem to be labeling as "a vast conspiracy among Democrats and minorities" while ignoring their own well documented instances of voter suppression that are still being pursued in the Show-Me state as recently as last year.

Interesting fact about Cashill's crying wolf: "No evidence has ever been presented that these registrations have ever been the cause of any illegal votes."

However, what's more important today is that Funkhouser is teaming up with these conservative forces in order to further strengthen his coalition of white people.

It strikes me as funny because I know a great many people in the Funkhouser camp are dyed in the wool liberal Democrats that would find most of the ideologies of Cashill and his ilk repugnant but they want the support, the votes regardless of the motives and now it's far too late and much too close of a race to risk alienating anybody.

Some people might call this consensus . . . But they would only be folks (like Funkhouser) who have absolutely no experience in politics.

Actually, I'm not surprised . . . Conservatives, liberals, Democrats and Republicans have previously jumped into bed with each other when it comes to waging a war against the civilians in Iraq the terrorists or trying to stop all those damn Mexicans who want menial labor jobs.

Cashill offers a scathing description that I'm sure is accurate regarding those in control of the Black voting bloc in Kansas City but I'm pretty sure this kind of thing goes on in every place where there is money to be had by peddling influence regardless of race. Still, the message is loud and clear and while I'm sure many in the Funkhouser camp would disavow the clearly bigoted depiction . . . You won't hear a peep out of them till after election time . . . Check it:

In the inner city, vote harvesting kills reform in its tracks, and the people were there to protest that. Unfortunately for these citizens, however, both of the would-be prosecutors had eagerly sought the machine’s endorsement and weren't overly squeamish about how it harvested votes.

In 1994, Nat Helms, then the spokesman for the effort to legalize gambling in Missouri, approached a group of ministers actively associated with this same harvesting machine. They had been preaching that gambling was bad for the community.

Helms, who later publicly regretted his actions, tells what happened next:

"We went to them and said, ‘what is it going to take for you to change your message? Nothing convinced them of anything. So we said, 'what about a million dollars?' Well, that worked. Next week, gambling is good. Gambling is good for Kansas City. They got posters out, they got their ward workers out."

People change their mind when money is on the table? Shocking!!!

Anyway . . .

The strange bedfellows that have united in order to defeat Brooks should signal that the Funkhouser camp isn't a group reformers set out to "clean up" City Hall . . . During this race, they've proven themselves to be nothing more than your average KC politicos . . . Ducking important issues, flip-flopping, casting aside their beliefs for a bigger cross-section of voters, relying on big media and big money just as much as their opposition and ultimately what should be noted is that (despite propaganda to the contrary) Funkhouser is simply another brand of politician and just as much a part of very same corrupt political system that Cashill describes in his column.