by Steve Timmer

Nov 7, 2012, 9:30 AM

Mendacious in battle; mendacious in defeat

In one of the greatest snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of victory episodes in Minnesota election history, Dan McGrath and the dissembling Protect My Vote crew went from about 80% support just months ago to turning in a second place performance yesterday. Displaying the same generous spirit that carried him through the campaign, McGrath said:

He blamed what he called a “fear-mongering message” promoted by opponents. “It’s senior citizens won’t be able to vote. Soldiers won’t be able to vote. Students won’t be able to vote. [Voters are] afraid it comes with all of this excess baggage,” he said. “Which it doesn’t.”

But all one needed to do was look at the voter ID bill passed by the Republican controlled-legislature in 2011 to see where the Republicans were headed with enabling legislation. The ALEC-conceived amendment was just the camel’s nose under the tent to force a DFL governor to come to terms with the whole camel or risk a constitutional crisis.

McGrath is also guilty of titanic projection when he says the Vote No forces engaged in fear mongering. He’s the one who talked — incessantly — about the thousands of dead registered voters, when it seems that the only thing that dead people do is endorse Republican candidates in Edina. He talked about people voting multiple times and voters impersonating others, without a shred of proof, and that vouching might still be possible under the amendment.

McGrath has borne a haunted and hunted look for several days; the outcome is a delicious denouement.

The voter ID amendment was Jim Crow all the way, and Minnesotans saw it for what it was, just in the nick of time. And now, not even the non-resident gridiron Cicero, Matt Birk, nor the moldering Pat Boone can put poor Jim back together again.