President Obama Really Isn’t Going Anywhere on Jan. 20
An important part of the peaceful transition of power in our American republic is term limits on the president and the tradition that, at the conclusion of his term, the president leaves Washington, D.C., and does not stay to harry his successor by setting up a shadow government in the nation’s capital.
The picture of a helicopter lifting off from the Capitol to ferry former President Ronald Reagan to Andrews Air Force Base for the trip back to California marked the transition of Reagan to Bush with finality. So too did the lift-off that took President George W. Bush to Andrews and then back to Texas after Barack Obama took the oath and became the 44th president of the United States.
However, when Obama leaves the Capitol after Donald Trump takes the oath of office, there apparently will be no helicopter ride to Andrews; rather, it will be a short taxi ride to Obama’s $5.4 million rental in the tony Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, DC.
And after that Obama will open a post-presidency office in World Wildlife Fund headquarters, causing one to wonder if that deal was in the works before Donald Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton.
While much of Obama’s post-White House focus will be based in Chicago, where he is designing his presidential library and will be building out a center that will promote leadership and other public priorities, he will also engage in other activities. One of them will entail supporting the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which will pursue redistricting efforts to boost Democratic candidates across the country.
According to The Washington Post, few former presidents have undertaken political activities so soon after leaving office.
Obama’s choice to make the National Democratic Redistricting Committee a special priority is very interesting, considering that the next census is still three years off, putting state redistricting some four years away in 2021.
However, “lawfare” attacks on redistricting, voter ID and election integrity legislation are, in the wake of Trump’s victory, an announced priority of Democrats and the far left.
And with Hillary Clinton thoroughly discredited and the Democratic Party’s geriatric leadership mired in the politics of the past, who are the only Democrats available to lead such an effort?
Barack Obama. And his trusty sidekick, Eric Holder.
Two weeks ago, Holder was announced as chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, saying the group plans to help craft legal strategies to ensure more equitable maps while also opposing gerrymandering.
At that time, Holder hinted at a likely future partner in these activities—soon-to-be-former President Obama.
Before the 2010 elections, noted the Huffington Post’s Paul Blumenthal, there were only 14 states where Republicans controlled both legislative chambers. After a well-organized and well-funded push to win those chambers back, Republicans ended up with full legislative control in 25 states―just in time for the last redistricting process, which began in 2011.
After the 2016 elections, Republicans now control both chambers in 32 states. It is the largest state legislative majority held by the Republican Party since the 1920s.
As state legislators will begin drawing new maps come 2021, Holder says Democratic redistricting efforts cannot simply be “about drawing the lines, but winning back the offices.”
Now what’s most interesting about this is not that Democrats want to win back state and local offices they lost—after all, electing party adherents is the main reason political parties exist—it is how well these plans intersect with the plans of far-left billionaire Nazi collaborator George Soros and the network of shadowy fronts and organizations he’s set up to do the same thing.
As a trove of leaked documents analyzed by our friend election integrity lawyer J. Christian Adams revealed, the effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election was far more expansive than had previously been reported.
The billionaire and convicted felon, said Adams, moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud and integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats. The documents reviewed by J. Christian Adams reveal that the Soros campaign fueled litigation attacking election integrity measures such as citizenship verification and voter ID. It funded long-term efforts to fundamentally transform election administration—including the creation of databases marketed to state governments for use in voter verification. It propped up left-leaning media to attack reports of voter fraud and conducted racially and ideologically targeted voter registration drives.
The racially targeted voter registration drives were executed at the same time Soros dollars were funding other public relations efforts to polarize racial minority groups by scaring them about the loss of voting rights and the dangers of police officers.
Adams says the Soros documents reveal hundreds of millions of dollars being poured into the effort to transform the legal and media environment touching on elections. One document notes that poverty-alleviation programs are being de-emphasized for this new effort. It states: “George Soros has authorized U.S. programs to propose a budget of $320 million over two years, with the understanding that the annual budget for U.S. programs will be $150 million beginning in 2013.”
As the Wall Street Journal‘s Zusha Elinson and Joe Palazzo documented just before the 2016 election, money from Soros helped transform once-sleepy races for local prosecutors around the country.
Soros, a major backer of far-left causes, contributed at least $3.8 million to political-action committees supporting candidates for district attorney in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas and Wisconsin, according to campaign filings.
Of the 11 races, the candidate he backed won nine times—twice because the Republican candidate dropped out before the election.
And how did Soros achieve this enviable won-lost record?
The Henry County, Georgia prosecutor campaign is a good example.
Valerie Richardson of The Washington Times reported Soros dumped $147,000 into Georgia Safety & Justice, an independent-expenditure committee registered on Aug. 26, aimed at defeating Republican Matthew McCord and electing his opponent, Democrat Darius Pattillo.
“It was horrible,” said Mr. McCord, a lawyer in private practice in McDonough. “They rented space, they had a staff, they were using a Washington, D.C.-based PR firm. So, what I knew was they could say whatever they wanted to say about me. It didn’t matter if it was true, and I would have no way to respond.”
He had already received a taste of things to come, he told Richardson, “I’ve always been fairly centrist. I have a foundation that I started that has paid to send minority kids to school. And they [Soros campaigners] were already trying to paint me as a white racist,” he said.
And who is the first line of defense in state vote fraud and election integrity cases?
Your local prosecutor.
Our take is that Obama’s decision to stay in D.C. was simple; he’s staying around to stage-manage the continuation of the Soros-funded racial polarization of America and to focus those efforts where they will stifle election integrity efforts and make Eric Holder’s job at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee that much easier. {eoa}
George Rasley is editor of ConservativeHQ, a member of American MENSA and a veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2008. He served as lead advance representative for Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and has served as a staff member, consultant or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative Republican political figures, including President Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. He served in policy and communications positions on the House and Senate staff, and during the George H.W. Bush administration, he served on the White House staff of Vice President Dan Quayle.
This article was originally published at ConservativeHQ.com. Used with permission.
