President Obama, members of his administration, his campaign staff and assorted Democrat surrogates have repeatedly demonstrated during this election cycle that there is no tactic they consider too underhanded if they believe it will help them win in November. From Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s slanderous charge that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years, to demonstrably false advertisements claiming that Romney was responsible for a woman’s cancer death, to Vice-President Joe Biden’s pander that Romney will return African-Americans to slavery, Team Obama’s campaign is plumbing the depths of a bottomless sewer.
Still, of all the scurrilous tactics being employed by President Obama in his attempt to hold onto 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, none is more despicable – or more revelatory of his view of our fighting forces – than the Obama campaign’s federal court challenge to a law in Ohio that allowsour men and women in uniform an additional three days to vote. By filing suit in Ohio, President Obama has exposed his belief that the men and women who lay their lives on the line for this country every day as they fight global terrorism are not worthy of an additional 72 hours to vote as compared to civilians. In other words, in Obama’s eyes, members of Seal Team 6 should be treated no differently than the local grocery store clerk when it comes to how long they have to cast a ballot to determine the next Commander-in-Chief.
As this commentary goes to publication, the battle in Ohio continues without resolve. Last Wednesday, a federal court judge, having heard oral arguments from both sides, took the case under advisement without setting a ruling date. The next day, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted directed that polls across the state be closed on all weekends during the five weeks of early voting. By so doing, Husted leaves in question for the court whether active duty military, along with their families, can vote on the Monday before Election Day when the polls are closed to everyone else.
But no matter how the court rules – and acknowledging that gamesmanship is involved from both sides of the political aisle – no one should lose sight of the fact that President Obama deliberately decided to go to federal court and argue that active duty members of the United States Armed Forces should not be the beneficiaries of a two-tiered voting system that gives them a small amount of extra time to vote. After all, that is the crux of the issue once you strip away all of the politics from this fight.
And, that is why 15 military groups, including the National Guard Association of the United States and the Marine Corps League, have joined the lawsuit on the side of the State of Ohio and against the Commander-in-Chief under whom a number of the organizations’ members once served. For the most part, these organizations and their members don’t care about the politics involved by either side. What they seek is to protect long-established legal precedents that recognize that the military deserves special consideration when it comes to voting.
As the joint motion filed by the military support groups states, “The Obama campaign’s and Democratic National Committee’s argument that it is arbitrary and unconstitutional to afford special consideration, flexibility, and accommodations to military voters to make it easier for them to vote in person is not only offensive, but flatly wrong as a matter of law.”
As the grandson of a doughboy who fought the Germans in the trenches of France during World War I and the son of a B-25 Mitchell side-gunner who flew combat missions against the Japanese during World War II, I am at a loss to find words strong enough to express how offensive it is that Obama is denigrating our military by purposefully refusing to acknowledge that the men and women who volunteer to pay the ultimate price for our freedom deserve to be in a class unto themselves when it comes to their franchise to vote.
As a citizen of this great nation who can never repay the debt I owe to our fighting men and women – and their families who quietly and gracefully bear tremendous burdens – I can only hope that Americans across the land will rise up and demand that President Obama and the Democratic Party withdraw their heinous lawsuit and allow the good people of Ohio, by means of their duly-elected representatives, toprovide extended voting privileges to our active duty military.
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