When talking about the USA firings, even Republicans use the word "politicize." Why? Because it's a vague, wishy-washy word that opens the door to an "everybody does it" narrative. (And Democrats, idiotically, use this Republican talking point as if it were, fer gawdsake, neutral.)
But what the USA firings are really about is using the criminal justice system to affect election outcomes. That's why the Bush regime has to corrupt not just their own appointees to get fake charges brought, but the civil service as well--the grunts who gather the evidence and handle the cases. Once again, the non-Beltway McClatchy gets the story right, as Pravda on the Potomac and Izvestia on the Hudson shamelessly fumble it:
Congressional investigators also are examining allegations that [Bradley Schlozman, a former interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City and top official in the Civil Rights Division] hired lawyers based on their political affiliations.
Schlozman served as the division's top deputy from 2003 until the spring of 2005 and then as acting chief until late November 2005.
In a March interview with McClatchy, he denied allegations of politicization, saying he'd "tried to de-politicize the hiring process" and had filled jobs with applicants from "across the political spectrum. . . . I didn't care what your ideological perspective was."
Shamelessly lying, of course. But then, he's Schlozman is a Republican, and it's really more trouble than it's worth to figure out when they aren't lying.
However, former employees of the division's Voting Rights Section, whose decisions can affect the outcome of elections, told McClatchy that eight lawyers had been hired there since 2004 largely because of their Republican or conservative connections.
Two former department lawyers said that when they'd applied for jobs elsewhere in the division in early 2005, Schlozman had asked them to delete mention on their resumes of Republican affiliations and resubmit them. Both attorneys were hired.
One of them, Ty Clevenger, said Schlozman "wanted to make it look like it was apolitical." Clevenger also said that when he'd passed along a resume from a fellow Stanford University Law School graduate, Schlozman had asked, "Is he one of us?"
"Across the political spectrum." Right, then.
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"Steal elections" is a tad shorter
and says the same thing, does it not?
The problem isn't the use of the term "politicize" as much as it is the fact that the term "election fraud" has been taken over by the Bad Guys, the guys who are committing the fraud when they are being paid to prevent it.
Commit election fraud on the one-cent, steal-one-gumball scale (be a poor person hired to register voters and pad your paycheck by writing in fake names and addresses) and you get harrassed if not arrested if not jailed. Commit election fraud on a genuine ballot, by being registered at an address you don't live at which is outside the district in which you actually live, and have nothing at all happen as long as you're Republiscum like Ann Coulter.
Commit election fraud on a break-the-bank-in-Vegas scale by eliminating great numbers of legitimate voters from the rolls with tactics like caging, or wildly unnecessary polling place ID laws, and get a job in the Bush "Justice" Department. Lovely.