Republican National Committee Convention CEO William Harris says that Karl Rove's protege' Tim Griffin, a U.S. House Representative from Arkansas, who sits on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, was chosen to speak at the 2012 Republican National Convention [Griffin scheduled to speak Tuesday, August 28, 2012 at around 2:15PM] "because he represents the future of the party".
Actually, we've already seen what kind of a "future" Griffin represents.
Griffin has a colorful political history. During the Bush / Cheney administration, (Bush's Brain) Karl Rove, and Tim Griffin were up to their necks in the firing of federal prosecutors. One, the US Attorney for New Mexico, Captain David Iglesias, (he’s a Naval JAG), and himself a Republican, said he was fired because he refused to go along with RNC demands that he arrest innocent citizens on fake charges of fraudulent registration. Iglesias was horrified at this Soviet-style tactic. “I thought I was a Jedi warrior, but it turns out I was with the Sith Lords.”
Since Iglesias wouldn't go along, Rove had Bush fire not only Iglesias, but seven other prosecutors, including Bud Cummins, US Attorney for Arkansas.
In his place, Rove directed Bush to appoint Tim Griffin. As it turns out, however, it was discovered that Griffin was illegitimately appointed to the role of US Attorney as part of a massive controversy over unprecedented political influence over the Department of Justice. He became a key figure in one of the biggest scandals of the Bush administration, which, ultimately, lead to the resignation of Gonzales.
So Tim Griffin, after serving a mere 6 months, was forced resign in disgrace from his post at US Attorney for Arkansas.
But wait....as they say......there's more.....let's step into the WayBack Machine and go back a bit further;
From June 2002 to December 2004, Griffin had been Research Director and Deputy Communications Director for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, a high-ranking position within the RNC. He and Karl Rove conspired on a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 American citizens.
In October 2004, thanks to the work of the investigative journalist Greg Palast, BBC Newsnight released an email (obtained through an error by the sender) and sent from Tim Griffin to other high-ranking officials of the RNC with the subject line "Re: caging."
Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). If used for the purpose of disenfranchising racial or ethnic demographics, vote caging is a Federal crime, a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965..
The email in question contained a list of 70,000 Floridians who were registered to vote. The list contained primarily African-American and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts. The addresses of the individuals in the spreadsheet were primarily homeless shelters and those of deployed, active-duty military personnel and students away at college.
The RNC subsequently sent first-class letters to these 70,000 potential voters marked "Do Not Forward" and the letters themselves contained instructions to return the letter to ensure proper voting registration. If the letters were not returned, the corresponding voter was removed from the voter registration roll, under the guise of "inconsistent registration."
However, the purpose of this mail-scheme ("voter-caging") was to remove members of the target demographic (for partisan purposes). What might happen, is that a soldier mailing in his or her vote from Iraq would have that ballot disqualified—and the soldier wouldn’t even know it. In Palast's words, that’s not just sick, it’s a crime, a violation of the Voting Rights Act. And it was a Federal crime because of whom the RNC caging crew attacked: not just any soldiers, but soldiers of color. And, after the soldiers, the Rove gang targeted students at traditionally Black schools (away on summer break), homeless men and, for good measure, a few precincts of Jewish voters. In other words, anyone who was likely to vote Democrat.
At one point, Griffin confidentially wrote: "The real story is this: There were thousands of reported illegal/fake voter registrations around the country, so some of the Republican State Parties mailed letters welcoming new voters to the newly registered voters. … The Republican State Parties ultimately wanted to show that thousands of fraudulent registrations had been completed.".
(Does any of this "widespread voter fraud" nonsense from Republicans begin to sound familiar to you.?)
In his defense, Griffin claimed that the purpose of 'caging' was to identify "fraudulent" voters. Unfortunately, this contradicted one explanation of the Bush campaign to BBC that the lists were of potential donors and not in any way created to challenge voters. (Perhaps the homeless are considered prime candidates as Republican donors.)
GRIFFIN: Obviously, I’ve seen the Internet stuff about caging. First of all, the allegations that are on the Internet and have spread through the tabloids are completely and absolutely false, number one. And ridiculous. Caging, as you may know, I had it looked up, is a direct-mail term for basically organizing returned mail. Now I know that it has been defined (inaudible) on the Internet as some sort of purging voters, suppressing voters, caging voters, vote caging. All these different thing go back to one guy, who’s name I won’t mention, who wrote something about me when I came in control of the U.S. attorney (inaudible). It’s completely untrue. It’s not even, there’s not even a scintilla of proof. And I’ll just say that it’s so untrue, I don’t know exactly what you want me to say. I didn’t do any of the stuff he alleges, and of course if I didn’t do it, I don’t know of any Karl Rove impact (inaudible). This is all made up and faux pas. I didn’t cage votes, I didn’t cage mail, I didn’t cage animals, I’m not a zookeeper.
But then the intrepid Palast whipped out a Griffin email from August 2004 indicating that Griffin not only knew of 'caging,' but directed the operation. The emails were dated August 2004, just before the presidential election.
“Caging” would end up costing Bush’s opponent John Kerry more than one state. Griffin, of course, claimed the whole incident to be false, despite the emails delivered from his email address.
“Tim Griffin should be in jail.” That’s the conclusion of civil rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after going through the evidence. “What they did was absolutely illegal—and they knew it and they did it anyway,” he said.
While the incident in question was investigated, however tepidly, by the U.S. House of Representatives, it was never investigated by Federal authorities with jurisdiction over violations of Federal law.
Which brings us back to Griffin's resignation as a U.S. Attorney General.
He wasn't out of work for long.
In 2010, Koch interests dumped $167,183 into Tim Griffin’s campaign for Congress. Presumably because you can never own too many Congressmen. And also because the billionaire Koch brothers stand to make even more billions from ventures related to the XL Pipeline and Griffin is now the Koch's head cheerleader.
So here we are in 2012, Griffin, currently seeking reelection, the linchpin of one of the dirtiest, Washington-insider schemes, serves on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and oversees the very department he helped undermine, AND he was picked to speak at the 2012 Republican National Convention "because he represents the future of the party".
Think about it.
Learn more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Griffin
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2007/05/raging_caging.html?nav=tap3
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/06/15/13963/griffin-caging-zoo/