Via Mediaite, which soberly observes that Judson Phillips’s opinion proves nothing about tea party opinion generally. I’m not so sure that this clip proves anything conclusive about Phillips’s opinion either: It’s conspicuously brief, seemingly cutting out before he leaves the subject, and it comes from Think Progress, which hasn’t always done a sterling job of editing conservatives for context. But judging from the number of comments piling up in the Headlines thread about this, you guys want to have (or continue) a food fight about it, so here you go. Let the tomato- and pie-throwing begin!

Apart from the fact that a rule like this would exclude a whole lot of poor people from voting and would therefore surely be unconstitutional as a variant of a poll tax, it makes less sense the less local the election is. The fear is that renters won’t carefully consider what’s best for their community since they can always bug out if the neighborhood starts to deteriorate; rarely will that be true if the “community” in question is the United States and the election involved is a federal one (notwithstanding the temptation to move to Canada if The One is elected to a second term), which I think is what Phillips has in mind here. Beyond that, though, it’s simply not universally true that renters are less wedded to their community than property owners. Take it from me: If you’re willing to pay the sort of rent it takes to live in New York City (rent-controlled apartments excluded, natch), it’s because you really want to live in New York City. I’ve paid a pretty penny over the years for the right to be resoundingly crushed by Democrats in every state and local election. Don’t take my right away!

Update: Apparently Phillips sent out a blast e-mail about all the leftist attention to this clip a few hours ago. I’m not on the mailing list but Ed is. Here’s what Phillips says:

Do they really want this fight?

A couple of weeks ago, on the Tea Party Nation radio show, I was talking with David DeGerolamo of NC Freedom about the Founding Fathers and the original Constitution. During the course of our discussion, I mentioned that the founding fathers limited voting rights to property owners. I commented this was a wise idea.

Apparently, two weeks after the show, some liberal stumbled across it and today, that comment has turned into liberal headlines such as, “Tea Party Nation President says It Makes A Lot of Sense to Restrict Voting to Property Owners” and “Tea Party Leaders Attack Constitution.” Suddenly, this has morphed from a discussion between two tea partiers into articles claiming that I want to change the Constitution to restrict voting to property owners.

To put it mildly, the left went nuts.

Watching the left go into hysteria over this has been nothing short of amusing. Of course, when the left goes spastic over something like this, they either get it wrong, or nine times out of ten, they lie about what was said. One of the more amusing stories started out, “Listen to Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips discuss ending voting rights for those who do not own property!”

Of course, it begs the question; do they really want this fight?

Let’s talk about the left and voting. Perhaps we should start with ACORN. In 2007, eight members of Acorn were arrested and all later pled guilty to voter fraud. ACORN is of course, a self admitted leftist organization. This would be noteworthy in and of itself, but of course, this isn’t the first time. In 1986, twelve ACORN members pleaded guilty to voter fraud. In February 2005, an ACORN worker was convicted of voter fraud in the St. Louis area.

In Houston this year, out of 25,000 voter registrations submitted by a liberal group called Houston Votes, less than 2,000 were actually valid.

In Illinois this year, at least 35 counties failed to send ballots to U.S Service members overseas in time for them to vote. However, in Chicago, election officials made certain that ballots were delivered to criminals incarcerated in the Cook County Jail.

This year, in Arizona, the liberal groups Mi Familia, Border Action and Faith, Hope &Vote bombarded the Yuma, AZ Recorders office with a massive number of registrations right before the deadline. Of those registrations, over 8000 were found to be forged. Over 300 were by convicted felons or illegal aliens.

Of course, this does not even begin to discuss the storied history of liberal Democrat election fraud. “Landside” Lyndon Johnson was the master in Texas of getting dead people to vote for him. In Chicago, the Dailey machine was legendary in stuffing ballot boxes. In more recent times, Democrats in Washington stole the Governor’s race from Dino Rossi in 2004 and the Minnesota Senate seat from Norm Coleman in 2008.

Liberals do not believe in fair elections. This goes back to the general problem liberals have with any form of competition. They do not like the competition of ideas because their ideas suck and Americans by a wide margin do not like their ideas. That is why they have to steal elections.

That is why liberals have to register people multiple times to vote. That is why they have to get dead people to vote. That is why they have to get illegal aliens to vote.

The left is currently trying to raise hell and lie about something I did not say regarding voting. Do they really want to bring their record on voting to the forefront?

Emphasis mine. He should post the transcript of the full exchange; like I said up top, this wouldn’t be the first time a conservative’s words had been bowdlerized by a lefty editor for maximum outrageous outrage effect.