Let me finish tonight with this.
I’ve said this before and will say it again: the Republican Party ought to be ashamed of this effort to suppress the voting of African-Americans.
Seventeen states have pushed efforts to either require more documents or shut down voting opportunities. It’s a multi-state effort that you have to wonder if it’s being run out of the Republican National Committee. If not, they might think of getting out there and condemning it. I think that will happen when hell freezes over.
These are organized campaigns by Republican-controlled legislatures at the state level with a single ambition: to cut back on voting by African Americans and other minorities. In some cases, the courts have been able to stop them, but certainly not all.
It’s the old, dirty old scam of winning elections by keeping your rivals from getting out its vote. If you can’t win the hearts and minds of the voters, just shut the window on them. Just come up with the latest technique to closing down their voting opportunities. It all fits with the other ugly stuff—the continued talk in TV ads about “welfare recipients,” the talk about Obama as a “food stamp president,” the use of the filibuster to shut down the program of the country’s first African-American president, and the continued “birther” talk…Shameless. That’s the word for it, and it’s the program of the party of Abraham Lincoln for 2012. I don’t think he’d be proud of this stuff. It’s incredible that so many are. It’s no way to win an election.
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