When Poppy Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, who could have predicted that Thomas would go on to be the deciding vote for striking down the Voting Rights Act? You’d have to be a pretty sick individual to have that kind of malevolent imagination.
In recent years, the Republican Party has nakedly pursued black disenfranchisement without even the plausible deniability of a guise. Voter Fraud? Please. That doesn’t even rise to a guise.
If anything, the Voting Rights Act should have expanded pre-clearance to the whole country, or at least to anywhere that a Republican is empowered to make changes in federal election procedures. Remember this?
Question: “What are the Republicans doing to get black people to vote?”
Ken Emanuelson: “Well, I’m going to be real honest with you: The Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote, if they’re going to vote 9 to 1 for Democrats.”
And this?
Mike Turzai, the Pennsylvania GOP House majority leader, said that a strict new voter ID law will help Republicans win the state for the first time since 1988.
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation — abortion facility regulations — in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done,” he said to applause at a Republican State Committee this weekend, according to PoliticsPa.com.
The comment contradicted the usual Republican line that voter ID laws are for guarding against voter fraud — which is extremely rare if not nonexistent in practice — and not to help elect Republicans.
I hoped that I would not live to see this day, and not because I wanted a short life.