Midway through his second term, President George W. Bush proudly signed the The Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, And Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization And Amendments Act Of 2006 which was sponsored by Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. It had been passed in the Senate with an unanimous 98-0 vote and in the House with a strong bipartisan 390-33 majority.
The Act needs to be updated because it was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. But they won’t. And they won’t because the Republican Party has become so racially hostile to blacks that they can’t overcome the resistance of their worst bigots. Speaker Paul Ryan met with the Congressional Black Caucus today and flat out said that he can’t get the Act fixed up and reauthorized.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told black lawmakers Wednesday that he supports new voting rights protections they’ve championed, but said he won’t bypass a committee chairman to move legislation, according to a Democrat who attended the gathering.
“He said it right in front of everybody — he said he supports the [Jim] Sensenbrenner bill,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), said after Ryan met with the group on Capitol Hill.
“So somebody was saying, ‘Well, why don’t you go tell your committee chair to do it?’ ” Cleaver added. “And he said, … ‘Look, I can’t do that.’ “
Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a former chairman of the Judiciary panel, has sponsored bipartisan legislation to update the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in response to a 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted a central provision of the 1965 law.
But Sensenbrenner’s proposal does not have the backing of the current Judiciary chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who maintains the Supreme Court left ample protections in the VRA, thereby making congressional action unnecessary.
I feel like Speaker Ryan could get this done if he wanted to, but I’m not sure what would happen if he rammed it through. I suspect that it would cause a major revolt, and perhaps even another coup like the one John Boehner just experienced.
I consider this important enough that Ryan should insist on principle and resign if he own caucus can’t live with it. It’s really a moral issue for me more than a political question. Ten years ago, it wasn’t even a partisan subject, but ten years ago we didn’t have a black president and a raging Tea Party revolt against the Republican Establishment.
Basically, I think Paul Ryan is a coward. He’s a political coward, but more importantly, he’s a moral coward.
P.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte has also used his position as Judiciary Chairman to prevent any legislative reaction to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, kill comprehensive immigration reform and call for the deportation of DREAMers.
So shouldn’t the title say “won’t” as opposed to “can’t”?
Exactly. A political coward + isn’t interested in doing what should be done. Weasel.
The fact that GW Bush passed the initial legislation is now viewed by the Racist RepubliKKKan party members as one of the salient reasons why W is “not a conservative.”
Cowardly Weasel Ryan doesn’t want to be painted with the same brush.
The needle on my outrage meter is stuck all the way over to the right. Not only is the Republican Party the party of racism, they are the party of blatant racism who openly says as much and defies anyone to challenge them.
I used to think that people who are racists would at least never admit it, but it seems the racists in the Republican party are quite proud of it.
Agreed with your outrage here, and will note the bizarre discussion happening upthread where Ryan’s cowardice and the GOP’s implicit and explicit racism are completely ignored in favor of broad attacks on the Democratic Party. Those people might be interested in confronting the fact that Democrats could organize to take Ryan and others out and still not have the majority in the House due to the extreme gerrymands in dozens of States. A Speaker replacing Ryan will still be unwilling to buck Chairman Goodlatte, and Goodlatte is not someone we could expect to take out even if the Democratic Party was running an outstanding 50-state strategy.
The frequency made and historically illiterate claim here at the Pond that Democratic Party leadership are the creator of all ills is taken to an extreme level here. All SCOTUS judges nominated by Clinton or Obama voted to protect the VRA; all judges nominated by Reagan and the Bushes voted to knife it. The failure of the Repubican- controlled Congress to fix the VRA is secondary to the Republican-controlled Court overturning the VRA.
This is why there should be a 50 state strategy. I’m sure Goodlatte has no real opposition to re-election. He probably comes from a bright red district. But if the DNC spent money on voter education and recruitment, he couldn’t afford to be so blatantly obvious.
The DNC is supposed to advance the interests of the Democratic Nationally. That’s the N in DNC. It’s not supposed to be an organization to prevent new ideas and more importantly new blood from gaining power. The DNC exists only to serve the interests of a small group of elitists. It does NOT have the interests of the donors in mind. The donors are marks to be bled. I used to donate but now their fundraising “surveys” just clutter the land fill. At least they give the USPS some revenue.
Exactly my thoughts. His district should be targeted. What a useless bunch of drones.
The 50-state strategy was meant to reunite the United Statesl. The DNC is perfectly satisfied cannibalizing the chunks it needs to keep raking in dough and occupying the White House. This way they don’t dirty their toes in the muddy waters of the political chaos we’re seeing now and which they have done their very best to encourage: divide. Sanders says unite.
The DNC is an utterly useless organization for the rubes, er, common voters who identify as D-voters. The DNC exists solely to empower the elites and get payola from Wall St, the MIC and similar. Worthless, useless, arrogant, condescending pigs at the trough.
They’ve done absolutely nothing that’s of any value to the commoners. Anything that’s benefited us is simply by happenstance.
It’s quite possible the DNC doesn’t have the money to do a “50 state strategy” that even when Dean was in charge was more myth than reality any way. If the state parties can’t get their act together why should the DNC waste resources when they could use them in places where the local party isn’t such a mess.
So they don’t have people like Goodlatte to deal with. A strong Democratic organization would put pressure on the Republicans to not nominate such crazy candidates for fear of losing. If there is no Democratic candidate or only a self-funded token, then they are free to nominate cuckoo birds. The cuckoo birds then become committee chairs by seniority.
It doesn’t take a lot of money to campaign in a small town or rural district. No expensive television buys. Most helpful would be the advice of experienced campaign consultants.
it costs a couple hundred thousand to run in any district on the cheap end if you actually want to have any chance of winning and there are 435 districts as you know; it costs millions to win a Senate seat 100 of those; most states have hundreds of legislative districts that also don’t come cheap.
Instead of wanting some magical force from Washington maybe Democrats can get off their asses and build local parties and then fix state parties.
If I was at the DNC I wouldn’t throw bad money at any district that doesn’t have any local support. It’s up to the people, Democrats, to actually do the work.
Then what the Hell do we need the DNC for? And why should we send them money?
their job is to win as many races as they can given their limited resources not throw money at lost causes
IOW to keep the current occupants in office at all costs. Yes, that is their mission. I question the long term strategy of no growth. As the Democrats dwindle to a minority party there will be less and less money to distribute.
Did you actually use “Paul Ryan” and “principle” in the same sentence?
With that exchange, Ryan has essentially admitted to being a coward. But voting some 63 times to throw an estimated 22 million off health care (per Congressional budget office) apparently is not a problem.
Time for a discharge petition?
Yes, he is a coward. I hope whoever is going to run against him on the Dem side makes use of this example. His district is conservative but is not all the Tea Partyish.
In 1999, at a county fair in Wisconsin, the booth next to mine housed the Republican parties exhibit. It was staffed by the newly minted House member, Ryan.
He was mostly left alone, and the few conversations during the lulls revealed him to be knot tew brihte.
Hard to believe that lightweight has become the playuh he has.
Not at all hard to believe he is the coward he’s been all along.
Why are Ryan’s actions so hard to fathom? The stripped down Voting Rights Act bequeathed by the Supreme Court makes voter suppression so much easier than it used to be. And the GOP loves to suppress the (non-white) vote. This includes Paul Ryan.