Comments

1
Don't forget drug laws. Drug laws are racist enforced and disenfranchise black males.
2
Well black people just gotta start voting republican! Problem Solved!
3
@2 Yes, voting for a party that's spent 45 years demonizing you is always a popular strategy!
4
There is no doubt that these policies and practices are racist, nor denying that the Republican party is a haven for the majority of racists in this country.

However, I'd argue that many if not most of the Republicans driving this aren't so much racist themselves, as morally flexible enough to be okay with solidifying their positions on the backs of minorities.
5
@1 (Pope Peabrain): According to the Brennan Justice Center, 13% of African-American men are barred from voting because of felony convictions. Felony disenfranchisement has replaced literacy tests. (Overly restrictive and costly ID requirements would have replaced the poll tax, but the Justice Department actually did something about that.). And of course, there's always wholesale voter registration purges like the one in Florida in 2000.
6
It's not really racist per se, but yeah, it sure ends up that way. What they'd really like to do is ban everyone who isn't a Republican from voting. It's only a concidence that a lot of blacks fall into that category.
7
Here's the quote: “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.”

I'm a total leftie, can't imagine why anyone would vote Republican, think that the Tea Party guy who said it is in all likelihood horribly bigoted as well as stupid... but leaving off the second part of that sentence is just plain misrepresentation.
8
Don't forget discouraging young people from voting. I think their next strategy will be lobbying to raise the voting age to 60.
9
Hahaha...this is my shocked face.

And hey, they aren't racist...they'll be happy to remind you that MLK, MalcolmX and Frederick Douglass were all Republicans...and so was Abraham Lincoln. Apparently having been - pre southern strategy and civil rights, really pre FDR - the less racist party is good enough to grant permanent absolution.
10
@6 Voter ID laws in which only AARP cards are defined as acceptable ID.
11
oops, make that @8
12

Sen. Elbert Guillory has switched political parties to become the first black Republican senator in the state since Reconstruction.

On Friday, Guillory said he had come to disagree with the direction of the Louisiana Democratic Party, which he referred to as "the party of disappointment." He expressed his opposition with the party's stances on abortion, the Second Amendment, education and immigration.

"Today, the party of disappointment has moved away from the majority of Louisiana. They have moved away from the traditional values of most Americans," he said. "Their policies have encouraged the high teen birth rates, high school drop out rates, high incarceration rates and very high unemployment rates."


http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2…
13
Too bad that statement couldn't be used as mens rea to prove that the shenanigans keeping minorities from voting were intentional by GOP.

@7: it doesn't matter how you think someone will vote; if you claim to support democracy and the will of the people, then your party should not be associated with voter suppression tactics.
14
@13, when did Republicans start supporting democracy and the will of the people? That would sound pretty "socialist" to most of them.
15
Of course, most Democrats don't really give a shit about blacks either, or they wouldn't be so anti-gun.
http://www.youtube.com/v/c4n8egXfmJM?ver…
16
@4: "...I'd argue that many if not most of the Republicans driving this aren't so much racist themselves, as morally flexible enough to be okay with solidifying their positions on the backs of minorities."

Uh, being morally flexible enough to be okay with solidifying their positions on the backs of minorities is racist.
17
@7, well, be fair: he didn't finish saying what is manifestly true, either. Here, lemme fix that:

“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 there's no way we're going to abandon our racist and bigoted base, so, black people always will vote for Democrats."

There ya go. If they wanted black people to vote for Republicans, maybe they should, I dunno, push for equity in the political sphere?
18
What @7 said. There is nothing remotely racisist about the quote.

You must be crazy if you think Democrats aren't thinking of ways to keep white social conservatives in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia home on election day.
19
@15: Us black folks don't actually vote for representation, we vote to mitigate our damages. In other words, we vote for the guy who will fuck us over the LEAST. Like it or not, that's been the Dems for quite some time now.
20
Just what office does this "official" hold, Dan? (Answer: none)
21
@18: Bullshit. I know some Ohio social conservatives. In 2004 (while blacks in downtown Cleveland were waiting for hours to vote) their suburban polling places runneth over with available voting machines.
22
we know Danny was sure grateful for all the good black folk who voted in the Prop 8 election......
23
@18,
If everyone in the country were forced to vote, democrats would win landslide victories in almost every election.

The most apathetic voters are usually liberal-ish. Republicans work their asses off to make voting as difficult as possible (or even make it plain impossible).

Democrats might hope that conservatives won't vote, but they don't need to do much to actively dissuade them. Their goal is simply to get MORE people to vote, because that's how they'll win.

More people voting = democratic victories
Fewer people voting = republican victories
24
@23, you don't think the Democratic campaign strategy is to dampen voter turnout on the republican side? Paint Romney as a mormon to lose support of evangelicals who overwhelmingly vote GOP? Actively challenge military absentee ballots in Florida because those favor GOP candidates?

25
@24, "painting Romney" anything is hardly the same as deliberately removing Romney supporters from the rolls, which did not happen. If you wanted to vote Republican anywhere in the United States, there were absolutely zero barriers to you doing so. Millions of people are routinely prevented -- legally prevented -- from voting for Democrats.

In addition, "he did it too" is not a defense, not when you are five and not when you are trying to vote, either.

Only one party in America makes deliberate, widespread legal vote suppression a priority, and it's not the Democrats. And you know it.
26
@24,
Yeah, I'm sure they do all that, just not in the balls-out, die-hard fashion republicans do.

The republicans only chance - ONLY chance - of winning is to disenfranchise as many people as possible. They have no way of winning if they can't do that. Democrats can win in a number of ways: disenfranchise potential republicans, get more people to vote, make voting easier, etc.

So, yeah, both sides do it, but since it's the republicans one and only method, they just approach it with more vigor.
27
@16 has it. One does not need to be malicious to be racist. If your actions hurt a class of people, and you know that, and you're okay with that--no matter how merely pragmatic you are being--you are a bigot.

Furthermore, if you are planning or acting to disenfranchise any voters, for any reason, you are literally anti-American.

Also I think it is pretty fucked up that we had the same number of black US senators in the 19th century as in the entire 20th: 2.
28
Yeah, and just why is it that blacks (and other minorities) are so heavily weighted towards Dems? Perhaps it's because of all the blatantly racist words & deeds Team Rape has been doing for over fifty years. This isn't an issue about a party trying to suppress the vote of people that don't support them, as some logic-twisters on here are trying to say. It's an issue of a party of bigots who know that the people they hate know it, and thus don't want them to vote.

What little discussion there has been among the republicans, to suggest that, maybe, you know, they shouldn't be *quite* so racist has been met w/ howls of derision.

29
I like this quote:

“As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Translation: if only the really angry people vote, then our results improve.

Take that as you will.
30
@19:

I'm white, and I do the same thing. It's part of the reason I've been voting Green for a long time. They have no chance of getting seats in my riding, generally speaking.
31
@16,27 It may be that we're arguing semantics as much as anything.

I agree that the practice is racist and that those willing to put such barriers in place are all sorts of bad people.

The thing is, that as #8 pointed out, they're also actively going after young voters, but I don't think that most of them qualify as personally ageist, although such policies are specifically that.
32
@30: I vote Green when I can practically, i.e. when my vote won't possibly tip the scale for the right. And everybody except the very rich and lobbyists aren't getting pure representation. My point was that black people are aware of the racism on both sides of the major parties and vote for the weaker concentration.
33
@20 - Oh - so it's just the constituents that are racist fuktards? Geez, well that's just fine then ...

P.S. - you're an idiot.

@18 - Yes, it's racist. The non-racist response would be: "well, we need to get them to vote republican".
34
In other news....water is wet!
35
@18 - Let's look at California, Massachusetts and other states where the legislature is not only control by Democrats, but Dems actually have veto-proof supermajorities (and Democratic Governors, too). Please cite a single piece of legislation that Democrats have introduced -- merely introduced, not even passed -- that would try to prevent Republican demographic groups from voting.

Please wait...

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