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Why Republicans Rip the Voting Rights Act
Why delay renewal of hugely important civil rights legislation that Republicans themselves say they support? By stalling, the GOP is throwing a bone to conservative Southern whites, the writer says. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and social issues commentator and the author of "The Crisis in Black and Black" (Middle Passage Press).
In 1980 Ronald Reagan told biographer Laurence Barrett that the 1965 Voting Rights Act was "humiliating to the South." The carefully handpicked, emotionally charged words from then GOP Republican presidential candidate aimed to tap into the fury of white Southerners over civil rights, and, of course, garner their votes. Two years later, then Assistant Attorney General John Roberts (now Supreme Court justice) sent a tidal wave of memos imploring President Reagan to reject a 25-year extension of the act. A hesitant Reagan approved the extension anyway.
Reagan did not want to buck Democrats and civil rights leaders who still had clout in Congress and favorable public sentiment. The last thing Reagan wanted was to be tagged a bigot and an enemy of voting rights. But candidate Reagan's soothing words to the South, and Robert's stern opposition, were huge signals that many Republicans were at best ambivalent, and at worst, openly hostile to the act.
That hasn't changed. President Bush has twice said that he would sign legislation that extends the 1965 Voting Rights Act when it expires in 2007, and nearly every Republican senator and House representative publicly swore they'd back extension. Yet, all it took to derail House approval was a loud complaint from a handful of Republican representatives that bilingual ballots should be dumped and that the act unfairly punishes Southern states for voter discrimination. That may also be enough to derail a vote in the Senate on the Act. Before the Republicans objected the Senate Judiciary Committee had scheduled a vote on extension of the act the last week of June. Voting rights supporters considered the vote a slam-dunk, but not now.
The delay was probably inevitable, not because Bush and Republicans want to kill voting rights, as many civil rights leaders and black Democrats claim, but because it's smart, partisan politics to stall. The clumsy effort to tie renewal to English-only sentiment was a cover. The real aim of Republicans is to appease conservative white voters in the South, just as candidate Reagan did.
Read More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e6775cf32de6e2ac0cb4dea3871c0665
Reagan did not want to buck Democrats and civil rights leaders who still had clout in Congress and favorable public sentiment. The last thing Reagan wanted was to be tagged a bigot and an enemy of voting rights. But candidate Reagan's soothing words to the South, and Robert's stern opposition, were huge signals that many Republicans were at best ambivalent, and at worst, openly hostile to the act.
That hasn't changed. President Bush has twice said that he would sign legislation that extends the 1965 Voting Rights Act when it expires in 2007, and nearly every Republican senator and House representative publicly swore they'd back extension. Yet, all it took to derail House approval was a loud complaint from a handful of Republican representatives that bilingual ballots should be dumped and that the act unfairly punishes Southern states for voter discrimination. That may also be enough to derail a vote in the Senate on the Act. Before the Republicans objected the Senate Judiciary Committee had scheduled a vote on extension of the act the last week of June. Voting rights supporters considered the vote a slam-dunk, but not now.
The delay was probably inevitable, not because Bush and Republicans want to kill voting rights, as many civil rights leaders and black Democrats claim, but because it's smart, partisan politics to stall. The clumsy effort to tie renewal to English-only sentiment was a cover. The real aim of Republicans is to appease conservative white voters in the South, just as candidate Reagan did.
Read More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=e6775cf32de6e2ac0cb4dea3871c0665
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