Republicans' central, unstated purpose -- restricting minorities' voting rights

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The sad, sorry Republican retreat from civil rights
By Joel Connelly, August 23, 2013

A half-century after the 1963 March on Washington,  "Jim Crow" Democrats who resisted civil rights in that era have been replaced in our capital by a new, evolved, polished species of Jim Crow Republicans.

Republicans in Congress, especially filibuster-busting GOP senators under leader Sen. Everett Dirksen, made possible much of Dr. Martin Luther King's monumental "dream" -- in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.

As a kid, I watched the great Lincoln Memorial rally on TV, including a delegation  from Capitol Hill.  Prominent was the shiny bald head of Sen. Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., next to the white mane of his Gotham colleague Kenneth Keating.

What a difference 50 years makes, and not for the better.

"Our country has changed," U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican, wrote in his recent opinion that gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

The Supremes' ruling, in turn, cleared the way for Republican governors and legislatures in North Carolina, Florida and Texas to move forward on restrictive legislation with a central, unstated purpose -- restricting minorities' voting rights.

The new generation of Jim Crow Republicans (e.g. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas) don't have the options once available to Dixie's Jim Crow Democrats.  They can't hold whites-only primaries.  They can't require lengthy "literacy tests."  They can't impose a poll tax. 

They can, however, restrict early, and particularly Sunday, voting.  They can require government ID and then make it difficult -- particularly for elderly non-drivers -- to get.  They can make minority voters spend hours waiting at understaffed polling places. 

They can discourage college students by not accepting college-issued photo ID. They can gerrymander legislative and U.S. House districts to such ends as minimizing Hispanics in Texas' congressional delegation.

Is this the party of Lincoln?

Or Eisenhower, whose administration pushed for strong civil rights legislation?  Or William McCullough, the Ohio Republican on the House Judiciary Committee  who went to the mat for a strong public-accommodations section to the 1964 Civil Rights Act?

It all began to turn in 1964, when GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act and segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina crossed the aisle to become a Republican.

Thurmond became a linchpin in the 1968 "Southern Strategy" of Richard Nixon.  The moderate GOP lions of the Senate -- Jack Javits, Thomas Kuchel, Clifford Case -- were purged in GOP primaries.

Now, we get a little lip service, like House Speaker John Boehner recently paying tribute to House colleague Rep. John Lewis, R-Ga., whose head still bears scars from his beating at Selma, Ala.

The dour GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell remembered working as an aide to Kentucky's Republican Sen. John Sherman Cooper, who defied segregationists at home to round up votes to break filibusters in 1964 and 1965.

Would McConnell call in the chits to bust a filibuster today and pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act? Of course not.

If a voting rights bill made it through the Senate, Boehner (and such lieutenants as Washington's Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers) wouldn't let it get to the House floor for a vote. Just look how they've bottled up immigration reform.

Once the nation's most prominent African-American Republican, ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell, unlimbered Wednesday night on North Carolina's new, restrictive voting law . . . with Gov. Pat McRory, who signed it, sitting in the audience.

"These kinds of actions do not build on the base," said Powell.  "It just turns people away.  I want to see policies that encourage every American to vote, not make it more difficult to vote.  What it really says to the minority voters is . . . We really are sort of punishing you."

The Republicans of the 21st century are even borrowing the "states' rights" rhetoric once heard coming from the lips of segregationist Southern Democrats.

The U.S. Justice Department said this week it will use other Voting Rights Act provisions, challenging a Texas redistricting plan that minimizes minority representation, and asking for "pre-clearance" of restrictive new election rules.

Justice is seeking to "obstruct the will of the people of Texas," thundered Gov. Perry.  "We deserve the freedom to make our own laws, and we deserve not to be insulted by a Justice Department committed to scoring cheap political points," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Of course, it's not "freedom" but rigging the game.  Its purpose: Domination by a reactionary core that fears a more diverse, inclusive America.

A trio of presidents -- Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter -- will return to the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday for a "Let Freedom Ring" rally at the site of Dr. King's "I have a dream" speech.

Unlike 1963, there won't be any Sens. Javits, or Keating, or Clifford Case, or John Sherman Cooper to give bipartisan heft to the goals of civil and human and economic equality in the "Land of the Free."

It's a crying bloody shame.
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