2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumRand Paul to black student: Bringing up GOP voter suppression ‘demeans’ Civil Rights movement
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accused a black Howard University student of demeaning the civil rights movement by bringing up recent GOP efforts to limit voting accessibility.
The Republican Party has been using their state legislators and their governments to prevent African-Americans from voting, because they didnt want to re-elect President Obama. said the student, Julian Lewis, a former White House intern under President Barack Obama. So Im asking you, how can we believe what youre saying in regards to voting rights when we honestly feel, based on our intellectual ability to gauge whether you can connect with us or not, how can you say that, sir?
Paul countered by revisiting one theme of his speech, pointing out that it was Southern Democrats who were behind the early efforts to stifle African-American voting rights before the civil rights movement took hold.
I think if you liken using a drivers license to literacy tests, you demean the horror of what happened in the 40s and 50s, maybe probably from 1910 all the way through the 1960s in the South, Paul said. It was horrific. Nobody is in favor of that. No Republican is in favor of that. But showing your drivers license to have an honest election, I think, is not unreasonable. And I think thats the main thing Republicans have been for.
However, voter ID laws and other Republican-backed measures such as the curtailing of early voting hours have in fact been heavily criticized for disproportionately affecting the African-American voting community, among others, prompting Sen. Nina Turner (D-OH) to say in August 2012 that Jim Crow has been resurrected in her state.
Also, despite Pauls suggestion that Republicans opposed measures like poll literacy tests, fellow Tea Party member and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) said at the first Tea Party National Convention in February 2010 that the lack of such tests helped Obama be elected in 2008.
People who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House, Tancredo said at the time.
Paul also attempted to rewrite his position on the 1964 Civil Rights Act during the speech.
I have never wavered in my support for civil rights or the Civil Rights Act, he said. The dispute, if there is one, has always been about how much of the remedy should come under federal or state or private purview.
In a May 2010 interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, however, Paul suggested the dispute around the Civil Rights Act centered around freedom of speech.
Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racists from speaking? Paul said at the time. I dont want to be associated with those people, but I also dont want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because thats one of the things that freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesnt mean we approve of it.
When Maddow asked if that also applied to desegregation of lunch counters, he compared that issue to the conflict between restaurant owners rights to bar guns from their establishments and gun owners rights to carry their firearms.
Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? Paul said. These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion.
As Think Progress reported in January 2012, Pauls father, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), voted against a 2004 resolution praising the Civl Rights Act, saying it increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty. Seven years later, the younger Paul explained that decision by saying, The point is that its not all about that. Its not all about race relations, its about controlling property, ultimately. Such views prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to label Paul an extremist that same year.
Pauls full speech can be seen at C-SPANs video library. A transcript is available at iroots.org. A short excerpt from the conclusion of the speech, posted on YouTube by the National Review on Wednesday, can be seen below.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)"Questioning my credentials is demeaning to all the opthamologists who passed the real boards."
alsame
(7,784 posts)not wearing his robe and hood.
Please proceed with your minority outreach, GOP.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)JustAnotherGen
(31,783 posts)The old gas light trick didn't he?
And this is why I vote Left/Democratic. Only ONE party has lied to me - about me. And it's not the Democratic Party.
Note to the Rich Old White Guys Party - this black 40 year old rich woman is NEVER ever going to vote in her own interests on economics. . . because on every other issue you are against me. Now go Cheney yourselves.
Rant over. ;-
Old and In the Way
(37,540 posts)and applauded!
You make an important observation with this statement: "this black 40 year old rich woman is NEVER ever going to vote in her own interests on economics. . . because on every other issue you are against me."
For the most part, I think that's true for the majority of Democrats. Tax margins and personal economic benefit for me at the expense of the many is an idea that defines me as a Democrat. The amalgam of special interests that constitute today's Republican Party - the Stupid, the Rascists, the Chritianists, the Scientific Ignorants, the Grifters (see Sarah Palin, for one example), and the All Around Anti-Socialists (the NRA coomes to mind, here). Collectively, they all want to use government to remake society in their image - a repressive sledge hammer that replaces common sense and progress with authoritarianism / bankrupt ideological law that promotes their failed economics, failed Constitutional understanding of gay marriage and women's rights, and a misguided attempt to put religion in government and replace legislation with Republican Clerical Christian Imams who will interpret "God's law" for their own social and economic ends.
Their agenda and policies, when considered in total, spell the end of the USA that our parents fought WW2 to save. I view it a collective act of treason by trying to actively game our electoral system and end our democracy in order to promote their unAmerican ideals and self interests.
JustAnotherGen
(31,783 posts)All of it . . . My dad fought South Korea and Vietnam. He was a Green Beret. And these same "all of those things you just called them" said he was anti American because of his absolute opposition to Iraq and Afghanistan. He knew a paper clip op when he saw one . . . Ms Klein calls it Shock Doctrine.
My eyes are wide open. So are yours. Now to get other people to hear every word out of their mouths for what they are . . .
Old and In the Way
(37,540 posts)I was somewhat past your father's age, I think...yet I faced the draft and did my medical pre-evaluation. I knew how really bad it was at my particular point (1971) - knowing the fast collapsing rationale for our involvement in Viet Nam....yet I also know that my Dad was deeply involved in trying to protect American troop lives with his involvement on manufacturing US Army ordinance - most proudly, the design/build of the M-60 machine gun. A veritable awesome weapon that you want when you go to war....except that you were the "kill guy" if you were the NV/VC..kind of a cosmic win/lose situation....
I like to think that we, as a world, are well past the primitive constraints of stupid, unproductive world wars and we can make war crimes something to execute people over. I think if we kill, say, a the next dozen nasty bastards who start wars....we'll see a lot less inclination to be the front man on the next anti-humanitarian front.
Pass it on - the Corporate war that Cheney/Bush orchestrated in Iraq cost us, the people/taxpayers of this country, the infrastructure to supply 1/3 to 1/2 of our current energy requirements. I would have supported a 2nd Iraq War committed to making us 100% renewable energy efficient.
A decentralized energy structure is, by definition, both labor intensive and strategically smart from a geo-political/environmental perspective.
But that is not where ultimate personal financial profit lies...
rurallib
(62,387 posts)"They are not only ignorant, they are proud of it!"
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Even with its flaws, the Democratic Party is a far cry from the compromised and corrupt(and not just fiscally, either) GOP of today.
John2
(2,730 posts)Paul's reciting that Democrats was against Civil Rights at a predominately Black University. he is talking to University students, that probably have taken African American History courses about slavery and the History of African Americans. I suggest Paul register for courses himself.
The current Democratic Party has nothing to do with the Civil Rights issues of the Past. I would ask Paul, what current Southern Republican politician supported Civil Rights. There were not that many Republican politicians in the South during that era. And during the Civil War, there were no Republican Politicians in the South. The Republican Party was a Party of the North and upper Midwest. It was after the Southern Strategy and Civil Rights Act, that the Republican party made inroads in the South. Many white Southerners and Southern Politicians crossed over to the Republican party. You may have some stubborn old people still in the Republican Party thinking the current Party represents Fredric Douglass, but that is further from the truth. The Republican Party of Douglass and Lincoln, did not have white supremacists or organizations like the KKK supporting it. There are African Americans that do have college educations if Paul doesn't know that. That is their problem. They think all African Americans are uneducated.
demcoat
(31 posts)Is the voters of 2016 presidential election. His campaign season for the white house just started.
Jamaal510
(10,893 posts)always curious what his take was on the voter ID laws, as a libertarian-Republican. His logic is simply flawed. Basically what I got from this is that it is acceptable for people to have to jump through unnecessary hoops just to vote, yet background checks for gun-savy lunatics are out of the question, as he and other Senators tried to filibuster them.
People such as Rand only like freedom when it is convenient for them, it seems. They could care less about my freedom to vote, or to not get shot randomly at school.