HILLARY IS DEALING PROPERLY WITH THE CURRENT MOB OF REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

…Hillary Clinton talking about voting rights in Texas

The words of the late conservative, Paul Weyrich, are as true today as they were in the 1960’s.

With all the partisan noise that the plethora of 2016 Republican candidates are making, it’s appropriate that they would all be going after Hillary Clinton as the anticipated Democratic nominee.  But Hillary is doing a good job of not immediately reacting to the attacks by the over 20 potential GOP nominees.  Instead of going after these negative personal attacks, Hillary is bringing up positive areas that most commonsense voters feel  that need some attention.

In this case, Hillary has gone after her ideas as to what should be done for dealing with the latest rules that the Republican states have installed for making it hard to register and to vote. 

Remember when it was Abraham Lincoln's GOP that sponsored helping voters tear down the barriers that were built those decades ago in all the Southern states?  Well I guess “turn-about is fair play,” as today it is the Republicans that are doing everything they can to keep all the minorities including women, blacks, Hispanics, students and Seniors from registering and voting.

Clinton is going directly after the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision that said that critical parts of the Voting Rights Act weren’t needed any longer.  She also named names of those potential Republican nominees such as Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush for their supporting new barriers in their states for keeping eligible voters from voting.   As Hillary said, “Republicans should stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of election fraud and start explaining why they’re so scared of letting citizens have their say.”

But Hillary doesn’t just go after the republicans focus on keeping American’s from voting.  She also came up with some good ideas for making it easier to vote.  For instance, Clinton used some details from last year’s bipartisan report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Clinton called for making the rule that no one should have to wait more than 30 minutes in order to vote. She also offered a proposal of a national standard of “at least 20 days of early in-person voting everywhere, including opportunities for weekend and evening voting.”

OK, we all know that the reason for this approach is that all those that the Republicans are trying to keep away from the polls, those ethnic minorities, Seniors, students, veterans and the poor, historically they will usually vote Democratic.

But the reality is that America is genuinely a democratic republic.  The federal government should be guaranteeing broad participation in voting for our congressional representation.  But the GOP is doing everything they can to eliminate as many voters as possible from going to the polls.

The late Paul Weyrich was the founder, or the co-founder, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, The Moral Majority and the now famous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  ALEC is the organization that writes all those far-right bills for state and federal lobbyists such as the “Stand Your Ground” laws.

Before he became president, Ronald Reagan had attended a conservative meeting in Dallas where Mr. Weyrich spoke.  What he said is exactly what caused the Republicans to pursue what had later become the GOP’s Southern Strategy.  Weyrich speech is also the basis of today’s Republican focus for keeping Americans away from the polls. 

The following was at the heart of Mr. Weyrich speech:  "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our [Republican] leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Just as true for the Republicans today as it was in the 1960’s and 70's.

Copyright G.Ater  2015