Harvest Of Shame: Republicans Seek to Destroy the Voting Rights Act

huffingtonpost.com
Harvest Of Shame: Republicans Seek to Destroy the Voting Rights Act
Brent Budowsky

Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Republicans who stood for egalitarian democracy. George Bush and Congressional Republicans have a different vision of the Grand OId Party: the vision of Richard Nixon and his Southern Strategy.

Their notion of freedom and democracy is voter suppression, intimidation and abusive tactics aimed at driving many African Americans and other minorities away from the polls, to destroy their fair voice in our democracy.

This is a moral and political outrage. The betrayal of the Voting Rights Act is a betrayal of a tradition of justice and democracy that has historically achieved bipartisan support that included many Republicans who believed in their party's now-abandoned tradition of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

Democrats should fight this. John McCain, will you fight with us?

Voters should challenge every Republican to join us in opposing to our last breath this attempt to destroy the Voting Rights Act and all it embodies to American democracy. We should begin a massive, all-out campaign to make certain that voting machines are honest; to make certain that no one seeks to bully or intimidate any American to take away their franchise and that anyone who does is prosecuted and punished under law.

The Voting Rights Act must stay. Senators and Congressmen who seek to destroy it must go. Democrats and all of freedom's friends must wage this fight relentlessly until we win, which if we fight, we will. The media should report this attack on voting rights without fear or favor. We will never have credibility in the world speaking of democracy in Iraq until we defeat those seeking to demean democracy at home.