Rand Paul spoke at Howard University. I’ve just listened to the speech, more on that later. I was struck by his response to one of the student’s questions regarding voter ID:
I think it’s important in the history to know what happened. Democrats in the south were very very harsh. Almost all democrats, okay? That’s who ran the governments. And they DID have tests at the polls literacy tests and special tests. And guess what, if you were white and forward you didn’t have to do the test but if you were black you had to do the test and you didn’t pass the test. People were scared and intimidated and prevented from voting.
I think if you liken using a drivers license to literacy tests, you demean the horror of what happened in the 40’s and 50’s. Maybe from 1910 all the way through 1960’s in the south. 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 that is the main thing republicans have been for.
Again, I think the democrat position that election laws being racist is an example of racism today. You have a political movement, an ideology, using race as a lever to gain advantage for themselves.
Well said!
Uh, Southern Democrats of that era all switched to the Republican party because the Democratic party went so far away from their conservative views. He really is being a bit silly and dishonest when he tries to make it seem like “Democrats” were being racist. It was a group of southern Democrats who first left the party and now have died out. If he had left out the dishonest dig at Democrats and talked about how the culture (both parties) has changed in the South, it would be well said. He turned it into petty dishonest partisanship.
Uh, Southern Democrats of that era all switched to the Republican party because the Democratic party went so far away from their conservative views. He really is being a bit silly and dishonest when he tries to make it seem like “Democrats” were being racist.
It’s complicated, to be sure.
But I think the smaller point I am quoting him on here is regarding the voter ID issue.
People today are all up in arms because people want there to be a good way to make sure you are who you say you are when you vote. And to do that, you need a drivers license or other state issued ID card.
And when people say, “That’s RACIST!” he’s calling bullshit. When black people were required to pass tests to vote, that was racist. When everybody is required to show a ubiquitous state issued ID, that is NOT being racist.
In fact, playing the race card in that scenario is racist, not the other way around.