Holder's Jim Crow Politics

[Valin]

WSJ:

The AG says Voter ID laws are 'poll taxes.'

7/10/12

 

Some of our liberal friends were a tad upset when we wrote last month that Attorney General Eric Holder was using the voter ID issue to stir up racial incitement. But maybe they should complain to Mr. Holder, who can't seem to liberate himself from a Jim Crow-era political mindset.

 

Speaking to the NAACP in Houston on Tuesday, Mr. Holder assailed the Texas law that requires voters to show some identification, using terms redolent of Deep South racism before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. "Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them—and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them," he said. "We call those poll taxes."

 

The nation's first black Attorney General knows exactly what he is doing by citing the fee that some Southern states used after Reconstruction to disenfranchise blacks. Poll taxes were made illegal by the 24th Amendment in 1964. Yet faced with the prospect of a close re-election battle, and fading support from independents, Team Obama is trying to rekindle its 2008 coalition by using the race card to drive up black voter turnout. Texas and Florida, both with GOP Governors, are the election-year foil.

 

(Snip)

 

[clearvision]

They spanked him good. But nothing will come of it.