Forget piecemeal disenfranchisement, conservatives openly now talking about the big kahuna
As they feel their racial hegemony slip away, angry white guys are getting angrier and more hysterical. Now The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, who is a highly respected voice of modern Republicanism, wants to quit messing around:
On his radio show yesterday, Bryan Fischer called for ending Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, as well as the elimination of the minimum wage … all in order to help the poor and those struggling to make ends meet, of course.
So logically this discussion resulted in Fischer eventually calling for a return to an electoral system in which only people who own property can vote.
“You know, back in the day, in the colonial period,” Fischer said, “you have to be a landowner, a property owner to be eligible to vote and I don’t think that’s a bad idea. And the is very simple: if somebody owns property in a community, they’re invested in the community. If they’re renters, they’re going to be up and gone; they could leave the next day … [P]eople that are not property owners – it’s like people that pay no taxes, they have no skin in the game. They don’t care about the same things that somebody does who is rooted in the community”
– See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-only-property-owners-should-be-eligible-vote#sthash.6D7x0nvw.dpuf
Back in the day his organization would have paid taxes. Let’s take away his tax exempt status and see if that shuts his mouth!
“Back in the day . . .”
In point of fact the idea that property holding was linked to voting during the colonial period is highly over-sold. Technically, for example, in Massachusetts before about 1740 there was such a linkage. But then again, not really. The Crown appointed the Governor and senior executive officials, so no voting there. People did vote for delegates, but the Mass colonial legislature had no real ability to make much law. Most laws were made by towns and townships, and they worked on a town meeting consensus model rather than by strict voting. Studies of the period indicate that women, free blacks, etc. participated in those meetings.
Nor is disfranchisement new. Until about 1828 in North Carolina free Black men could vote–then they held a referendum and took away their right to vote.
I’m thinking we should just go back to making poor people recite Shakespeare at the polls.
It’s Animal Farm, teabagger style: “Some pigs are more equal than others.”
Since when is Bryan Fischer a “highly respected voice of modern Republicanism”? Common man. I call bullshit.
I lived in an electoral system, Texas for 45 years. A telling legacy of Jim Crow is the fact that even today the Election Divisions in each county are under and run by the Tax Assessor/Collector. You know what that meant not too many years back; poll taxes.
Needful to say, Texas is rife with voter suppression activity ranging from purging of voter rolls by Republican County Clerks who maintain the rolls, along with the Sec. of State, who is a governor-appointee and highly political. So, voters are constantly having to re-verify their registration, especially when they move addresses. Name changes, such as divorces, marriage, etc. are a fertile area of challenging voters at the polls by election clerks, particularly in their new era of voter ID’s. Data says 1/3 of women voters in Texas face possible purging because of name changes. Of course, the Tea Party has ramped up their racist work of harassing African American voters at the polls and in infiltrating the ranks of temporary election clerks to wield such power over the easily intimidated. The Texas Tea Party has nationalized their training of voter intimidation with training programs through a group called True the Vote, run by Houston’s King Street Patriots. Add to that the threat to the Hispanic population of going after illegal family members if Hispanic Citizens get too “uppity”. The creativity in harassment is boundless.
There was a time when the AfA’s Fischer wouldn’t have been a leading voice of Republicnism. Not today though:
“As the AFA’s leading talk show host, whose voice is heard on affiliates in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Fischer frequently hosts likely presidential candidates who are looking to make inroads among Religious Right voters. Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and businessman Herman Cain have all appeared on Fischer’s radio show. In addition, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour were both guests on Fischer’s show while they were weighing runs for the presidency.”