GOP Won't Support Voting Rights Act, Yet Attempts To Lure Black Church Voters

Much of the original 1965 Voting Rights Act provisions are permanent, however some provisions needed to be extended by Congress in 1987. Now some of these provisions are set to expire in 2007. And the GOP leadership in Washington has so far failed to extend these provisions which will expire without a Congressional extension. Yet RNC head, Ken Mehlman has spoken at many Black churches in a GOP strategy to lift Black voters votes for Republican candidates from above the barely double digits that they currently receive to a higher vote share.

This is a very cynical GOP strategy. To attempt to suppress part of the Black vote on one hand, but to appeal to Black religious conservatives to support GOP candidates. In Ohio, for example some Black voters were forced to wait nearly two hours to vote, which discouraged some voters in this critical state that John Kerry narrowly lost.

In a recent Rainbow Push Coalition conference in Chicago, Democratic Party Chairman, Howard Dean addressed this GOP hypocrisy, "I think it's hypocritical for the Republicans to pretend to reach out to the African-American community unless they say they are going to reauthorize what gave the African-American community political power".

For all intents and purposes this is merely a modern version of the type of racist tactics that were seen in the South in the 60's, where Blacks found it difficult to register to vote, faced unconstitutional "poll taxes" or literacy tests written in Chinese to discourage Blacks from voting. The GOP strategy of appealing to conservative Black churches to bring out their voters, but refusing to support the extension of the Voting Rights Act for the benefit of the entire Black community is merely a cynical and calculating effort to cut Democratic votes in critical states for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

With falling poll numbers for the Republican rule in Washington, GOP strategists know that White votes will be down for GOP candidates in 2006 and 2008. And with these declining votes by White voters, heavy margins of working class Blacks and Hispanics could mean some major shifts in Senate or Congressional seats, or in the 2008 Presidential election. Looking at the grim prospects for GOP candidates in 2006 and 2008, the best strategy some of the Republican leadership can come up with is to "suppress the Black vote", as one GOP strategist once proclaimed.

How the leadership of the party of Abraham Lincoln can get behind such a cynical political strategy is a 180 degree change of moral values for this party. The Republicans have allowed trade agreements such as NAFTA, WTO and now CAFTA to erode the high paying urban factory jobs in industrial cities such as Detroit. This has pushed Black community unemployment up to 10.1% compared to the national average of 5.1%. And with the loss of so many high paying jobs, the Republican leadership not only allows a mass flow of jobs to labor cheap China with 24-40 cent an hour labor replacing American labor disporportionately hurting urban Black families who count on high paying factory jobs to live the American dream, but further conspires with big corporate donors to keep the federal minimum wage stuck at a mere $5.15 an hour for lower paid American workers thanks to hundreds of millions in corporate donations for the GOP to enact their blatantly procorporate antiworking people agenda. And the Black community has been greatly disportionately hurt with this procorporate agenda. Now the only hope to prevent Black community anger at the devastating economic setbacks of the Bush Administration years is for the GOP to "suppress the Black vote" for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

When George Bush was made President by the Supreme Court, despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore by 500,000 votes, the Black community was very depressed. This community well knew that the huge social and economic advances of the Clinton years, of which Al Gore was sure to follow would be coming to a crashing end. This is exactly what happened in the Bush years. A devastating retreat from the advance of economic equality that should touch all families. Suppression of the Black vote is another rotten legacy of the Bush years. It is a hypocritical note for an administration that claims it wants to promote "democracy " in the world.