The party of division: The question is …

By Maurice Washington

Recently President Biden flew to Atlanta to promote so-called “voting rights” legislation that would nationalize state election laws and codify many of the measures that temporarily” loosened ballot security in 2020, because of the pandemic. Those “temporary, emergency measures” included no-excuse absentee ballots, mail-in ballots sent to all registered voters in certain states (alive or dead), diluted or discarded witness-signature requirements, unsupervised ballot drop boxes, and more. Many of these changes were made by secretaries of state, county commissioners and judges — but not state legislatures, as the United States Constitution mandates.

In his speech the president asked, “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. Martin Luther King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” Speaking recently in Philadelphia, Biden condemned the idea of voter IDs: “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are — who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Sadly, he went on to suggest that requiring voter IDs would mean returning people to slavery.

It is UTTER NONSENSE to assert that Americans who support common sense measures to ensure integrity in U.S. elections are just like president of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, a slaveowner whose troops killed more than 364,000 Union soldiers in the War Between the States to preserve the evils of slavery, and George Wallace, Alabama’s former Democratic governor whose slogan was “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” and “Bull” Connor, the notorious Birmingham, Alabama, commissioner of public safety who used dogs on civil rights protesters in the 1960s — and by the way, was elected one of Alabama’s two members of the Democratic National Committee !

Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told MSNBC recently that if Republicans win November’s midterm elections, “Voting in this country as we know it will be gone.” Vice President Kamala Harris alluded to President Donald J. Trump’s voters as “the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy.”

Once again the Democratic Party is using partisan political false narratives at our expense — narratives that are intended to divide America and elevate black victimhood and white guilt. This time the weapon of choice is “voting rights.” Those who oppose bills to protect voting rights are, in the words of the current president of the U.S., operating in the mold of Bull Connor.

The “party of division” once again is setting the stage for the kinds of unrest and rioting that caused nearly $3 billion in business and personal property damages, numerous assaults on police, deaths of innocent citizens — and strained relationships among whites, blacks and other minorities in cities and states across America in the summer of 2020.

The message here is clear: If you’re against the Dems’ proposed voting rights legislation, you are a racist and, if you’re black, an Uncle Tom.

Fortunately, Americans of all races are not buying what the Dems are selling. An AugustHonest Elections Project survey of 1,200 voters found that 81 percent favored voter ID, including 77 percent of blacks. Additionally, most voters are happy with last month’s defeat of Democrat-backed election reform legislation and support a GOP senator’s call for a bipartisan bill. A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 50 percent of likely U.S. voters believe it was a good thing that the bill supported by President Joe Biden was defeated in the Senate. Only 32 percent think the defeat of the bill was a bad thing, while another 11 percent say the bill’s defeat will not make much difference.

South Carolina law since the 1950s require a witness signature on absentee ballots. Just months before the 2020 presidential election, Democrats filed a lawsuit hijacking the COVID-19 pandemic and attempting to change our election laws in the middle of the game. The S.C. legislature expanded absentee voting, allowing any voter in the state to vote absentee but still requiring a witness signature for ballot security. A Democrat-appointed judge overstepped her authority and intervened, waiving the witness requirement. Republicans appealed to the U.S. fourth circuit, which ruled in their favor; less than 24 hours later they changed their mind. We appealed to the Supreme Court, and the highest court in the land ruled in our favor, granting a stay to the fourth circuit ruling and reinstating the witness signature requirement. Democrats have been attempting to hijack the COVID-19 pandemic and use it to meddle in our elections, causing widespread voter confusion in the process. Unlike in several other states, many of their radical efforts to weaponize COVID-19 to strike centuries-old voting procedures failed in S.C.

Democrats, not Republicans, have battered America’s democratic norms and institutions nonstop since at least 2016. That year, Obama’s Justice Department and FBI spied on the opposition party’s presidential campaign. The basis for Democrat espionage against Trump was the so-called “dirty dossier,” funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Remember, soon after Trump’s upset victory, Democrats used print ads, TV commercials and death threats to pressure Trump’s Electoral College representatives to change their votes.

When this failed, at least 54 congressional Democrats boycotted Trump’s inauguration, dissing America’s peaceful transition of power. Hillary Clinton called Trump “an illegitimate president.”

For three years, Democrats advanced the lie that Trump was a Russian agent. Former FBI chief Robert Mueller’s probe found such charges baseless.

Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters trashed and burned government buildings in summer 2020. Some Democrats cheered these rioters; Kamala Harris actively raised bail money to spring them from jail.

Yes, Lyndon Johnson, (a Democrat) signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law. However, there was a larger percentage of Republicans in Congress in both instances that voted for it than of Democrats. Also, worth noting: The passage of the civil rights legislation of ’64 was largely driven by Senate Republicans led by Everett Dirksen. Senator Dirksen got an award from the NAACP for helping to shepherding the act into fruition.

In contrast, Al Gore's father, Al Gore, Sr., worked with other Democrats to mount what was at the time the longest filibuster in the history of the Senate to prevent the bill from ever getting on the floor for a vote. There is nothing in the Republican Party platform that targets any person of color for discrimination. It was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a Republican, Chief Justice William Taft, who struck down laws that made it illegal for women to vote, and if you look at Jim Crow, it was Republican votes in the Senate and House that rid America of Jim Crow.

Today the message is still the same: If you don’t vote for Democrats the Republicans are going to turn back civil rights and voting rights, or as Biden said several years ago in his address to the NAACP, “They gonna put y’all back in chains!” This is the same Joe Biden who lead the charge on the issue that kept black students away from the classrooms of white students, who worried his children would grow up in a “racial jungle.” This is the same Joe Biden who referred to Robert Byrd (a former KKK member who worked against the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act) as the dean of the senate, a close friend and a mentor.

The Democratic Party, aided by race hustlers, is on the brink of undoing what Dr. King and others fought and went to jail for.

The questions we should be meditating on are these: How do we get out of this cycle before it’s too late? How do we save this country before it’s too late? What should we be teaching our children so they can live in a country we want to live in, a country full of many different kinds of people who actually like each other, who are happy to work together, who are united ultimately by the core fact that they are all Americans? That is what we should be asking.

Maurice Washington is chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party and former Charleston City Council member. He is president CEO of Trust Management, LLC, and is committed to a life of public service.