CNN political analyst Ronald Brownstein echoed President Biden and compared Republican opposition to Democrat voting rights legislation to segregationists Sens. Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell’s opposition to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In an analysis piece titled, “Why ‘states’ rights’ are having a Republican revival,” Brownstein argued Republicans push to restrict abortion and election laws at the state level is part of their broader strategy to strengthen states’ rights. He repeatedly links Republicans’ support for states’ rights and opposition to national Democrats’ legislation to federalize elections to segregationists
“Democrats repeatedly noted how much the contemporary claims from the GOP echoed states’ rights arguments that Southern segregationists such as Sens. Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell raised against the original Voting Rights Act and other landmark civil rights legislation during the 1960s,” Brownstein wrote on Tuesday.
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Brownstein said Republicans’ description of the Democrats’ legislation as a “federal takeover” was heated language and again linked them to segregationists.
“One of the most striking aspects of last week’s showdown was how strongly and persistently Republican senators portrayed any new standards as a ‘federal takeover’ of voting rules and a threat to state prerogatives. With that heated language, Republicans embraced states’ rights claims against a federal role in protecting voting access more unreservedly than at any point since Southern segregationists filibustered unsuccessfully to block the original Voting Rights Act’s passage in 1965.
Brownstein’s article echoed what President Biden recently said during a speech about voting rights.
“So I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered?” Biden said during remarks from the Atlanta University Center Consortium, on the campus of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. 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?”
Republicans blasted the president’s comparison. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Biden’s comments were divisive and “profoundly unpresidential.”
When pressed by a reporter about his comments, Biden became angry and denied he compared opponents to Democrats’ voting rights legislation to segregationist.
“You campaigned, and you ran on a return to civility. And I know that you dispute the characterization that you called folks who would oppose those voting bills as being Bull Connor or George Wallace. But you said that they would be sort of in the same camp?” RealClearPolitics reporter Philip Wegmann asked.
“No, I didn’t say that. Look what I said,” Biden scolded. “Go back and read what I said and tell me if you think I called anyone who voted on the side of the position taken by Bull Connor that they were Bull Connor. And that is an interesting reading of English. Yeah, I assume you got it in the journals because you like to write.”
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Brownstein concluded his analysis by claiming the argument for states’ rights was “irrevocably discredited” over 50 years ago.
“So long as Democrats can’t surmount the filibuster to preserve nationally guaranteed individual rights, that means the conservative claims of states’ rights are poised to increasingly drive policy in the 2020s — more than half a century after those arguments had appeared irrevocably discredited during the titanic struggle to topple state-sponsored segregation,” he wrote.
