I call the Republican rhetoric song and dance, and the new dance is titled “the Republican twist,” and I’ll tell you why.
First of all, if we talk about voting rights, redistricting and early voting laws, which have been retracted, it is a dance to keep the poor, the ethnic groups, the elderly and the college kids, who might vote Democratic, from voting. But they also sing their song out loud on national television, as the Republican [State] Rep. Mike Turzai of Pennsylvania did, when he said, “The new voter ID (law) is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the State of Pennsylvania, done.” Have they no shame shaking our core beliefs at the U.S. Constitution? The right to vote — it is a right, not a privilege?
So here’s the deal: I don’t mind if we have fair and un-tethered voting laws, and the vote doesn’t come out my way. I do mind very much, however, when I have to tell all of you that in Florida, from 2000 to 2008, my vote did not count. Not when Katherine Harris made Bush president with the blessing of the Florida Supreme Court, and not in 2004 when the Republicans sent their boys in suits to intimidate the voters. Only in 2008, the Republicans mis-stepped in their dance, and now they are doing the Republican twist again by changing the voting rights laws and redistricting.
No matter what you believe in, I don’t think anyone wants to have their constitutional rights taken away from them, because if one group can do it, so can another group do it to you. So if you don’t stand up for someone else’s rights, when it’s your turn, who will stand up for you?
Shirley Bass
Wellington
