Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
At the beginning of the Republic, only white males who owned property and were free of debt enjoyed the privilege of the franchise to vote. The Constitution has been amended several times to expand the privilege of the franchise to vote to all U.S. citizens, with rare exceptions.
The Republican Party has engaged in voter suppression for many decades to keep "undesirable" voters from voting and has been enjoined by a long-standing consent decree for many years that prohibits their voter suppression efforts. The GOP gets around the consent decree by farming out its voter suppression efforts to third-party groups that are not technically covered by the consent decree.
So it should come as no surprise that Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips proposed on a Tea Party radio show that voting is a privilege that should be limited to property owners. Tea Party Nation President Says It ‘Makes A Lot Of Sense’ To Restrict Voting Only To Property Owners:
PHILLIPS: The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote. It wasn’t you were just a citizen and you got to vote. Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.
Think this is just a stray comment and an isolated incident? Think again. The king of right-wing gas bags, Rush Limbaugh, picked up this theme last week and went further. Limbaugh "media tweak": "If people cannot even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote?":
From the December 3 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' Rush Limbaugh Show:
"Media tweak of the day: We always announce these, and it always works. This story raises a very unpolitically correct question: "If people cannot even feed and clothe themselves, should they be allowed to vote?" Should they be voting? If people are receiving government assistance, that is taxpayer assistance, if they weren't allowed to vote can you imagine the difference in the political makeup of this country? Can you imagine that? It's just a think piece. I'm just putting it out there for you."
Yeah, sure he is. This is how the right-wing noise machine operates. Once Rush picks it up it will be repeated by right-wing radio talkers, bloggers, syndicated columnists, and of course the fools at Fox. Tea-Publicans are now fantasizing about taking away your franchise to vote. Expect to hear more of this.
The "original intent" constitutional conservatives (sic) should go the whole nine yards: why not propose returning to only white males who own property and are free of debt enjoying the privilege of the franchise to vote? It's what assholes like Rush Limbaugh really want. Why not just be honest about it and say so? Go ahead — let's have this conversation.