The Patriot Post® · Senate Republicans Save Voting Rights

Senate Republicans invoked the filibuster on Tuesday, effectively killing (for the immediate future) the Democrats’ partisan power-grabbing legislation, S 1, which they had dubiously titled the “For the People Act.” Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists dishonestly frame this as a “voting rights” bill, but make no mistake: It’s about Democrat power.

All 50 Republicans held the line, while Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV, Trump +39) once again showed commitment to his party over the will of his own constituents and even his own expressed principles. Despite loudly declaring that he objected to such a partisan bill, even offering a slightly watered-down version, Manchin ultimately fell in line.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pulled no punches in his denunciation of the legislation. “The rotten inner workings of Democrats’ S 1 power grab have been thoroughly exposed to the light,” he stated. “Whichever label Democrats slap on their bill, the substance remains the same.” Ironically, Democrat Congressman Jamaal Bowman unintentionally agreed with McConnell’s assessment: “If we deliver [S 1], we maintain power in 2022. If we don’t … then we risk losing power, and risk losing this moment in American history to really push a progressive Democratic agenda.”

Prior to the vote, Joe Biden’s White House issued a BIG Lie statement asserting, “Democracy is in peril, here, in America. The right to vote — a sacred right in this country — is under assault with an intensity and an aggressiveness we have not seen in a long time.” Well, if Biden is truly concerned about the state of “democracy” in America, then he should be breathing a sigh of relief and thanking Republicans for boldly standing against a Democrat threat against our great Republic. But, of course, Biden would rather keep spinning the yarn that GOP election integrity laws in various states are “Jim Crow 2.0.”

Senator Ted Cruz (TX) expertly turned the tables on this bogus talking point:

That is a grotesque lie, and Mr. President, the majority leader knows that. The president of the United States knows that. The vice president of the United States [knows that]. They know they’re lying. But ironically, they’ve inadvertently said something that is accurate about this piece of legislation. Jim Crow legislation was grotesque and ugly. It was legislation that was drafted without exception by Democratic politicians. Jim Crow was written by Democratic politicians, and its purpose, when the Jim Crow laws were written, [was] to prevent the voters from ever voting out of office Democratic politicians. One of the ugliest chapters of our nation’s history. And thankfully, we repudiated Jim Crow.

Well, the majority leader used the phrase Jim Crow 2.0 and inadvertently he’s right, but not about what he’s describing. He’s right about the ‘Corrupt Politicians Act.’ The ‘Corrupt Politicians Act’ follows the exact same pattern that Jim Crow did. It is partisan legislation written by elected Democrats, designed to keep elected Democrats in office and to steal the right to vote from the citizenry to decide on somebody else.

Cruz is exactly right — the party with a history of suppressing voting rights has been and remains to this day the Democrat Party.

Going all the way back to the first voting rights act, the 14th Amendment, it was Republicans who assured that the recently freed slaves were given full citizenship rights, and especially the right to vote.

With the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it was once again Republicans who, more than Democrats, stepped up to get the law passed, ending the Democrats’ Jim Crow abuses of voter rights.

And now, it is Republicans who have once again stepped up to protect the integrity of voting rights by ensuring that federalism is preserved, working to rebuild Americans’ confidence in an electoral system governed by standards of fairness and accuracy, and preventing the legitimate votes of Americans from being offset by fraudulent votes that Democrats aid with their bulk-mail ballot strategy.

The fact of the matter is that no democratic republic can stand if the citizenry cannot trust the accuracy and legality of the vote. What S 1 would have done is sow ever more distrust and uncertainty in future elections.

Finally, no matter the Democrats’ rhetoric, the fact of the matter is that the American people don’t see this legislation as being “for the people.” For example, the vast majority of Americans reject the Democrats’ opposition to voter ID. Furthermore, while Americans widely support mail-in voting, that comes with the caveat of more stringent verification requirements — commonsense protections to prevent voter fraud.

The truth is, Republicans aren’t against people voting; they’re against voter fraud. Democrats, on the other hand, not only dismiss voter fraud outright, they irrationally claim that any concerns and attempts to mitigate it are “racist” and a threat to democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. But, again, Congressman Bowman let the cat out of the bag: This is all about the 2022 election and keeping Democrats in power.