Todd Akin channeling his heroes Strom Thurmond and George Wallace
by digby
Rep. Todd Akin, the GOP’s candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, suggested in an interview that it was time to “look at or overturn” the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Asked directly if seminal federal civil rights legislation that prohibits discriminatory voting proceedures needed to be modified or scrapped, Akin said that states — not the federal government — should set voting rules. According to Akin, elections “have historically always been a state thing” and that’s a “good principle.”
During the heyday of the African-American civil rights movement, the term “states’ rights” was used as a code word by defenders of segregation. In 1948 it was the official name of the “Dixiecrat” party led by white supremacist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond.Democratic governor George Wallace, of Alabama, who famously declared in his inaugural address in 1962, “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”—later remarked that he should have said, “States’ rights now! States’ rights tomorrow! States’ rights forever!”
If you ever want a clear idea of what “states’ rights” really mean, read the platform of the 1948 “States’ Rights Democratic” Party, also known as the Dixiecrats:
As you can see, it wasn’t very long. In the first paragraph or two it railed against the totalitarian federal government. But it soon got to the real agenda:
The “right” to deny equal rights to all Americans is what “states’ rights” has always been about. That is why the federal government had to intervene in voting cases when some of them decided that they had the “right” to deny the vote to African Americans (or any other American they chose to deny it to.) And that’s what this cretinous Dixiecrat throwback Todd Akin wants to go back to. And he’s not the only one. States run by Dixiecrat throwbacks (what we call “Republicans” today) all over the nation are trying to deny citizens the right to vote.
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