Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

RNC chair and GOP head Reince Priebus:

Our Party is a champion of civil rights. Founded by abolitionists & today leading the fight for educational access. #CivilRightsSummit
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) April 10, 2014

Yes, the champion of civil rights.

Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-MS), the tea party favored candidate to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran who seems to be in the habit of associating with white nationalists and neo-Confederates, vowed not to pay taxes if they go up because of reparations over slavery and mocked complaints of racism over an ad depicting a white woman holding down a black woman.

McDaniel, while riffing on a shock jock radio program in late 2006 or early 2007, compared rapper Vanilla Ice to a minstrel show performer and pondering when it's appropriate to refer to a woman as "Mamacita." The Wall Street Journal was able to obtain a clip of McDaniel making the remarks.

Yes, the party of abolitionists.

Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God.

And the party of voting rights, too.

Earlier this year, the Miami-Dade County Elections Department quietly implemented a policy to close the bathrooms at all polling facilities, according to disability rights lawyer Marc Dubin. Dubin said the policy change was in “direct response” to an inquiry to the Elections Department about whether they had assessed accessibility of polling place bathrooms to those with disabilities.

“I was expecting them to say either yes we have or yes we will,” Dubin said.

Instead, he received a written response announcing that the county would close all restrooms at polling places “to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not treated unfairly,” a January email stated. “[T]he Department’s policy is not to permit access to restrooms at polling sites on election days,” Assistant County Attorney Shanika Graves said in a Feb. 14 email. Elections Department officials did not immediately respond to ThinkProgress inquiries.

They're the party of civil rights, alright.  Curtailing them at every opportunity to preserve the dwindling power of white voters as the majority in this country.