Randsplaining 101! Benjy Sarlin documents the atrocities...
As Rand Paul told it, the biggest problem keeping African Americans from voting Republican is that they didn’t know Republicans have long been leaders on abolition and civil rights. As students at Howard University heard it, the problem was that Paul was condescending, misleading, and removed from the issues facing their community.
Paul devoted almost none of his speech Wednesday at the historically black college in Washington, D.C., to explaining the GOP’s thorny relationship with black voters over the last fifty years, and most of it arguing that “the Republican Party has always been the party of civil rights and voting rights.” His history lecture focused almost entirely on the period before 1964, when the GOP began to champion the states rights arguments of southern whites. Echoing a popular conservative talking point, Paul repeatedly reminded the audience that Democrats passed Jim Crow laws in the south and that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, as were the first black legislators and the founders of the NAACP.
“Would everyone know here they were all Republicans?” he said at one point, referring to the NAACP’s founders.
“Yes!” came the booming response from nearly the entire audience, who appeared offended Paul would even raise the question.
And on it went from there, as Rand Paul discovered that a roomful of college students at one of the most prestigious universities in the country (historically black or otherwise) actually do know something about American history. You know, more than Rand Paul did.
In a way, I'm hoping that this was a humbling experience for the Junior Senator from the Commonwealth, but the odds of that are miniscule at best. Transcript of the speech is, of course, at Reason Magazine's website. My fav paragraph:
I come to Howard today, not to preach, or prescribe some special formula for you but to say I want a government that leaves you alone, that encourages you to write the book that becomes your unique future.
Yeah, and on that book was "Died from neglect."
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