“They’re all saying the same thing. Thurmond, James Eastland and well, Mitch McConnell, 64 years later.”

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Wednesday night likened Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to “avowed” segregationists, simply by using his own words.

Hayes showed clips of McConnell talking about voting rights legislation and clips of literal white supremacist segregationists, like Senator Strom Thurmond (photo, right) and Senator James Eastland (photo, left) – all saying the same thing, all giving the same reasons why they don’t support legislation to protect the right to vote, namely, they all claimed, falsely, that it’s “unnecessary.”

“It has been against the law to discriminate on the basis of race in voting since 1870,” Hayes reminded viewers, “when the 15th Amendment was ratified, saying, quote, ‘the right of citizens of the United States to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’ It says it right there in black and white in the US Constitution. Says that you cannot racially discriminate in voting.”

“And so you can imagine a version of Mitch McConnell in, I don’t know, 1920 Kentucky saying literally the exact same statement: ‘Oh, well why would we need a law to enforce voting rights, it’s already illegal,’ or, say, avowed segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond, in the middle of filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights Act, saying, quote, ‘There are mainly three reasons why I feel, feel the bill should not be passed. The first is that it is unnecessary. Every state has enacted some legislative version, making it unlawful to intimidate a voter or to hinder him in the exercise of his voting rights penalties have been provided for such violation.'”

“We don’t need new laws to protect the right to vote, certainly not to protect against discrimination or race those already exists in the Constitution,” Hayes said, mocking Thurmond.

“Those were the type of arguments segregationists made, Jim Crow authoritarians decade after decade after decade after decade in this country. As they flogged multiracial democracy to death, underneath the table as they gave those speeches. ‘We are not discriminating, the law says we can’t. Anyone can vote.'”

“This is how Senator James Eastland a Mississippi notorious segregationist, the ‘voice to the white South,’ put it to Mike Wallace,” Hayes told viewers.

“Well, we have no voting qualifications, based on race,” Eastland told Wallace. “We, not at all, and anybody who’s qualified can vote,”

Mocking him, Hayes said: “Mississippi Senator. 1957. ‘We have no voting qualifications based on race, of course, why would we? It’s in the Constitution, we can’t.’ The Constitution, ratified in 1870. When Mississippi was under federal occupation. They’re all saying the same thing. Thurman, James Eastland and well, Mitch McConnell, 64 years later.”

Watch:

 
Image: The New Civil Rights Movement

State Rep. John Kavanagh, who chairs the the Government and Elections Committee in the Arizona House, says not everyone should be voting, and the “quality of votes” matters. One of the nation’s top voting rights experts is blasting that rhetoric, suggesting it’s racist, “straight out of Jim Crow.”

“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans,” Kavanagh, a Republican, said, as CNN reports. “Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud,” he claimed, not only without any proof, but falsely. While there are relatively few voter fraud and election fraud cases across the country, those who have committed these crimes are almost always Republicans.

“Republicans are more concerned about fraud,” Kavanagh claimed, “so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues,” Kavanagh added, again, without merit. “Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

Legally and constitutionally, Kavanagh is wrong, which is even more disturbing because is a former police officer and retired police detective who served the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Dr. Kavanagh currently is a part-time professor of criminal justice at Scottsdale Community College, after serving as the Program Director of the Administration of Justice Studies and Forensic Science Programs.

Kavanagh’s remarks are being seen as racist by Ari Berman, a writer at Mother Jones and the author of the book, “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.”

“This rhetoric is straight out of Jim Crow & very thing that was used to justify mass disenfranchisement of Black voters,” Berman said on Twitter.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill honed in on the phrase “quality of votes” as well:

The “quality of votes….” https://t.co/dhSr6ihupb

— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) March 11, 2021

And Elie Mystal, Justice Correspondent at The Nation, also weighed in:

These people act like the 15th Amendment literally doesn’t exist. https://t.co/C3BmNNBbY7

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 11, 2021

Image via Facebook

Called Obama ‘Head Negro’

Katrina Pierson, the highly-controversial former national spokesperson for the Trump 2016 campaign, is planning a run for Congress. Pierson, who has a history of racist remarks including lamenting the lack of racial “pure breeds” in politics, is vying for the seat of the late Republican Rep. Ron Wright of Texas. Wright was the first sitting congressional lawmaker to die from COVID-19.

“There is a lot of excitement about my potential candidacy, and I am honored to have so much local support,” Pierson told The Hill, which was first to report the news. “As a proven conservative fighter, from my home state of Texas, I remain committed to furthering the America First agenda. I was with President Trump long before the historic escalator ride, and I remain with him still. I will make my final decision within the next 48 hours.” 

Pierson in a since-deleted 2012 tweet had written, “Perfect Obama’s dad born in Africa, Mitt Romney’s dad born in Mexico. Any pure breeds left?”

On CNN in 2016 she was asked about the tweet and defended by suggesting it wasn’t racist because she herself is a “half-breed.”

In 2013 Pierson called President Barack Obama the “head Negro,” and in 2012 a “Jihadi.”

In August of 2016 Pierson lied about then-President Barack Obama, claiming he, and not President George W. Bush, had started the war in Afghanistan. Obama was a state senator when Bush started that war.