Posted on 06/12/2005 6:33:39 PM PDT by Buck W.
CHICAGO - (KRT) - Until President Bush and top Republicans reaffirm their support for the Voting Rights Act, they should stop courting black voters and showing up in black churches, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said Sunday.
Dean, speaking in Chicago at a Rainbow PUSH Coalition conference, also labeled the Fox News Channel a propaganda machine and sharply criticized the Republican Party, which he said has yet to support re-authorizing certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act that expire in 2007.
"I think it's hypocritical for the Republicans to pretend to reach out to the African-American community unless they say they are going to reauthorize what gave the African-American community political power," Dean said in an interview. "I'd love to have the president say whether he's going to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act."
After barely registering a double-digit showing among black voters nationally in last fall's election, the Republican Party has intensified its efforts to recruit African-American supporters. Chairman Ken Mehlman is engineering the party's most aggressive outreach to black voters, frequently speaking in churches and to community groups in an effort to improve the party's performance among minority voters before the 2006 mid-term elections and the 2008 presidential race.
Dean said Republicans should not "pretend" to be genuinely interested in courting African-American voters until the party makes a clear statement on the act.
"The chairman of the Republican Party as you know has made a big deal about attracting African-American voters," Dean said to conference attendees. "And this is a litmus test. If you aren't going to support the extension of the Voting Rights Act, I don't know what right you have to go to a black church and show your face."
Dean raised the ire of many GOP leaders last week after issuing several sharp-barbed comments directed at Republicans. His comments have stirred criticism among several Democrats, too, who believe his rhetoric is detrimental to the party.
Dean's recent remarks drew a rebuke from Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview to be aired Monday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," according to the Associated Press.
Cheney called Dean "over the top" and "not the kind of individual you want to have representing your political party," according to the Associated Press.
Asked by a reporter Sunday to reply to Cheney's criticisms, Dean said: "My view is that Fox News is a propaganda outlet of the Republican Party and that I don't comment on Fox News." The response drew applause from the room.
Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said Sunday that anger should not be an agenda.
"Howard Dean can attack Republicans till he is blue in the face," Schmitt said in a telephone interview. "But we remain committed to growing and expanding the Republican Party. He can focus on throwing mud and making headlines, and we will continue to focus on making inroads in minority communities."
The five-day PUSH conference has drawn top political and civic leaders, educators and labor union officials from across the nation. Dean weighed in Sunday on voter's rights. Later in the day, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., gave a speech on improving education to compete in the global economy. Sen. John Edwards and former President Bill Clinton are scheduled to attend conference sessions on Monday.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson formed the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, a Chicago-based progressive organization that fights for social change, in 1971. Jackson led discussion Sunday on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark legislation that grew out of the civil rights movement.
Although the act is permanent, and the right to vote is protected by the 15th Amendment, certain provisions of the act were extended in 1982 and those parts expire in 2007 unless Congress re-authorizes the measure. These provisions include ones that ensure non-English speaking voters get assistance at polling places and another that requires jurisdictions with segregationist pasts to submit changes in election law to the U.S. Justice Department for approval.
The coalition is organizing a march and rally supporting renewal of some of the law's provisions on Aug. 6 in Atlanta, where President Lyndon Johnson signed the law 40 years ago. The group is leading a signature drive calling for the renewal of the act. Jackson said he plans to give President Bush a petition with 1 million signatures.
I thought he was gone for good after he lost the NH primary last year. Thank you Dummies!
Sounds like someone's worried about the mass exodus from the burning circus tent and blamimng the Emergency Response Crews instead of his carelessly discarded lit cigar into a pile of dry straw.
Yeah it keeps getting better and better. I especially love this one. Is he making a vailed threat to Blacks that get uppity and might think about leaving the plantation.
go Heil Howard go!!!
That's two years away. This guy is a nut.
More Mad How Disease.
I love it.
Let me see if I've got this right: We Republicans shouldn't talk to the African-American community until we're ready to get the government to give them stuff. Is that the gist of it?
You hit it right on the head.
These people are still so BITTER over the 2000 election, the can't see straight---
Why anyone would think that President Bush would urge the end of the Voters Right Act, I haven't a clue...
Although, I would like it changed to required a picture ID, and the ballots being in English only...
Therefore, I guess I would be BOOED mightily at the Rainbow/Push Conference, wouldn' I?
By the list of speakers, it sure seems like Rainbow/Push is reaching out to the red states, doesn't it? /s
Which is it Howie?
Good one!
Here's an idea! (Karl Rove, are you reading?)
Let Bush have an announcement on national television promoting his support for extending the Voting Rights Act but not without first reading the Senate vote from the 1965 Voting Rights Act, complete with party affiliations of the "nay" votes. I'd say making this prime time speech in late October 2006 would be the perfect time for such an announcement.
Would you like that Howie?
Is this the same 'voting rights act' that keeps coming up as 'expiring' in an arbitrary year and is in fact an urban legend????
Dean 2008 !!!
You can't make this stuff up! Awesome. Mad How Disease! lol
Pray for W and Our Troops
Dean is just another lying pissant from a party of pissants.
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