Tag: GOP white supremacy

Ron Johnson keeps digging

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The Wisconsin senator tried Monday to explain his comments about being more scared had Black Lives Matter followers stormed the Capitol. But the revisionism didn’t stop there.

Last week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) yet again caused controversy by saying what he really thought about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Having previously downplayed the severity of it and raised a debunked conspiracy theory that it might not have been perpetrated by supporters of former president Donald Trump, Johnson said he never truly felt threatened. His reason: Because, in his words, “those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.” He said he would have felt more threatened if Black Lives Matter or antifa were behind the riot.

On Monday, Johnson kept digging.

In an appearance on a local Wisconsin radio show, Johnson fought back against allegations of racism for invoking BLM and saying he would have been more scared if that movement had been behind it. Continue reading.

Opinion: Republicans’ rhetoric on H.R. 1 is apocalyptic. Are they that afraid of democracy?

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TO HEAR Republicans tell it, a bill that the House passed late Wednesday night would spell the end of the republic. It is “unconstitutional, reckless, and anti-democratic,” former vice president Mike Pence proclaimed. The bill is “the most divisive, unconstitutional and destructive piece of legislation of my time in Congress,” Rep. Garland “Andy” Barr (R-Ky.) railed. “It would effectively make it legal to cheat.”

The bill that has these politicians frothing is H.R. 1, a long piece of legislation with a noble purpose: making it easier for Americans to vote and encouraging the government to be more responsive to the people. Republicans’ apocalyptic rhetoric is so wildly disproportionate to the contents of the bill, one must wonder what they are really worried about.

Conservatives complain that the bill would mandate early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, provisional ballots for people who accidentally vote out-of-precinct, same-day voter registration and automatic voter registration. So? There is nothing scary or even unusual about these reforms, which many states have embraced without seeing the pervasive fraud Republicans predict and claim falsely has occurred. Continue reading.