With his popularity rating at 33 percent and facing myriad high priority policy issues ranging from rampaging inflation to an out-of-control border crisis, President Biden has chosen to focus on voting rights, which ranks far down the list of voter concerns as the November midterm elections approach.
Reading from his trusty teleprompter in Atlanta, the president went way over the top, calling Georgia's new election reform law "Jim Crow 2.0" and comparing those who oppose his voting rights proposals to hateful racists like Bull Connor, George Wallace and even Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. Please!
His far-left supporters loved the speech; everyone else hated it. Wall Street Journal political columnist Kimberly Strassel said it was close to "a Donald Trump special," full of lies and false claims.
"He made false claims about the electoral system, accused Republicans of undemocratic aims, and pre-emptively attacked the legitimacy of the 2022 election," Strassel wrote, adding that Biden sounded just like Trump claiming that he won the state of Georgia in the 2020 presidential election.
"He baldly claimed Georgia Republicans enacted an election law designed purely to put up 'obstacles' to voting (and) that enables Republicans to get the result they want, no matter what the voters have said," Strassel wrote. "These claims are as wild as any Mr. Trump made," in 2020. And finally, Strassel asserted "the Biden-Democrat claim that election integrity measures make it 'harder to vote' is one big untruth" because these measures are much less restrictive than those in Biden's home state of Delaware, and many other states.
Another Journal columnist, Peggy Noonan, called Biden's Georgia speech "a break point" that was a disaster for him because he alienated those he needs in order to pass his ambitious, and very progressive, legislative agenda.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Biden's speech was "profoundly unpresidential, deliberately divisive and designed to pull our country further apart." He went on to say that although "I have known, liked and personally respected Joe Biden for many years, I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday." Ouch!
McConnell said Biden sounded exactly like Trump as he attempted to "delegitimize the next election in case they (the Democrats) lose it," as well they might. As we know, Republicans are widely expected to regain control of both houses of Congress in November unless Trump throws an egocentric monkey wrench into the proceedings. Many of us, Republicans and independents alike, would welcome many of Trump's policies without Trump himself in the White House. If he runs again in 2024, all bets are off.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) claimed that "what motivated the Jan. 6 insurrectionists is now motivating state legislatures to do dastardly things" like asking voters to show ID. He said Georgia's new voting law is "aimed at people of color, young people (and) urban people." But in Georgia, anyone can get a mail ballot while in Schumer's New York absentee voters are required to state a reason why they're requesting an absentee ballot.
Here in Nevada, Democrats have approved sending mail-in ballots to everyone and they even endorse "ballot harvesting," which permits one person to dump a handful of ballots into the nearest ballot box. That's something the Democrat-controlled Legislature should correct before we go to the polls in November.Slaughterhouse
Question: Now that the Nevada Supreme Court has upheld the Douglas County Commission's rejection of a proposal to build a slaughterhouse in the neighboring county, will Carson City officials now allow the same company to build that same slaughterhouse in our historic state capital? And if so, why?
Guy W. Farmer is the Appeal's senior political columnist.
