Top Perry Confidant Calls for an End to the Voting Rights Act
http://www.lonestarproject.net/Top Perry Confidant Calls for an End to the Voting Rights Act
Texas GOP wants Supreme Court to kill the Voting Rights Act
Who is Ted Delisi?
Delisi is a deeply embedded political confidant to Rick Perry and a host of other statewide Republican politicians. He is closely tied to Karl Rove and acquired Rove’s direct mail and voter contact business after Rove began working fulltime for George W. Bush. Delisi’s wife, Diedre served as Rick Perry’s Chief of Staff and now works on his Presidential campaign. It is fair to accept that Ted Delisi’s views on the US Voting Rights Act reflect the views of Rick Perry and the broad leadership of Republicans in Texas. (Sources: Delisi Communications, Austin American Statesman)
In a live radio interview last week, top Texas GOP operative and Rick Perry insider, Ted Delisi, removed any doubt that Perry, Greg Abbott and the Texas Republican leadership see the Texas redistricting litigation before the US Supreme Court as a chance to end the US Voting Rights Act.
During an interview on Houston radio News 92 FM, responding to a question from host Scott Braddock, Delisi bluntly said it's time for the Voting Rights Act to be "history."
Click the radio below to listen:
Listen to the entire segment here.
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And by way of hating that, they hate all those pesky voters that the VRA protects. Right?
I mean if you aren't going to vote republican - then "screw you" they say.
I hate people that won't honestly compete for voters in the "free market" of ideas and issues. That's what the Rs truly lack - any vision for the future. That and compassion for their fellow man of course.
With the Rs it's always been about the candidates/incumbents choosing their particular segment of voters to send them back to office - not about letting all qualified voters have their say about who should represent them. What happened to their support of the free market principals? It doesn't apply to voting you silly rabbit! 
I'm very scared of the redistricting case they took in Texas as well as these constant challenges to the constitutionality of the VRA. The right wing is constantly trying to pick it off. And the Texas voter photo ID case will be the biggest challenge. If it falls here there will be no protection for any class of voter. And frankly there have not been the kind of changes to make this protection obsolete. In fact things seem to be getting worse again.
It will be a very horrible tragedy that a voter protection law that was essentially begun by a Kennedy would die by the hand of another Kennedy. 
In the 2009 SCOTUS case where the court very narrowly limited it's ruling to that district, many of us feared it would be the end of the VRA. We certainly felt that the arguments and questions asked by the justices meant that they are moving to a future ruling that the VRA is unconstitutional. Primarily because it only applied to the South (for the most part) yet there is evidence of discrimination across the U.S.
Wikipedia entry on the case:
Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Austin_Municipal_Utility_District_No._1_v._Holder#cite_note-5
A great write up of the case and ruling here:
NAMUDNO: Right Question, Wrong Case
(snip)In his opinion for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts stressed the legitimacy of the constitutional question. "Things have changed in the South," every member of the Court agreed – a point that Congress had barely acknowledged just three years earlier when it renewed section 5 for another quarter century. The provision is "extraordinary legislation otherwise unfamiliar to our federal system," Roberts wrote. An "extraordinary" provision demands an extraordinary context, and, at the oral argument, he signaled his own grave doubts about preclearance four decades after the act's initial passage. But, undoubtedly pleased at the prospect of near unanimity on the Court, he simply said the validity of the act "is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today."
(snip)
The Court had fine-tuned the bailout provision, which did little to change the law. Extrication from section 5 remains difficult – not only legally, but also politically. The real significance of this case thus lies not in what was held but rather what was foreshadowed.
NAMUDNO invites another case that properly frames the core constitutional issues. Why was Georgia but not Ohio (where serious voter fraud was alleged in 2004) still in federal receivership? The Texas utility district contained no districts that could be gerrymandered to create safe minority legislative seats. Distributing voters on the basis of race and ethnicity to secure minority representation was a necessity when southern whites would not vote for black candidates, but were such suspect classifications still justified? Those are the central constitutional questions that the right section 5 case would raise.
Even if we survive the Texas photo voter ID case this time, these cases will continue and continue until the republicans get what they want - a total destruction of voter protection.
