PJ Rule of Law: According to the unequivocal position announced last Friday, any RNC effort to reactivate federal oversight of state elections under the Voting Rights Act is dead and buried. The decades-long flirtation between the RNC and the racial left that ended last Friday has been an unfortunate saga of politics over principle. . . . He who rides a redistricting tiger becomes afraid to dismount. As the RNC clutched the tiger’s ears tightly and created safe racially gerrymandered districts using federal oversight, Section 5 was also used to destroy election integrity and aid the institutional left. Until you see the abuse of power as it happens from inside the DOJ Voting Section as an employee, you simply cannot fathom how the federal power over the states is abused by DOJ bureaucrats. Or, just ask Texas Governor Rick Perry or South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson about the abuse. And abuse they did – to the tune of millions of dollars in sanctions against DOJ lawyers and even DOJ employees who have committed perjury in an effort to conceal these abusive ideological biases in the unit given the power to review state election laws.”
“Yes, the RNC really did support federal preclearance oversight of state elections, just as Eric Holder does now. When this support ended is an unanswered question after the RNC on Friday unequivocally stated it opposes any fix to Section 4 that would place states such as Texas, South Carolina, and Virginia back under a federal boot. That’s good news. . . .