Yesterday NPR did a story on the teabagger movement in Nashville. One of the speakers talking about the evils of immigration said (I think), “There are people in this country who can’t spell the word vote, can’t pronounce the word vote in English, and these are the people who put Barrack Hussien Obama in office.” I must have heard wrong. The speaker couldn’t have said that people who can’t vote, voted the President into office. Did anyone else hear this story? Did I misunderstand? Can I get a pod-cast?
It was Tom Tancredo. The video is available at http://crooksandliars.com/.
He didn’t say they couldn’t (weren’t allowed to) vote; he said they shouldn’t have been allowed to vote, presumably because had they known what they were doing they would have voted McCain/Palin into office.
The quote is from Tom Tancredo’s key note speech from the Tea Party convention that’s going on. I’m having trouble finding a video of the whole speech online, but that’s who you’re looking for. And no, I don’t think you misunderstood.
ETA: never mind! better google skills above!
Remember Tancredo’s whole thing is anti-immigrant, legal or otherwise. So what he meant was
“Everybody (=every Hard Rightist) knows that illegal aliens vote en masse, and their sorta-legal extended families vote en masse, and **those **people are who voted for Obama. Not Real (=White) Americans like me/us.”
The sheer illogicality of illegal aliens who need to hide from the gov’t at every turn registering to vote, much less in great numbers, seems to be lost on him.
Sounds more like a call to infanticide.
Actually, I didn’t read it as an argument about illegal immigrants voting, but instead about people who are illiterate or non-English speakers voting. He seems to believe that there should be some sort of literacy test requirement for prospective voters.
Yep, I think that’s the concept that he’s going for.
The problem is that such tests were used in the US at one point to discourage some people from voting. See Jim Crow laws. (And even if this requirement were enforced in a non-discriminatory way, I’ll bet that he’ll find that some of his supporters are unable to pass any such test.)
Yeah, if that were to happen, the Republicans would never win another election. Aren’t they the ones always decrying elitism?
He’s right! There should a literacy test when registering to vote. Maybe we could institute some sort of fee, too. That way deadbeats wouldn’t be able to vote.
We could call it a Poll Tax, or something.
A list of true/false questions regarding the positions and backgrounds of the candidates would be an excellent test to determine voter eligibility, requiring them to know basic, true information about the candidates.
(I’m kidding, but it would be funny.)