It was passed unanimously by the Senate, and only 14 voted No in the House.
But this seems like the kind of thing that Republicans would criticize as virtue signaling by the woke Left. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz voted Yes. Is it because the Republicans want to take credit for freeing slaves, as if they were there?
It was probably just a relatively painless way to try to look like the good guys, or maybe it was because of the party supply and greeting card lobbies.
Politics.
The same thing that motivated most Democrats.
Because they want to give everyone another federal holiday. It doesn’t matter why. One more federal holiday means that much less damage the government can do, right?
It’s always handy to have a “I can’t be a racist ‘cause I voted for/against this thing” in your back pocket. Juneteenth is like their one black friend.
Republicans already take implicit credit for ending slavery every time they claim to be “The Party of Lincoln” (even though they aren’t a party that Lincoln, or for that matter, Eisenhower, would recognize), and often explicitly as if they have literally and personally executed the Emancipation Proclamation like some kind white savior from a revisionist Tarantino film.
No, they did it to prove that they, too, can make concessions and be “bipartisan”, at least when it doesn’t have any material effect on their agenda. Note that this didn’t come without significant grousing, particularly by Wisconsin senior senator Ron Johnson who, bemoaned the ‘costs’ of giving federal employees yet another day off and the lack of debate on the Senate floor. (One questions what such a ‘debate’ would look like; perhaps it could be a literal reenactment of the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates, although the Republicans would presumably have to take on the Stephen Douglas role of arguing that formal recognition of the holiday is a “states’ rights” issue.)
We can presume that Mitch McConnell saw this as a rare conflict with no net upside and full of embarrassing news coverage that even the opportunity to dog whistle to white nationalists wouldn’t justify, and for which he can hold it up as a shining example of compromise the next time he elects to constipate the Senate with his next defluxion of obstructive excreta.
Also, every time you hear a conservative whinging about ‘virtue signaling’, ask them what all of their lined flag decals and Lee Greenwood fetishism is about. Such as they can be considered ‘virtues’, Republicans are the most reflexively flag-waving disciples of mindless bigotry since the Brownshirts started Stechmarsching around the streets of Munich, notwithstanding their bizarrely unironic idolatry of their weird con-man-baby leader:
Stranger
Of course. But what are the politics behind this particular vote?
Supporting the Juneteenth holiday is a gesture that lets Republicans pretend to acknowledge the nation’s original sin of slavery even as they insist that racism is confined to our national past. At the same time, however, Republicans across the country — egged on by Fox News and the right-wing media chorus — are trying to pass laws barring schools from teaching the factual history of racism and white supremacy in this country under the guise of attacking “critical race theory,” a set of academic concepts they stripped of its original meaning and context.
Stranger
McConnell has an excuse not to make election day a holiday.
Basically there was no profit in opposing it. Juneteenth being a Federal holiday does exactly nothing to hurt the GOP’s strategic position. The only real negative for the GOP is some of their white nationalist voters will bristle at the holiday’s existence, much as they already make jokes and mock MLK day. But that’s kind of a “whatever” thing, they aren’t going to vote based on that. Meanwhile opposing it would give the Democrats multiple good news cycles vs Republicans.
Eating bad news cycles is strategically worthwhile for goals that significantly benefit the modern GOP’s political prospects–for example by getting a Supreme Court seat secured or protecting partisan gerrymandering. For something that generates no gain at all, less so.
It was to demonstrate spirit of compromise: yes on Juneteenth, no on voting rights.
(Not a criticism or personal jab at the OP):
I think the OP’s question is unintentionally based off of a caricature of Republicans or conservatives, namely, that Republicans are cartoon-like villains who automatically oppose anything that is good - that if Juneteenth honors and celebrates the end of black slavery in America, that Republicans must therefore oppose it just because it is good. There are plenty of good, moral, decent things that Republicans support - you might as well ask why Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor of human-rights legislation when it came to the China-cultural-genocide-of-Uyghurs issue. (Sure, there are plenty of bad things that Republicans support, too, but they’re not Scooby-Doo villains.) In addition, conservative workers enjoy getting a holiday off just as much as anyone else, so this would fly well with much of their base.
Not all of them. But check the voting record of Andy Biggs (Q-AZ) (and the FreeDUM Caucus). If he’s not Snidley Whiplash, I don 't know who is. He was the SOLE vote against a non-binding resolution supporting the Rohingya.
I used to make this claim, too, because whether you agree with conservative views or not, in a democracy everybody needs political representation that at least roughly aligns with their own values. But in the past couple of decades it became increasingly difficult to justify that statement when Republicans lined up again and again along strict party lines to stand for morally reprehensible positions and outright obstructionism, forcibly ejected moderating elements within their party. It is one thing to note that Republicans have been the stalwarts on the necessity of invading Iraq and Afghanistan even after it became apparent that the justifications for doing both were feeble if not completely manufactured (in the case of the supposed evidence for nuclear weapon development in Iraq), but since 2009 they have regularly sidelined conservative-but-rational voices like John McCain in favor of blanket obstructionism, nationalist rhetoric, and more recently a disturbing turn toward transparent authoritarianism.
When even their most genuinely conservative remaining members are attacked for speaking out to object to the Orwellian ‘truths’ that the Republican party has decided to promulgate, such as censuring Liz Cheney, or viciously assailed Cindy McCain (who isn’t even an office-holder or has expressed political ambitions of her own, for fuck’s sake), the GOP became the cartoonish, quasi-fascistic political movement its critics have described it as. When even George W. Bush, a literal poster boy for the Tom Clancy-esque presentation of a Republican who gave us the thrill of a sitting President landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier to proclaim “Mission Accomplished” (while he allowed is administration to continue to pursue a baseless war in Iraq) can’t stomach supporting the party, it is definitely an extreme of caricature of conservatism even before it was taken over by a former game show host and real estate huckster who basically stepped out of a Philip K. Dick novel to take over the country and run it as his own national con job.
That Republicans as a whole can still occasionally do something good isn’t evidence of their lack of ethical turpitude; it is just that it is really difficult to do the morally wrong thing every time even if you mean to. It’s hard work being evil, especially when you can’t come up with a remotely rational justification for it. But I’ll remind you that it was all Republicans that repeatedly blocked and stalled on passing and reauthorizing the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 to provide financial support to September 11 first responders suffering from chronic and deadly health issues from their exposure to toxic substances, and it was such a absurdly villainous thing to do that it took a literal comedian to shame them into doing their jobs.
The GOP has become the party of “cartoon-like villains” who literally expells or marginalizes anyone who calls out out even the most transparent lies such as the claim that the 2020 presidential election was invalid or that the people ‘visiting’ the Capitol Building on 6 January were not committing insurrectionist acts at the direction of Trump. That they voted for Juneteenth as a federal holiday (and then self-servingly claim to be the “the ones” who ended slavery, so really it is the Republicans Party that should be celebrated) is just an opportunity to deflect the more substantial criticism of their actions and views.
Stranger
I think you’re right. But I think that, in recent years, Republicans have more and more become cartoon-like villains who automatically oppose—well, not “anything that is good,” but “anything that Democrats support,” or anything that would give any more power to Democrats. Much of which is good.
If the Republican party stands for anything nowadays, it’s thwarting the Democratic party by any means possible.
Perhaps not a direct criticism but I think this is a mischaracterization. I separate Americans who are Republicans from congressional Republicans, and the congressional Republicans have largely criticized anything that is anything but far right. I had expected them to oppose the bill as being “woke” but virtually none of them used that strategy. They couldn’t bear it for Liz Cheney to state facts and truth. After the Capitol was violently attacked at Trump’s suggestion, Republican leaders still raised baseless objections to the vote results. During the Obama administration, with a year left in his term, they refused to hold Senate hearings for a Supreme Court nominee. This is not a caricature. If it is not in their own best interests, they won’t do it, interests of the country be damned.
I only separate them inasmuch as they tolerate their latest behavior in the last possible election. For the vast majority of Republican Americans, that means they are supportive enough of xenophobia, racism, and the reflexive desire to oppose anything not far right that they vote for a massively incompetent imbecile.
Whereas I do not pin them --yet!-- with the “support of dictatorship” moniker because it would be easy to assume that $45 was joking when he said that he would accept the result of the election only if he won. The events of January 6 were pretty unthinkable even with these plain words.
Time will tell of course if they will choose to re-elect the supporters of the coup.
Back in 2010 in Utah a Republican state senator introduced a bill to celebrate John Browning day on the same day as MLK day, John Browning being famous Utah gun maker. I fully expect some odious state law makers to try and rebrand this new holiday in some horrific way.
I think the OP question is a good one specifically because “Republicans are cartoon-like villains who automatically oppose anything that is good”. It’s a mystery.
Similarly, why did they support action on the opioid epidemic? That was a mystery, until I learned that their reason was that more white children were being swept up in drug abuse, so taking a primary approach of criminalizing addiction was going to start incarcerating their base’s kids. Then it made sense. Perhaps there is a similar explanation here? It’s a perfectly post worthy question.
I pretty quickly guessed that the Juneteenth vote was to provide cover for blocking African Americans from voting, but if that explanation didn’t make sense, then this would be a mystery too.
Exactly. Whereas the more accurate description is that Republican politicians are real-world villains who oppose anything that is meaningfully good while allowing strategic compromise on superficial and cosmetic issues in order to camouflage their true nefarious agenda.