The Republican Party is taking a firm stance against China’s anti-democratic policies designed to thwart free elections and autonomy in Hong Kong. The Beijing government is foisting new election laws on the former British colony intended to end the “one country, two systems” policies that allowed Hong Kong to exist as a democratic enclave in an otherwise totalitarian state.
Last year, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
praised Hong Kong’s pro-democracy, “demonstrations against the repressive grip
of the Chinese communist party.” And he hailed the fact that “Hong Kong voters
with American flags in hand dealt crushing defeats to Beijing’s preferred
puppet candidates in elections last fall.”
McConnell continued his support for Hong Kong democracy this
year by criticizing new Chinese laws restricting voters’ rights in the enclave.
“The Chinese Communist Party is trying yet again to tighten their grip,” he
said. “New laws supposedly related to national security aim to stifle dissent
and curtail Hong Kongers’ civil liberties.”
Sen. Ted “Cancun” Cruz, R-Texas, also supported Hong Kong’s civil rights movement, saying last
January, “I’ll continue to support and stand alongside those of you speaking out against tyranny and fighting for freedom.”
China’s authoritarian government and its attempts to destroy
democracy in Hong Kong deserve the strongest condemnation. Yet the GOP’s
response to the Chinese restrictions would be more admirable if it weren’t so hypocritical.
At the same time McConnell criticized China’s new laws
curtailing the civil liberties of Hong Kong’s citizens, the Republican Party
was launching a multitude of state-level voter suppression laws to prevent
American citizens of color from casting votes in future elections. And, as in
Hong Kong, the reason for passing these anti-democracy laws was that the GOP suffered
crushing election defeats in November 2020.
In February, the Brenner
Center for Justice reported that “33 states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over
165 restrictive bills this year.” In the first two months of 2021, Republican
state legislatures introduce four times the number of voter suppression bills
than introduce in the whole of 2020. The Center described this anti-democracy
legislation as “a backlash to historic voter turnout in the 2020 general election
and grounded in a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud and
election irregularities.”
Salon reported that number to be much higher, claiming the “tidal wave of (Republican) voter suppression” included 253 bills in 43 states.
These bills aim to limit mail-in voting, which became popular in 2020 during the COVID crisis; impose stricter voter ID requirements, which makes voting difficult for the elderly and minority voters who don’t drive; slash voter registration opportunities, also aimed at the elderly and people of color; and enable more aggressive voter roll purges, all aimed at removing people of color from the voting rolls.
Georgia—where a massive voter turnout helped give Joe Biden
the presidency and sent two Democrats to the U.S. Senate—is one of the states
scrambling to make it harder for its citizens to vote. On March 26, the state's governor, Brian Kemp, signed into law a bill that bans automatic voter registration, limits Sunday early voting days
and ballot drop boxes, and restricts absentee voting. It also prohibits volunteers
from passing out free food and drinks to people forced to stand in lines for
hours because of the state's failure to provide adequate polling places in minority neighborhoods.
Georgia’s Republican legislators introduced the bills in
response to Donald Trump’s baseless claim of widespread voter fraud in the
state.
The Georgia restrictions are so heinous and so obviously
aimed at Black voters they are being compared to the Jim Crow laws which
existed in the U.S. from the end of the Civil War until 1968. “We know their
targets are Black voters,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Atlanta-based
Black Voters Matter. "These (legislation) notes are dripping in the blood
of Jim Crow.”
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that marginalized
African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an
education, or marry outside their race. Violating Jim Crow laws often faced
arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and death.
Lest there be any doubt as to the oppressive nature of the
Jim Crow laws, they were so admired by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler he used them
as a model for the German racial purity laws that restricted the rights of
Jews, Blacks, Slavs, and Roma.
The Republican Party did not suffered setbacks in November 2020 because of voter fraud. Repeated investigations by federal and state agencies declared the election one of the cleanest in U.S. history. Fifty lawsuits filed by Trump supporters alleging voting fraud were found without merit by state and federal courts. The Republicans lost because their presidential candidate was widely unpopular because of his hateful rhetoric, unprecedented corruption, and dictatorial ambitions.
Both the Chinese government and the Grand Old Party need to realize governments only suppress the vote because their policies are unpopular. If you want to win over voters and win elections, don’t restrict people’s right to vote, change your policies.
