Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) clarified Tuesday that he doesn’t oppose his party’s voter ID efforts — he just thinks the GOP shouldn’t emphasize the issue.
“There’s nothing wrong with it … I don’t really object to having some rules with how we vote,” Paul said on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s radio show.
The Kentucky Republican had appeared to distance himself from the party’s voter ID efforts Friday in an interview with the New York Times.
“I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people,” he told the newspaper.
Paul told Hannity that he thought the reaction to his New York Times interview was “overblown.” The country’s drug policies have a restrictive effect on the minority vote, he said, while the GOP’s voter ID efforts may not.
Paul added that if the Republican Party is making voter ID a “central theme and issue,” his colleagues must be sensitive to how some minority voters will perceive those efforts as an attempt to shut them out of the voting process.
“I’m trying to go out and say to African-Americans ‘I want your vote, and the Republican Party wants your vote’ … we have to be aware that the perception is out there and be careful about not so overdoing something that we further alienate a block of people that we need to attract,” he said.
I would like to clarify: I support Voter ID when I’m talking to Republicans, but when talking to Independents I think it’s a bad idea.
Soooooooo… The GOP is “offending people”, but Rand Paul says there’s “nothing wrong with it.” Or maybe he just thinks they should keep people (specifically, black/female/young/Democrat-voting people) away from the polls – but do it in a nice way!
Two rules broken here:
flip flopping and pandering like a true politician
Paul must have been spanked badly by his comrades.
Anyway–its all about optics right, Rand? There is nothing wrong
with you pretending to care about African Americans getting disenfranchised
by voter id laws–which you don’t; you just want republicans to look like they
aren’t enjoying it so much–huh?
“…There’s nothing wrong with it…”
Spoken like a true libertarian.
A country, ostensibly run by the people, has a government that numbers, tracks, and taxes individuals from birth. This same government requires everybody to get a document from the government – i.e. permission – in order to vote to oust the government.
What could go wrong? Besides government trying to control the vote, which his party is especially committed to.