Are we really a Cracker Nation ?

Or as Eric Holder opined a "nation of cowards"

It's a rhetorical question, and I don't think either is the case, though to listen to the progressive socialists you would think BOTH are true. Yes Mr. Holder, we should be having a frank discussion about race, racial issues, racism and the growing popularity of throwing the race card as a sign of defeat, or lack of other evidence in the National Narrative these days. When you run out of constructive argument, or are otherwise defeated in debate, logic or argument, throw the race card. It's sure to garner a 72 hour news cycle for you, and the pile on of other progressive socialists will be on every talk show, spewing the same filth for as long as they are given an audience.

Take for example your recent remarks on ABC:

Attorney General Eric Holder is challenging Republicans who are calling for his and President Obama's impeachment, and denouncing what he calls a "gridlocked Washington" stalled by what he says is a Republican Party bent on blocking any of the administration's efforts. 

“For whatever reason, [some] Republicans decided early on that this was a president they were just simply not going to cooperate with,” Holder said in a rare interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas. "And over the past five-and-a-half years, we have seen demonstrations of that, where the president has reached out his hand, offered compromises that have simply not been met [in the way] they have been in the past by a Republican Party willing to do the appropriate things." 

Administration efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, for example, have failed. Asked about calls by Sarah Palin to impeach Obama over the administration’s immigration policies, Holder said: “She wasn't a particularly good vice presidential candidate. She's an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.” 

Holder similarly dismissed calls for himself to be impeached for declining to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS scandal. Holder insisted that a special prosecutor isn’t necessary, with “career people” and FBI agents “doing a good, professional job” investigating the matter. 

... Holder said that he and President Obama are treated differently than their predecessors.
“There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder said. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there's a racial animus.” 

... In addition, Holder took Republicans to task for efforts to, among other things, enact voter ID laws in some states. He called such moves “political efforts” aimed at making it “more difficult” for “groups that are not supportive of those in power” to “have access to the ballot.” 

“Who is disproportionately impacted by them? Young people, African Americans, Hispanics, older people, people who, for whatever reason, aren't necessarily supportive of the Republican Party,” Holder said, noting that “this notion that there is widespread in-person voter fraud is simply belied by the facts.”Holder said the Justice Department is expected to soon file challenges to restrictive voting laws in Ohio and Wisconsin, as the department already did in Texas and North Carolina.

There is a lot of material there, most of it is utterly false, but George Stephanopoulos did little (as usual) to call Holder to task. A study of his claims of "restrictive voting laws" by the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF NORTH CAROLINA actually proves just the opposite happened as reported in the findings of the North Carolina court and by The Blaze

If there was a hidden agenda behind North Carolina’s voter ID law to suppress minority turnout – as the law’s opponents claim – it hasn’t worked, based on a study showing not only more voters overall, but an increase in black voter turnout especially, after the law’s implementation. 

Study on North Carolina Voter ID Law Shows Increase in Minority Turnout
AP
The findings came before a scheduled hearing next week where the U.S. Justice Department will ask a U.S. District Court for an injunction against the law going into the November midterms. The Obama administration has argued that such a law will make it more difficult for minorities to vote. 

Comparing May 4, 2010 North Carolina primary election data with the May 14, 2014 primary data, the study found that voter turnout increased across the board, but particularly among black voters, where it increased by 29.5 percent, compared to an increase of white voter turnout of 13.7 percent. The findings were based on Census Bureau data and public names who signed the voter rolls. 

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, commissioned the study and included the findings in an amicus brief for the July 7 hearing. Judicial Watch was joined in its legal brief by the Allied Educational Foundation and by former Buncombe County commissioner candidate Christina Kelley Gallegos-Merrill. 

... North Carolina adopted a law in line with 37 other states that don’t allow same-day voter registration, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. 

“The recent election in North Carolina shows that the Obama administration is engaged in a race-baiting canard when it suggests that voting integrity measures suppress minority votes,” Fitton said. “It is high time that the Obama administration comes into line with the majority of the American people who want to strengthen rather than weaken ballot box integrity.”

It makes no difference to the progressive socialists, the race card and accusations are STILL flying:

Civil rights lawyers and activists are gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the start of the legal challenge that is expected to last all week. They will be seeking to persuade a federal district judge to impose a preliminary injunction against key aspects of HB 589, the voting law enacted by state Republicans last August. 

Lawyers for the North Carolina branch of the NAACP and the civil rights group the Advancement Project will argue that the main pillars of the law should be temporarily halted ahead of a full trial next year. Otherwise, they say, tens of thousands of largely poor black voters could find themselves turned away at the polls at the midterm elections in November. 

“This is the worst voter suppression law we have seen since the days of Jim Crow. It is a full-on assault on the voting rights of minorities,” said Reverend William Barber, president of the North Carolina state conference of the NAACP.

Not to be outdone in the slime game New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel "suggested in an interview that aired Monday that the level of Republican opposition to President Barack Obama is partly due to race."

When asked by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt whether GOP opposition to the president is “based on race,” Rangel paused and said, “You know, that’s a subjective question. But, let me say this: Are most of the states that they represent, are they in the Confederate states that fought the Union? Were they slaveholder states? And when they come to Washington, do you see more Confederate flags than American flags?” 

When asked by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt whether GOP opposition to the president is “based on race,” Rangel paused and said, “You know, that’s a subjective question. But, let me say this: Are most of the states that they represent, are they in the Confederate states that fought the Union? Were they slaveholder states? And when they come to Washington, do you see more Confederate flags than American flags?”

The Politico piece goes further quoting Sen. Jay Rockefeller "The retiring West Virginia Democrat said that some in the GOP don’t want the implementation of the health law to succeed because they don’t personally like the president and maybe he’s of the wrong color." Another Politico recent article highlighted the dual between Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Ron Johnson and direct (and denied) accusations of racism. You may read the whole piece here

Rockefeller’s remarks about Republican opposition to Obamacare amounted to implying that Johnson is “a racist.” 

As he chaired a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat accused the GOP of opposing President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act because he’s the “wrong color,” eliciting an emotional reaction from Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, that the Democratic senator “would basically imply that I’m a racist.” 

... “That you would say that opposition to Obamacare necessarily must stream from some inherent racism? Very offensive. Listen, my opposition to health care has nothing to do with the race of President Obama,” Johnson said. “It is the greatest assault on our freedom in my lifetime.

And of course who could forget Obama's own ridiculous comments following the Trayvon Martin shooting and the public calls for bounties on George Zimmerman's head!

But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that -- that doesn’t go away. 

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.
And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. 

There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often. 

And, you know, I -- I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.
And it's inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.

So what has been the position of the "right" in response to all this false narrative? Very little actually, I guess few have the cajones to take it on. In 2010 Republican National Committee, Michael Steele appearing on ABC with Jake Tapper offered "our party has always had a strong view on this issue. We fought very hard in the '60s to get the civil rights bill passed as well as the voting rights bill. So I think that, you know, any -- any, you know, attempted look backwards, it's not in the best interests of our country, certainly, and certainly not in the best interests of the party." As it turns out he is correct:

The Civil Rights Act -- which is best known for barring discrimination in public accommodations -- passed the House on Feb. 10, 1964 by a margin of 290-130. When broken down by party, 61 percent of Democratic lawmakers voted for the bill (152 yeas and 96 nays), and a full 80 percent of the Republican caucus supported it (138 yeas and 34 nays).
When the Senate passed the measure on June 19, 1964, -- nine days after supporters mustered enough votes to end the longest filibuster in Senate history -- the margin was 73-27. Better than two-thirds of Senate Democrats supported the measure on final passage (46 yeas, 21 nays), but an even stronger 82 percent of Republicans supported it (27 yeas, 6 nays). 

The primary reason that Republican support was higher than Democratic support -- even though the legislation was pushed hard by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson -- is that the opposition to the bill primarily came from Southern lawmakers. In the mid 1960s, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic -- a legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, when the Republican Party was the leading force against slavery and its legacy. Because of this history, the Democratic Party in the 1960s was divided between Southern Democrats, most of whom opposed civil rights legislation, and Democrats from outside the South who more often than not supported it. 

This pattern showed clearly in the House vote. Northern Democrats backed the Civil Rights Act by a margin even larger than that of Republicans -- 141 for, just four against -- while Southern Democrats were strongly opposed, by a margin of 11 yeas to 92 nays. 

When the Voting Rights Act hit the floor in 1965, the vote results mirrored those of the Civil Rights Act. In the House, the measure passed by a 333-85 margin, with 78 percent of Democrats backing it (221 yeas and 61 nays) and 82 percent of Republicans backing it (112 yeas to 24 nays). 

In the Senate, the measure passed by a 77-19 vote, with 73 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans supporting the bill. 

So it's clear that Republican support for both bills was deep. But to make sure we weren't missing something, we contacted a number of scholars who have studied that period, asking whether Republicans were dragged into supporting the bills reluctantly, or whether they took frontline roles in advancing them.

And if that quote from Politifact isn't enough, there is always the Congressional record itself. We should remember Senator Robert Byrd led the then longest filibuster in US Senate history AGAINST the Civil Rights Act of 1964

e longest continuous debate in Senate history took place in 1964 over the Civil Rights Act. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who had proposed the legislation, it was strongly advocated by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Addressing a joint session of Congress just after Kennedy’s death, Johnson urged members of Congress to honor Kennedy’s memory by passing a civil rights bill to end racial discrimination and segregation in public accommodations, public education, and federally assisted programs. In his address, Johnson declared, “we have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.” 

On February 10, 1964, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill, HR 7152. When the House-passed bill arrived in the Senate on February 26, 1964, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield placed it directly on the Senate calendar rather than refer it to the Judiciary Committee, chaired by civil rights opponent James Eastland of Mississippi. On March 9, when Mansfield moved to take up the measure, southern senators launched a filibuster against the bill. The Senate debated the bill for sixty days, including seven Saturdays. 

At the time, a two-thirds vote, or sixty-seven senators, was required to invoke cloture and cut off debate in the Senate. Since southern Democrats opposed the legislation, votes from a substantial number of senators in the Republican minority would be needed to end the filibuster. Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic whip who managed the bill on the Senate floor, enlisted the aid of Republican Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois. Dirksen, although a longtime supporter of civil rights, had opposed the bill because he objected to certain provisions. Humphrey therefore worked with him to redraft the controversial language and make the bill more acceptable to Republicans. Once the changes were made, Dirksen gained key votes for cloture from his party colleagues with a powerful speech calling racial integration "an idea whose time has come."

So are we really a Cracker Nation ? Or as Eric Holder opined a "nation of cowards" ...

Or have I been eating paint chips again?