…they can’t find anyone crazier than the last crazy person they’ve nominated for, or elected to, some office, the Republicans outdo themselves.
The folks at TPM ask how hard do you have to look to find an African-American candidate who thinks the three-fifths clause in the constitution was a good thing. Well, the Virginia Republicans have done it:
The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia has called the Constitution’s original clause to count blacks as three-fifths of a person an “anti-slavery amendment.”
In an April 28, 2011 statement while he was a Senate candidate, conservative minister and lawyer E.W. Jackson held up the three-fifths clause as an “anti-slavery” measure. The context of his statement was to attack President Obama after a pastor at a church service he attended referred to the three-fifths clause as a historical marker of racism.
“Rev. [Charles Wallace] Smith must not have understood the 3/5ths clause was an anti-slavery amendment. Its purpose was to limit the voting power of slave holding states,” Jackson, an African-American, said in his statement.
(via TPMDC)
Follow the link if you’re not conversant with the three-fifths clause for a clear explanation of why this statement is topsy turvy. Suffice it to say that if we hadn’t had the three-fifths clause we may-just may-have been able to get rid of slavery without a civil war.
This guy is going to play well with the unreconstructed Confederates, but Virginia has come a way from the days of Jefferson Davis, unlike some states we could name. Having voted for Obama twice, it seems unlikely that Virginians will warm up to the new Republican champion of crazy.
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