COMMENTARY | Because Monday's Fox News/Wall Street Journal GOP debate from South Carolina falls on Martin Luther King Day, Rev. Jessie Jackson, who was born in Greenville, S.C, wants to hear the candidates talk about issues regarding the legacy of King.
"I want to hear from them," Jackson told Politico. "Do they support Dr. King and the New South movement? Do they appreciate Dr. King's legacy?"
While it would certainly be appropriate to have the Republican candidates share their opinions about King and civil rights, that topic may pose some problems for Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
"Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King," states one of the controversial newsletters published in Paul's name in December 1990. "I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it!"
The newsletter also said King was "at best -- a socialist."
While Paul's supporters like to point to his Yea vote on a Dec. 5 1979, bill to amend H.R. 5461 as proof that he supported the holiday, H.R. 5461 isn't actually the bill that established the holiday. This bill was simply a measure intended to move MLK Day to the third Monday in January rather than Jan. 15.
House Vote 578, taken to make MLK Day an official national holiday, took place on Nov. 13, 1979. While 252 Members voted in support of the bill, Paul was one of the 133 who opposed the measure leaving the bill just five votes shy of the two-thirds majority required for passage. While the bill was finally passed in 1983, Paul again voted no.
Furthermore, on July 3, 2004, Paul was also the only congressman to vote against House Resolution 676, which honored the 40th anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a bill Paul has said he would also have voted against.
For his speech on the House floor, posted in its entirety on his "Fan Site," Ron Paul.com, Paul is praised as courageous for saying not only that that the bill "increased racial tensions" but that The Civil Rights Act of 1964 actually "violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty."
While Paul repeatedly claims ignorance of the racially inflammatory content of the newsletters his voting record and public statements regarding civil rights measures is more consistent with supporting that he shares the sentiments of the controversial quotes than serving to support his denial.
Moreover, Paul is heralded by his followers as courageous for being the only one to vote against the July 3, 2004 bill that celebrated four decades of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and for standing on the House floor to deliver a speech to condemn the measure.
"What the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did," wrote Henry A, Rhodes in his 1982 study, An Analysis of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Legislated Response to Racial Discrimination in the U. S., "was to create an environment in which attitudes would be able to change."
During the 2008 presidential election, as reported by ABC News, "blacks accounted for a majority of voters in South Carolina, 55 percent -- the highest turnout among African-Americans in any Democratic presidential primary for which data are available."
The Jan. 15 Newsmax-Insider Advantage poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leading the GOP field with an impressive 32 percent of voter support. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich holds second with 21 percent. Paul sits stagnant in third with 14 percent.
Considering these things -- should the GOP candidates decide to take up Jackson's suggestion -- it will be interesting to hear Paul defend his positions on civil rights, his opinions of Dr. Martin Luther King to voters in South Carolina on the anniversary of King's holiday that his newsletter called our "annual Hate Whitey Day."
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