During CNN Newsroom Thursday morning, the panel blasted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for wanting to “restrict voting rights” because he opposed a Democrat House bill which would demand Election Day be made a paid federal holiday.
CNN anchors Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow let their liberal guest, the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui, use McConnell's reaction to smear Republicans as engaging in voter suppression.
“Why is Mitch McConnell so opposed to something that would on the surface make it possible for more Americans to vote?” Harlow offered the leading question to Siddiqui.
Siddiqui dredged up liberal smears from the Midterm elections that Republicans had engaged in voter suppression while Democrats were instead, heroically fighting for voting rights. She even touted failed Democrat candidate Stacey Abrams as a perfect example of Republicans interfering in elections and trying to suppress “turnout” among black voters:
Many people saw this as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying the quiet part out loud. You have several states across the country where there have been Republican-backed efforts to restrict voting rights. I think for Democrats, this is one of the issues that they certainly plan to spotlight, particularly as they now have the majority in the House that there should be no partisan disagreement over making it easier for Americans to vote. And the suggestion that if that were the case, that it would be problematic for Republicans in the eyes of Democrats speaks more to the state of the Republican party.
Its notable that this is coming at a time when Stacey Abrams is poised to deliver the response to the State of the Union. She of course ran unsuccessfully for Governor in the state of Georgia where her opponent now Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, was still the Secretary of State and his office had overseen the purging of rolls in many people that said suppressed turnout among African-Americans. I think for Democrats this really cuts at the heart of the issue of voting rights.
Instead of pushing back against this biased attack against Republicans, the liberal anchors nodded along. Jim Sciutto offered up more alleged instances of voter suppression by Republicans:
“Yeah, right there is the North Carolina race right, that's being looked at and vacated by a judge, along those lines,” he stated, while Poppy Harlow gushed, “Still!”
This certainly isn’t the first time nor will it be the last, that CNN and the rest of the media has engaged in these blatant partisan attacks accusing Republicans of suppressing votes when elections don’t go the way they hoped.
