“If you’re a real Republican you would stand against all of the policies that they stand for.” We all know republicans love to talk about republican values. Michael Harriot explains why Republicans are not living up to the values that they say the love so much. TheGrio Daily is an original podcast by theGrio Black Podcast Network. #BlackCultureAmplified
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Michael Harriot [00:00:05] Now, what do Republicans want? You know, if you listen to Republicans, they’ll tell you that they want, you know, a good Christian leader. They want to protect life. They want small government. They want someone who isn’t a liar. They want a leader who extolls family values. And that’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily. The only podcast that’ll tell you what Republicans really want is Democrats. I’m world famous wypipologist Michael Harriot and this is theGrio Daily.
Michael Harriot [00:00:52] I know most of us believe that Republicans don’t actually believe anything. And that’s kind of true. Right. Like they say, they want Christian leaders and they say that they are Christian evangelicals and then they elect a lying, cheater, criminal as president. They say that they believe in family values except when they separate children at the border, except when they out gays in high school and middle schools. Except when they do the stuff that is anti-Christian. They’ll tell you that they don’t even like politics, they want people who are real leaders, who are truthful. And then they keep electing liars. And so today we’re going to look at, you know, some of the people who should be candidates for the Republican Party if the Republican Party really believed what they believe.
Michael Harriot [00:01:54] Like, you know, I live in Georgia. So let’s start with Georgia. Right. Like for governor. Right. Brian Kemp is a person who is known as the wizard of Voter Suppression. Right. And of course, we know that, you know, Trump called the governor and the secretary of state, Raffensperger, and tried to tell them to find him about 11,000 votes.
Donald Trump [00:02:23] So, look, all I want to do is just I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.
Michael Harriot [00:02:38] What Republicans hate is voter fraud. What Republicans hate is is stolen election. What they want is ballot security. At least that’s what they want in Georgia. Right. So, who could they find to give them some good ballot security? Well, there there is this woman, a Black woman. Right. Who has been fighting against voter suppression and the right to. Allow people who are legally registered to vote to vote for years. Right. Her name is Stacey Abrams. And the interesting thing about Stacey Abrams is Stacey Abrams is really not against the like stuff like voter ID, right. The reason people are against voter ID is because studies and courts have determined that the problem with voter I.D. is that when you are Black or you are poor, sometimes voter I.D. is unattainable because of the cost and that just the cost of an I.D.. Right. But the cost of getting to a place to get a voter I.D., so to get my ID, Georgia’s driver’s license. When I moved here, I had to drive about 20 miles. So I needed to live in a rural place. Our town that’s about 80% Black. So all of the Black people here would have to have a car or know someone who has a car to get a voter ID or any kind of I.D. And it sounds simple to a lot of people, but believe me, when you live in poverty, a lot of times it’s not that simple because again, you have to think about the logistics, right? So the voter ID place or the driver’s license place, it’s about 15 miles from here and it’s only opened on certain days, 8 to 5. So you have to find not only do you have to find a ride, but you’ve got to find someone who is not working during the hours that this place is open, who won’t charge you gas money and can provide you a ride so that you can pay for your voter ID.
Michael Harriot [00:05:07] So it’s not just the cost prohibitive measurement of getting the ID, but the logistics of doing that right. And a lot of people don’t understand if you live in a place like D.C. or if you live in a city at all. Right. Like a lot of rural America don’t have access to a place to get an ID. My mother didn’t have an ID for a long time during my youth just because there was no driver’s license place in the town I lived in in South Carolina. Right. It was a couple of towns over you again. You needed a ride. You needed a ride. It could take you when it was open. And then because it was the only place that gave IDs, it was always crowded. Like you basically had to spend an entire day there. You had to block out an entire day to go get your ID. And what Stacey Abrams did is say, I’m not against voter ID if we can make them free and we could get people to the place where they can get an I.D.. And that’s what she did. And she didn’t tell the government to do it because like what Republicans want, she said, why don’t we just do it with the community effort? That’s what the Georgia Voters Project was, why they allowed people to not just to register to vote, but to get the things that they need to vote. Your I.D. and often to get an ID, you need your Social Security card, your birth certificate. Again, you’ve got to go to the county courthouse or wherever your birth certificate is filed, which is a problem in many places like where I grew up, I, I got an old, old, old copy of my birth certificate because like it does, my mother doesn’t live in that town anymore. So I would have to call up someone who isn’t in my family and figure out how I could ask them to go to that county courthouse where I was born to get my voter ID.
Michael Harriot [00:07:22] Not only is it cost prohibitive, but. It’s hard to do. But there was a woman who embodies all these Republican ideals. She wants ballot security. She doesn’t depend on the government. Oh, there’s another candidate for Georgia senator. Right. Who embodies a lot of the Republican ideals, too. Right. Like, if you are an evangelical Christian, what’s better than a dude like Rafael Warnock? Who is a pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church that Martin Luther King preached at. Like he is the inheritor of that legacy. All those people who claim to believe in the ideals of Martin Luther King, wouldn’t they want a Christian who believed in equality? Wouldn’t they want someone who grew up poor, who worked on a farm, whose parents worked on the farm? Well, that’s Raphael Warnock. Raphael Warnock worked his way through school to achieve his education because you know what Republicans want, right? They say that Black people need to focus on education and hard work. What embodies that more than the Black dude who worked his way through college, an HBCU? You know, even if you believe in segregation, as a lot of Republicans do, this dude went to a HBCU. He segregated himself and then he went to divinity school and got his Ph’D and worked his way through it. He embodies all of those ideals. Why wouldn’t you vote for him?
Michael Harriot [00:09:06] Or let’s take let’s take Florida, for instance. Right. Like Florida, when you talking about the Senate race there. You want to talk about somebody who values education, who who values you know what people in Florida and Republicans want, right? They want law and order. Well, wait, just a candidate who was actually a police officer and a police chief. So she she probably values law and order. Her name is Val Demings. And she’s running against Marco Rubio, who embodies, well, nothing. So if Republicans really believe the things that they say, wouldn’t they vote for someone who’s a police chief, someone who believes in holding people accountable? Someone like Val Demings? Well, I wonder why they don’t. Oh, Val Demings is Black. Oh, yeah. Okay, so let’s. Let’s forget that. Let’s go to another state. Right. Let’s go home. Let’s go to. Oh, how about Pennsylvania? Right. Like there’s a dude in Pennsylvania. Wait, so, Dr. Oz, he’s running for office in Pennsylvania, but he’s not from there and pennsylvania, people want someone who represents two inches, so they probably won’t vote for him. Right. And he he’s like a rich do with a bunch of houses. And so Republicans paint themselves as the party of the common man. So they probably wouldn’t want him.
Michael Harriot [00:10:43] So why wouldn’t they vote for Dr. Oz’s opponent? Hmm. If they believed in what they were saying, they would vote for him. Or like in Texas. Right. Why would they vote for someone like Greg Abbott who is a proven liar? Right. Why wouldn’t they vote for someone like Beto O’Rourke who came up in Texas, who was born and raised in Texas. Why wouldn’t they vote for someone who wants to protect their right to life? Well, it’s not that Beto O’Rourke is anti-abortion. Beto O’Rourke is against the law that criminalizes people because Texas has this bounty law if you didn’t know, that allows like me to sue anyone if I hear they got an abortion right, like I can collect a bounty if I turn in someone or sue them for getting an abortion. That’s kind of like government intruding on your life, right? That’s like putting the government literally inside women’s vaginas. So if they believed in small government, wouldn’t they vote for someone who opposed that law? If they believed in the right to life, wouldn’t they vote for someone who didn’t preside over one of the worst COVID epidemics in the country? If they really believed in the right to life, wouldn’t they oppose someone who supports the death penalty? Hmm. If you were a Republican in Texas, you would probably vote for Beto O’Rourke.
Michael Harriot [00:12:37] Unless all that stuff you said you believed wasn’t true, unless you were never about Christian conservatism. Because your last president didn’t embody any Christian ideals unless you knew that every Republican president increases the debt more so than Democratic presidents. Unless you were a believer in fiscal responsibility and spent money on stupid stuff like building a wall and literally trying to put a moat around the border. Unless you weren’t really a believer in family values and wanted to separate children at the border. And you wanted to condemn LGBTQ children for loving who they wanted to love. Unless you want to condemn trans children. Then you couldn’t say you believed in family values because if you were a real Republican, you would stand against all of the policies that they stand for. You would stand against the don’t say gay laws because you believed in family values. You would stand against everything that they do because they literally embody the opposite of all of the Ten Commandments. They kill with the death penalty. They steal, Brett Favre. They bear false witness against their neighbor, literally, all of them lie. They don’t honor the Sabbath, which is when they held those racist Republican rally truck rallies. They they they literally break every commandment with their policies.
Michael Harriot [00:14:36] So it’s obvious that what Republicans are true, Republicans really would want is someone who believed that people could love whoever they love, who believe that people should be able to marry whoever they marry. Who believe that the government should stay out of women’s vaginas. Who believed in small government and taxing corporations, because that is fiscal conservatism. That is preserving the wealth. If you were a Republican, you would really vote for Democrats. And that’s why there are no such thing as Republicans. They’re just racists with a political party. And that’s why you got to download theGrio app. You got to tell a friend about this podcast, and you’ve got to subscribe on every platform. And that’s also why we leave you every episode with the saying from Black America and today saying is, “A Republican ain’t nothing but a racist without their hood on.” If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. Download theGrio app, subscribe to the show and share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to podcasts at theGrio dot com.
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