Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach had this to say at the Republican Party convention Feb. 20 in Overland Park, according to The Lawrence Journal World:
“The ACLU and their fellow communist friends, the League of Women Voters — you can quote me on that, the communist League of Women Voters — the ACLU and the communist League of Women Voters sued,” Kobach said, making sure that reporters in the room heard him.
Maybe that’s just good old boy politicking, pandering to a hard-right audience that assumes these nonpartisan groups are liberal.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been a target of such contempt for years. Conservapedia.com describes the ACLU as “a leftist, secular-progressive organization.”
Bashing the League of Women Voters is also not new. Back in 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that California Republicans defeated a resolution that sought to honor the league on its 75th anniversary. Critics said, “that the longtime fixture on the American political landscape is not the nonpartisan policy analyzer it claims to be but rather a group rife with liberal bias.”
Even if these self-proclaimed nonpartisan groups really do lean to left, it shows no class at all to label them “communist.” That is the kind of red-baiting that calls into question the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with you, as the ACLU and LOWV have disagreed with Kobach.