Ohio Republican House candidate Jim Renacci thinks civil rights is a “local issue:” ‘We Need To Get Our Federal Government Out Of The Way’.

It’s amazing to hear Republican candidates saying things like this, but it does reveal the modern GOP’s agenda — to rewind all the social progress of the last 100 years, and return to some idealized hyper-religious version of America that never existed.

The entire point of the civil rights movement was that states and local governments should not be able to determine these things for themselves, because there are some states that will choose (and did choose) to violate the civil rights of minority groups. That’s why George Wallace’s pro-segregation rallying cry was: “state’s rights.”

And now the GOP is trying to re-fight that battle, and bring back those bad old days of racial discrimination — and they’re even resurrecting the same long-dead arguments to do it. This kind of atavistic thinking is incredibly common in today’s right wing and Republican Party, and it’s one reason why I seriously doubt I will ever vote for a Republican again.