On the March 2 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews smeared the GOP as racist:
“It [the Republican Party] is no longer the party that voted overwhelmingly for civil rights and voting rights in the mid ’60s. In fact, its most consistent ambition these recent years has been a relentless push to limit voting rights, especially for minorities, by the imposition of new voter ID requirements, and with this, it’s doing what the Jim Crow enforcers did with poll taxes and outlandish literacy tests.”