Ted Nugent Says People On Welfare Should Not Be Allowed To Vote

Commentary | Ted Nugent is lashing out at welfare recipients, and in a recent rant, says that anyone receiving public assistance should lose their voting rights.

Ted Nugent is a vocal and frequent critic of the Obama administration, and has in the past been visited by the Secret Service due to a vaguely threatening comment he made last year indicating that if the President was re-elected, Nugent would either wind up “dead or in jail.” (A promise that has yet to be fulfilled by the rocker.)

Nugent also belongs to a certain (and sadly, seemingly large) segment of self-identified conservatives that claim to embrace the rights with which we are endowed in this country while advocating their eradication in the same breath, as evidenced by his recent ignorant comments about welfare recipients and voting.

While Ted Nugent seems to take it lightly, part of the American way of life and a source of pride in this country is the ability extended to all our citizens to vote in a free and democratic election. And Nugent is totally cool with casting all that to the wind and openly barring those who are struggling in poverty from having an equal vote.

In an earlier post-election rant, Nugent fumed:

“Let’s also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare … Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them. That’s insane.”

Nugent’s critique also was colored with some suggestive and unpleasant rhetoric about how he sees those who are reliant on public assistance to survive — he said:

“And you thought Planet of the Apes was a movie … Too many Americans have become entitlement chumps who have been convinced by Democrats and other liberal scammers that they are entitled to the sweat and hard work of other Americans. Free cellphones aren’t free. Food stamps have become vote-getting extortion vouchers.”

In a time when job openings are outnumbered by job seekers by a ratio of four to one, it seems Ted Nugent’s gripe isn’t so much with the poor as it is with basic math.