George Will: Holder 'made himself obnoxious' by opposing voter ID

Conservative columnist George Will implied on Sunday that Attorney General Eric Holder deserved to be held in contempt by Congress over the Fast and Furious scandal because he had opposed voter photo ID laws that Democrats say suppress the vote.

The conservative columnist told ABC's Jake Tapper that attacks on the Obama administration -- and Holder -- for a failed program to track guns in Mexico had to be put in context with "executive aggrandizement."

"First of all, the president rewrites immigration law by executive fiat," Will explained. "Then while it's saying we must shield the secrets here regarding Fast and Furious deliberations, there's a torrent of leaks on the most sensitive national security matters appearing on the front page of the New York Times."

"Finally, Mr. Holder himself has made himself obnoxious to Republicans by saying, unlike the Supreme Court, that voter ID laws constitute voter suppression -- that is if you have to present when you vote a photo ID the way you have to present a photo ID to get into Attorney General Holder's Justice Department."

"Now, we're getting to the real issue," Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen agreed. "This is why Republicans don't like Eric Holder. Because he has challenged voter ID under the civil rights statues as voter suppressions rules that they are. Because he has challenged the Arizona discriminatory immigration law. Because he has refused to implement the discriminatory anti-marriage laws."

"Eric Holder has shown a lot of backbone in the Justice Department and the Republicans hate it," she added. "So what do they do? They call for his resignation, they throw him with document requests that are impossible to respond to, they just throw more and more stuff at him to distract him from actually doing the things that the president and the people hired him to do."

Will's statement on Sunday seemed to validate House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) claim last week that Republicans were going after Holder because he was opposing voter suppression laws.

Pelosi had told reporters that the House Republicans who had voted to hold Holder in contempt “were the very same people who were part of a nationwide scheme to suppress the vote.”

“They’re going after Eric Holder because he is supporting these measures to overturn these voter suppression initiatives in the states,” the former House Speaker explained. “This is no accident. It is no coincidence. It is a plan on the part of Republicans.”

Watch this video from ABC's This Week, broadcast June 24, 2012.