Dear GOP: Hillary Clinton is trolling you on voting rights. Don't take the bait!

Hillary Clinton is calling for sweeping changes to America's voting system, including automatically registering all citizens to vote when they turn 18. The move is begging for a Republican response — and they shouldn't give her one.

To be sure, voting rights has been a live political issue in recent years. Conservatives, alarmed by the prospect of voter fraud, have passed many state-level laws tightening up voting laws. Progressives have argued that this is an effort to depress turnout among demographics more likely to vote Democratic, especially the poor and African-Americans.

Now, as a conservative, I have seen progressives use the race card way too many times to disqualify good conservative initiatives animated by pure motives. And as a European, it just seems crazy that you don't need a valid government photo ID to vote. I'm also a pretty cynical guy. I can believe Democratic politicians will fight for rules that they — wink-wink, nudge-nudge — know will get them more votes. And I can believe that the GOP's sudden interest in the somewhat obscure issue of voter fraud might not stem from the highest motives.

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So on the merits, the issue is a toss-up. But on the politics, the way forward for Republicans is easy: Shut the hell up.

Much has been written about the Democratic "emerging majority" and the party's "rainbow coalition" of minorities. (Though let's not forget the upper-middle class HENRYs who are destroying America, as well as the plutocratic class, which, as progressives feign not to understand, is well-represented by the left.)

But as the political analyst Sean Trende has pointed out, this coalition amounts to a Southern Strategy in reverse. Just as the GOP's Southern Strategy entailed, at least in part, dividing voters on racial lines to win super-majorities of the white vote, the Democratic Party's new Southern Strategy in reverse entails dividing voters on racial lines to increase turnout among minorities.

One of the most underreported facts in American politics is the fact that Asian Americans tend to vote disproportionately Democratic. The Republican Party's problems with minorities, in other words, go beyond policies said to alienate blacks and Latinos. Simply put, rightly or wrongly, there is a perception among many minorities that the GOP is the party of and for white people. And the behavior of many Republican politicians and (especially) commentators in the Obama era has done little to rectify this impression, to say the least.

This is why Hillary Clinton's move is clever. What do you do when you're trying to inherit a "rainbow coalition" from Barack Obama? And you happen to be a rich, white person? The Southern Strategy in reverse. And, in particular, you put an issue like voting rights at the forefront, and hope prominent GOP figures say something awful about it, as they are wont to do.

Of course, the fact that the mainstream media, already predisposed against conservatives, will be glad to gin up any bad line and spin it in the worst way possible, only helps her cause. Republicans are especially vulnerable during their primary process, when they will be more likely to pander, er, appeal to the right wing of their party.

Given the political reality, the only answer to a question about voting rights should include words like "eight years of failed policies" or "jobs" or even "Benghazi."

Hillary Clinton wants you to put your foot in your mouth. For the love of God, put a sock in it instead.