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Senior Moment
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Posted: Wed Jun 24th, 2009 04:03 am |
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GOP blind to its race problem
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
The modern GOP was created in 1965 with a stroke of Lyndon Johnson's pen.
If that is an exaggeration, it is not much of one. When Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he made a prediction: In committing the unpardonable sin of guaranteeing the ballot to all citizens regardless of race, he said, he would cause his party to lose the South "for a generation.''
And indeed Southern Democrats, who for a century had bombed schools, lynched innocents, perverted justice and terrorized millions in the name of intolerance, responded by leaving their ancestral party in droves. They formed the base of a new GOP, a reality acknowledged by Ronald Reagan when he opened his 1980 campaign at a segregationist fair in a town where three civil-rights workers were infamously martyred, by declaring, 'I believe in states' rights.''
In embracing its new southern base, the Republican Party became the Repugnant Party on matters of race, a distinction it has done little to shed.
So some of us were disappointed but not surprised last week when Sherri Goforth, an aide to Tennessee state Sen. Diane Black, came under fire for an e-mail she sent out. It depicted the 44 U.S. presidents, showing the first 43 in dignified, statesmanlike poses. By contrast, the 44th, the first African American, is seen as a pair of cartoon spook eyes against a black backdrop. Goforth's explanation: the e-mail, which went to GOP staffers, was sent ``to the wrong list of people.''
You may wish to let that one marinate for a moment.
And please, don't bother reminding me of Democrat Robert Byrd's onetime membership in the Ku Klux Klan; I make no argument that the Democrats are untainted by bigotry. Rather, my argument is that the GOP is consumed by it, riddled with it, that it has shown, sown, shaped and been shaped by it, to an abhorrent degree.
You think that's unfair? Well, after Goforth's e-mail, after ''Barack the Magic Negro,'' and John McCain's campaign worker blaming a fictional black man for a fictional mugging, and a party official in Texas renaming the executive mansion ''the black house,'' and an official in Virginia claiming Obama's presidency would see free drugs and ''mandatory black liberation theology,'' and a Republican activist in South Carolina calling an escaped ape one of Michelle Obama's ''ancestors,'' it seems wholly fair to me. Indeed, overdue.
And keep in mind: All that is just from the last year or so. I could draw up a much longer list but space is limited, and there is a final point to make.
Which is that, yes, I am cognizant of the danger of painting with too broad a brush and no, I am not saying membership in the GOP is synonymous with membership in the KKK. I know there are Republicans of racial enlightenment and common decency. Indeed, I am counting on it, counting on them to search conscience and demand their party find ways of winning elections that do not depend on lazy appeals to the basest emotions of the hateful and the unreconstructed.
Do it because it's the right thing. And do it because it is in the party's long-term interest. As a 2008 Gallup poll indicates, black people are more religious than Republicans as a whole and just as conservative on some key moral issues. Yet only 5 percent identify with the party of religion and conservatism. The GOP's ongoing inability to win over such a natural constituency speaks volumes.
I keep waiting for somebody to do something about it. I mean, I can hear Republicans of racial enlightenment and common decency yelling at me from here.
They want me to know there is nothing honorable, much less inherently Republican, in the hatred expressed by these weasels in elephant's clothes. In response, I would give them this advice:
Don't tell me. Tell them.
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RustyBradshaw
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Posted: Fri Jun 19th, 2009 05:46 pm |
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Editor’s note: Copied below is a letter to the editor submitted to the Sun Cities Independent. You can post your opinions by clicking on "Reply."
Lesson on leadership
This past week has been a real lesson on what Republican leadership in Arizona means to us.
1. Republicans who drive 109 mph do not get prosecuted or fined because a Republican judge doesn’t believe we should have photo enforcement. What about safety for the other drivers, Judge Keegan?
2. Actions of Republican law enforcement officials have resulted in multiple lawsuits against Maricopa County and huge payouts for negligence or errors. The latest ones are a $500,000 judgment for a beating death in the jail and a new suit charging excessive charges against an elected official. More charges by the county sheriff and county attorney against county and state officials may result in further lawsuits.
3. A friend of our Republican sheriff was fined for not understanding that spending money to influence a campaign is political. Most grade school kids could read the rules and understand that.
4. The Republican legislative leadership has spent five months trying to come up with a budget for Arizona without working with Democrats. Even the Republican governor cannot support their proposals. Their most important budget item is to make a temporary tax cut permanent. That is more important than funding state agencies, education, health benefits for families or any other service of government. Where were they when compassion and brains were handed out?
Hey, but don’t worry about the future. The legislature has expanded rights to carry guns — for protection, of course. This past week there were multiple murders in Maricopa County. Could it be that guns are used to kill as well as to protect?
If this is the kind of government you want, keep voting the way you have been. This is what you voted for.
Shirley McAllister
Sun City
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