Melanin in Politics

The Washington Times reports this morning that Hillary Clinton is losing support of Black in her bid for another eight years in the White House;

Black voters have been deeply loyal to the Democratic Party and to the Clintons, but they are more devoted to the dream of having a black president for the first time.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been engaged in racially tinged political banter with Sen. Barack Obama since her win in New Hampshire, is losing ground in polls with black voters nationally and in South Carolina, where about half of Democratic primary voters will be black.

In the Wall Street Journal’s Review and Outlook this morning, the WSJ’s Editorial Board wrote “The Politics of Pigmentation” a quick summary of the Clinton/Obama Me-Too mud slinging match for the Black vote;

Last Monday, in response to Senator Obama repeatedly invoking the late civil rights leader on the campaign trail, Senator Clinton told an interviewer, “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . . . It took a President to get it done.” Later on, in a separate interview, Bill Clinton didn’t help his wife when he described a chunk of Senator Obama’s record as a “fairy tale.”

The Obama campaign took umbrage at Mrs. Clinton’s perceived slight of King and Mr. Clinton’s patronizing remark. So did other black Democrats. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who is part of the Democratic leadership in Congress, announced he was rethinking his neutral stance in South Carolina’s crucial primary. Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic operative who ran Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, also rebuked the Clintons.

Team Clinton next accused their rival of playing the race card and called on black supporters to defend the record of the former President and first lady. At a Clinton campaign rally over the weekend, Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, coyly (and gratuitously) alluded to Mr. Obama’s past drug use, which the Senator already acknowledged in a best-selling memoir. “Bill and Hillary Clinton . . . have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood,” said Mr. Johnson. “And I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book.” Mr. Johnson later said he was talking about Mr. Obama’s civic work.

Let’s leave aside how this exchange undermines each candidates’ claims that he or she would unite the country rather than divide it like the “polarizing” President Bush.

I guess it’s almost funny that the Democrats are touting that they’ll “reunite the country” yet they’re polarizing their own party. But more than that, they have their history a bit twisted. There’s an excellent article at the National Black Republican Association entitled “Why Martin Luther King was a Republican” that recounts some of the history of the Party of Lincoln in the civil rights movement;

During the civil rights era of the 1960’s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was President Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.

Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Senator Al Gore, Sr. And after he became president, John F. Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.

In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican.

There’s much more to that piece that I urge everyone to read.

Investor’s Business Daily clarifies Democrats’ and especially the Clinton’s, civil rights record in an editorial yesterday;

If Obama wanted to get the record straight, he might have noted it was white southern Democrats who held the fire hoses, unleashed the police dogs and stood in the schoolhouse door. If Hillary wanted to be historically correct, she could have noted that the Civil Rights Act wouldn’t have been possible without GOP leadership.

Only 61% of Democrats in the House supported the measure, while 80% of Republicans did. In the Senate, 82% of Republicans voted in favor vs. only 69% of Democrats. Just six GOP senators voted against the act, compared with 21 Democrats.

Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia, former “Grand Kleagle” with the Ku Klux Klan and the only senator to have opposed the only two black nominees to the Supreme Court, led a 52-day filibuster against this legislation.

Democratic Sen. Al Gore, father of the former vice president, voted against the act, as did Democratic Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Also opposed were Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, Richard Russell of Georgia and, of course, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who was a Democrat at the time.

William Jefferson Clinton, as governor of Arkansas, was once sued by the local NAACP for failing to enforce the Voting Rights Act, and issued a proclamation for Confederate Day in Arkansas.

Not quite the stuff that Democrats want broadcast, I guess. And if Obama truly wanted to have an honest debate, he’d bring all of these points up, afterall, since he wasn’t in the country during the civil rights era, none of this could splash on him, right? But, then he’d have to admit that he’s a Democrat for purely political reasons, rather than principles, because the Democrats really haven’t ever done anything for Blacks except talk and throw crumbs.

The Wall Street Journal warns;

But there’s also a cautionary tale here in how identity politics can come back to bite. The left’s color-by-numbers approach to attracting votes has essentially painted the Democrats into a corner, making it very difficult for them to prevail in national elections without winning nearly every black vote. The result is the very antithesis of what King fought for — an over-reliance on blunt racial appeals instead of issues and ideas.

While Democrats pander and play word games for Black votes, the Republicans stand on their record.

Big hat tip to Steve at Internet Radio Network for his help in this.

Category: Historical, Politics