In the wake of his idiotic remarks at Strom Thurmond’s 100th
birthday celebration, Trent Lott’s stop and grovel tour continues.
Last Monday found him on Black Entertainment Television, calling
the controversy “a wake up call,” proposing to start a “task force
on reconciliation,” promising to “move an agenda … helpful to
African Americans” — and mentioning, by the way, that he now
favors making Martin Luther’s King’s birthday a federal holiday.
(Based, no doubt, on Dr. King’s many activities since Lott voted
against it in 1983.) How well Lott’s mea culpa took in the black
community can be gleaned from the venom directed at him on
BET.com’s discussion board after the interview.
The latest twist in the fiasco came midweek, after New York
State Senate Republican leader Joe Bruno said that Lott “ought to
be cut some slack”; the outrage from the black community at Bruno’s
suggestion was so fierce that Bruno wound up apologizing.
This is insanity. But it’s instructive insanity in that it
highlights the futility of Republicans kowtowing to, or tailoring
their message for, black voters. The core value of the Republican
Party is individual initiative. But this value is palatable only if
you believe opportunities for such initiative are readily available
to all. Republicans cannot adhere to their core principle and
simultaneously admit that black people are perpetually oppressed —
as Lott’s “wake up call” implies. This is the basic reason
Republicans cannot attract large numbers of black voters. To be
black, in the eyes of many black people, is to be perpetually
oppressed; more than skin color, hair texture or facial features,
the belief in ongoing black oppression is the unifying element of
black culture. As civil rights activist Roger Wilkins wrote
recently, “For blacks, there is the pain of slavery and the
continual loss of dignity that accompanies our treatment as
nonstandard citizens.”
It’s a profoundly wrongheaded sentiment — but virtually
impossible to debate. If someone insists he’s in pain, how do you
convince him he shouldn’t be? In any event, the percentage of
Wilkins’s black readers who’d nod in agreement is undoubtedly high.
Oppression has, in effect, entered into the very definition of
being black. Telling black people they’re no longer oppressed,
under such circumstances, amounts to telling them they’re no longer
black.
Republicans are thus in a no-win situation with regard to black
voters: Either you tell them that they’re not being oppressed, and
alienate them by your insensitivity, or you admit that they are
being oppressed, and alienate them by appealing to individual
initiative … which only matters in a fundamentally fair
society.
The solution to the Republicans’ “black problem” lies not in
prostrating themselves but in recognizing that their ideals serve
blacks as well as whites.
The overwhelming majority of black voters are hardworking,
taxpaying, law-abiding citizens. They may not realize it, but they
have an abiding stake not only in the value of individual
initiative, but also in the correlative values of national defense,
civic order, economic responsibility, educational accountability
and equal opportunity; these are ideals to which Republican
politics is committed. It cannot simultaneously commit itself to
government programs designed to redistribute wealth or to ensure
equal outcomes — both of which undermine individual
initiative.
The overwhelming majority of black voters, in other words,
should see the Republican Party as a viable option to exercise
their personal interests. They don’t because they’ve been
brainwashed, browbeaten and culturally cowed into believing that
their natural constituency is made up not of other hardworking,
taxpaying, law-abiding citizens but of a ragtag minority of
sociopaths who superficially resemble them. And Republicans only
reinforce this line of thought when they attempt to woo black
voters as a homogeneous block defined by epidermal loyalties.
Indeed, the entire idea of wooing groups of voters is
self-defeating. Republicans are faithful to their core values only
when they woo individual voters by saying plainly what they stand
for.
Until black voters begin to think of themselves first and
foremost as individuals, the Republican Party will have little to
offer them.
RINGING IN HIS EARS
In the aftermath of his announcement that he would not run in 2004,
Al Gore was inundated with phone calls from the
men who would like to fill his shoes as frontrunner. Gore took
calls with Sens. John Edwards and John
Kerry, and spoke for a long time with Sen. Joe
Lieberman, who in the next few weeks is expected to make
some type of formal announcement about his intentions.
All three called to congratulate Gore on his decision and to
wish him well and to ask for a meeting to discuss the future. Thus
far, Gore has made plans only with Lieberman, and put off the
others.
Several phone calls that Gore did not take came from Rep.
Dick Gephardt. No word on whether there is any
real animus there or not, but Gephardt has always been viewed as a
Gore competitor for money and support from Big Labor. As well, Gore
in the past has believed that Gephardt’s close relationship with
DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe worked against his
building a relationship with the party leader.
AT FULL BORE
On Wednesday, at the Brookings Institution, Sen. John
Edwards made what his staff had touted as one in a series
of “policy speeches.” Previous speeches dealt with the economy and
terrorism. This one attacked the Bush Administration’s Homeland
Security plan. The speech drew a moderate crowd of mostly second-
and third-tier policy wonks and journalists, many of whom showed up
hoping to hear the North Carolina senator tee off on Trent
Lott.
Those comments would have been better than the pabulum Edwards
laid out. “No specifics, no real meat, nothing,” said a Brookings
scholar in attendance. “One gets the sense he’s running out of gas
and the election season hasn’t started yet.”
To be fair to Edwards, plans for the speech were in the works
long before Al Gore made his announcement over the weekend.
Nonetheless, with the Democratic presidential race now wide-open it
says something that Edwards didn’t try to ratchet up the heat on
this speech.
The lackluster performance is also surprising in that Edwards’
political allies report they expect him to announce within days
that he is at the very least forming an exploratory committee for a
presidential run.
POINTING AT DANA
As the spectacle surrounding Trent Lott continues,
Republicans elsewhere are offering further confirmation that their
party is one that truly enjoys eating its own. Word out of
California is that some Southern California Republican moneymen are
looking to recruit a primary challenger to longtime conservative
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. The key reason is
Rohrabacher’s continued antagonism toward Israel.
“He’s awful on Israel, and it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Maybe he’s got too much water in his ears from all that surfing,”
says one of those California businessmen looking for a horse to run
against the sitting congressman.
Rohrabacher has been outspoken in criticizing U.S. support for
Israel, and is viewed as the one of the Muslim community’s
strongest supporters.
The oddity of the Rohrabacher situation is that on many issues
he’s in the conservative mainstream.
No names have been mentioned as possible challengers.
