Hillary's Plantation (Shelby Steel Hits A Home Run To Dead Center Field)

Opinion Journal ^ | 1/23/06 | Shelby Steele

[zarf]

Of course Hillary Clinton's recent claim that Republicans run the House of Representatives like a "plantation" was old-fashioned political and racial pandering. After all, she uttered this remark at what certainly would have been a prime venue for her husband: a largely black audience on Martin Luther King Day. So, clearly, she was looking to connect with this most loyal Democratic constituency. But Mrs. Clinton is possessed of a tin ear precisely where her husband is all deftness and charm. Black audiences are beyond her. The room of black faces that brings her husband alive, freezes her in overbearing rectitude.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

[Christian4Bush]

bttt

[bray]

Very nice! Condi '08!!!

Pray for W and OUR Freedom Fighters

[Congressman Billybob]

I took up the same subject in my column for this week, posted on FreeRepublic, and appearing this morning on ChronWatch.com. My language is harsher, and I get to the point faster, than this writer. But I reach the same conclusion, that Hillary Clinton is trying to whip the black vote into line for 2008 with old-fashioned race-baiting.

Click below for my take:

Congressman Billybob

Latest column: "The 'Chocolate' Minds of Mayor Nagin and Senator Clinton"

[msnimje]

I think her most startling comment of the day came after the "Plantation" remark when she condescendingly said, "And YOU know what I am talking about."

[msnimje]

Shelby Steele

[CheyennePress]

Geez, she's a shrill shill.

Good combo for our side, methinks.

[John Lenin]

Mrs. Clinton came to Al Sharpton's MLK celebration looking for an easy harvest of black votes. And she knew the drill--white liberals and Dems whistle for the black vote by pandering to the black sense of grievance. Once positioned as the white champions of this grievance, they actually turn black resentment into white liberal power.

Bingo!

[Mike Darancette]

No other potential Republican candidate could--to borrow an old Marxist phrase--better "heighten the contradictions" of modern liberalism and Democratic power than Ms. Rice.

That's Dr. Rice.

[TheCrusader]

The liberal Democrats have old, worn out ideas and still want to implement programs with 1960's and 70's ideologies. Democrats base much of their political platform on supposedly helping the "little guy", Blacks and other 'minorities'.

The problem is, Blacks have come a very long way and no longer need all these condescending government programs that insinuate Blacks are an inferior people in need of constant help. So what do the Dems do about this? They try to KEEP the Blacks and 'minorities' divided from the rest of America, which makes them feel oppressed and hopeless, which in turn makes the Dems relevent to them again. These are very desperate times for liberal politicians and organizations, and it shows.

[Digger]

I say Republicans run the House like a plantation because I am speaking to Negroes--the wretched of the earth, a slave people--who will surely know all about plantations." Is this a tin ear or a Freudian slip, blacks will wonder? Does she really see us as she projects us--as a people so backward that our support can be won with a simple plantation reference, and the implication that Republicans are racist? Quite possibly so, since no apology has been forthcoming

What's with this "Quite possibly so". Don't 85% of blacks or there about think this. So why wouldn't she use it. She treats every group in consecending fashion & they come back for more insults.

[Republic Rocker]

Awesome Article!

[JennysCool]

An excellent passage here:

No one on the current political scene better embodies this Republican advantage than the current secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. The archetype that Ms. Rice represents is "overcoming" rather than grievance. Despite a childhood in the segregated South that might entitle her to a grievance identity, she has clearly chosen that older black American tradition in which blacks neither deny injustice nor allow themselves to be defined by it. This tradition, as Ralph Ellison once put it, "springs not from a desire to deny the harshness of existence but from a will to deal with it as men at their best have always done." And, because Ms. Rice is grounded in this tradition, she is of absolutely no value to modern liberalism or the Democratic Party despite her many talents and achievements. Quite the reverse, she is their worst nightmare. If blacks were to take her example and embrace overcoming rather than grievance, the wound to liberalism would be mortal. It is impossible to imagine Hillary Clinton's "plantation" pandering in a room full of Condi Rices.

[Cruz]

good post

[Mind-numbed Robot]

It is impossible to imagine Hillary Clinton's "plantation" pandering in a room full of Condi Rices.

That is because Hillary would never speak to a group of Condi Rices. They have nothing in common and the "Rices" would easily see through her.

[Great Communicator]

This is why so many Republicans (including Laura Bush) now salivate at the thought of a Rice presidential bid.

Generally a very good article. However, I must take exception to the image of Conservatives "salivating" over a Condoleezza Rice candidacy. Dr. Rice is a remarkable and inspirational woman, but she is on the record as reluctantly pro-choice, and therefore unelectable. Regardless of how people here feel about this one issue, it remains a litmus test for Republican candidates, because there is a significant pool of Conservative voters who would rather lose an election than vote for a pro-choice Republican candidate. Fantasies about a conservative black woman breaking the back of the Democratic Party for good are delicious, but Rice is not going to be that woman.

[KC Burke]

I note with relish that Shelby has a new book coming out. He is absolutly riveting in a book sized presentation of his thought -- I will be placing it on my list.

[ntnychik]

plantation ping

[potlatch]

"an' when them cotton bolls get rotten, you cain't pick very much cotton....."