Posted on 02/08/2006 9:57:41 PM PST by demlosers
Black Republicans are making a run for a number of big elections this year. In Maryland, Michael Steele wants retiring Democrat Paul Sarbanes' Senate seat. Keith Butler is also running for Senate, from Michigan. Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steelers star, wants to be governor of the Keystone State. Randy Daniels would like to be governor of New York. And gunning for governor in a key presidential electoral state there is the great black hope for the Republican Party, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.
The "great black hope" is probably the last phrase Blackwell would use to describe himself (I, myself, cringed while writing it). A phrase that cheapens, not to mention ghettoizes; in truth, Ken Blackwell is a great hope for us all.
In a profile piece in the winter issue of "City Journal," contributing editor Steven Malanga calls Blackwell "Ronald Reagan's Unlikely Heir." Malanga writes, "Ken Blackwell has so many people worried because he represents a new political calculus with the power to shake up American politics."
Who can have a power like that, you ask? "For Blackwell is a fiscal and cultural conservative ... who happens to be black with the proven power to attract votes from across a startlingly wide spectrum of the electorate." Malanga continues, "Born in the projects of Cincinnati to a meat-packer who preached the work ethic and a nurse who read to him from the bible every evening, Blackwell has rejected the victimology of many black activists and opted for a different path, championing school choice, opposing abortion and advocating low taxes as a road to prosperity. The 57-year-old is equally comfortable preaching that platform to the black urban voters of Cincinnati as to the white German-Americans in Ohio's rural counties or to the state's business community."
And Blackwell could win — having taken an early pre-Republican primary lead (currently at around ten points) and garnering the national attention needed to gain support from his pears.
Ward Connerly, a black political powerhouse, himself, and successful crusader against racial and gender quotas in education, tells me, "a Blackwell victory would be very significant because it would illustrate that being a Republican is not the 'kiss of death' for a 'black' aspirant for higher office."
It's a message that the "party of Lincoln" has increasingly been trying to send. Republican outreach efforts are credited with increasing President Bush's share of the black vote from eight percent in 2000 to about 12 in 2004. There are miles to go yet (obviously), but it's progress. And it's something that Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman is devoted to — increasing black Americans' identification with the Republican party — speaking about it passionately both privately and publicly.
Addressing an NAACP audience last fall, Mehlman said, "If you give us a chance, we'll give you a choice." That's good stuff we all go for, but Mehlman doesn't have the power that Ken Blackwell does to pull it off. In one electoral triumph, Blackwell could achieve what no task force, outreach program or powerful speech ever will — making it "safe" for blacks to routinely vote Republican instead of being looked at as anomalies.
And Blackwell would do it in the healthiest way possible — without ever playing up race. "Blackwell is betting," Malanga writes, "that many black Americans may be ready for a candidate, like him, who doesn't preach victimology and doesn't see the world almost entirely in racial terms. Blackwell is a post-racial, post-civil rights campaigner; race rarely enters into his speeches and is barely a part of his political platform. And even when Blackwell does address racial issues — the achievement gap between black and white students, for instance — it's to tout free-market solutions like vouchers and charter schools." Which is why, Blackwell could prove to be "Jesse Jackson's worst nightmare."
Kathryn Lopez is the editor of National Review Online
Will the MSM make this "The Year of the Black Conservative" like they did to the bogus "Year of the Woman" in 1993? I seriously doubt it.
Should be 1992
If he is all that that article states, I hope that he is available to run the President in a few years.
It would mark the "Return of the visible black Republican".
At first when I read the headline, I thought that politically there was some group trying to change the politics of the GOP (which came back in the Reagan years). And then when I saw the subject I immediately thought back to the early 1980s and the black Republicans who lived down the block.
The black community has been conservative on moral issues. With the efforts by the left to draw parallels between the Homosexual Agenda and the black civil rights movement, the black community has put up resistance to that comparison.
But to answer your question, no it won't be a hot topic for the MSM. Expect more racist cartoons, more insults of Oreo Cookie, Uncle Tom, race traitor, etc. This is off the script from the DNC talking points, The media can't having a thinking voting public.
If conservative only stood for white people I wouldn't be dealing with conservativism at all. Conservatism is a combination and desire to see a government that small and respects family values. We're not a collective in a racial sense, we're a MORAL collective. Therefore nothing can make a black man a traitor or a sell-out by being a conservative. Those people whom assert they're sell-outs are doing an incredible disservice to rational debate and harmony. Mere rhetoric in my eyes.
The truth about the Black vote in 2004 is that in many important states the number was above the 11% average. In fact in 14 important states, California Florida Pa. Texas NC, Nev, Va WV and Wisc. among them, the average was 14%.
If we start seeing just 14% nation wide the rat is cooked.
That three percent is just around the corner. The rat has used every lie, every trick he has to scare Blacks about voting GOP. They are failing. The Black voter is listening to the GOP.
bump!
And a bump of Steele right back atcha!
Well-tempered Steele!
This looks so cute when you scroll down and see it. I just sit and watch them, lol.
That is wonderful!
It's one of the very best that you've done!
Bumping your comment, too. ;o)
Let us keep him in Ohio at least till 2012. Then we'll talk President or VP.
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