Posted on 07/26/2006 4:23:45 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
It has always mystified me that Condoleezza Rice is a Republican. She's black, she's a woman, she's smart. (OK, I hear all you Republicans snorting and getting ready to e-mail. I will grudgingly allow there are other bright right-wingers -- but few black women Republicans, and who would sign up after the disasterous Bush White House response to Hurricane Katrina?)
It seems so counterintuitive that Rice, a woman raised in the racially charged atmosphere of Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s, who knew two of the girls who were killed in the church bombing there in 1963, who had to overcome latent prejudice in academia, both as a woman and as an African American, should be a parrot for George W. Bush, a man so out of touch. What has she been smoking?
In fact, Rice was a bona fide Democrat until 1980, when she had an epiphany after overhearing a remark by President Jimmy Carter. He said he was shocked by the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. Rice, a scholar of Russian politics, was "shocked that anybody would be shocked by that," explained Nicholas Lemann in a profile of Rice for the New Yorker. Two years later she flipped to the GOP.
In some ways, Rice had always been a conservative, Lemann reported, untouched by the militancy of the '60s, including the civil rights movement; an only child who never rebelled; a woman who applied for post-graduate work at Stanford University on stationery that had her name embossed in gold across the top.
But as the saying goes, it's never too late to change. Or, in Rice's case, revert.
The Democrats could use Condi in the next election as a presidential candidate. Think about it: The Bushes got their hands on Rice when she was young and impressionable. She worked for Bush senior and got to know him well before she signed up with Dubya. It is hard sometimes to believe, when one hears her at press conferences or listens to her speeches, that she is saying what she believes, but rather that she is elegantly explaining -- since he can barely do it himself -- President Bush's positions.
"He's actually influencing her," notes Lemann, "and she seems to be performing for him the immensely useful service of transforming shorthand impulses into developed stated policy. When you hear Rice speaking, that's what Bush would sound like if he were as articulate as Rice is."
So what the Dems need to do is figure out how George capitivated her and impress upon her the error of her ways. I would love to see a woman in the White House next time, but I don't think Hillary Clinton is going to make it; her heart is in the right place, but she is too divisive and her recent speech at the Economic Club of Chicago made me want to put my head down on the table and have a long nap.
Hillary does not have the rhetorical flourishes to impassion those around her.
And, Rice -- if only she could be loosened from the Bush grasp and reprogrammed to become less aloof -- would make a dandy Democratic candidate. She could even go on the David Letterman show, a la Bill Clinton and his saxophone, and play the piano.
So this is my advice to the Democrats. Recruit Rice, develop some kind of solid program we bleeding heart liberals could embrace and then, get back into the White House! Got that?
mailto:jhunter@suntimes.com
Rule number one, if you're trying to figure out the mind of a leftist STOP THINKING and whatever you do, do not attempt to use logic or reason. It's OK to feel if you must how awful it must have been for the people who lost their homes but beyond that just accept the fact that everything was Bush's fault.
Just another misrepresentation in an article made up of them.
It seems so counterintuitive that Rice, a woman raised in the racially charged atmosphere of Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s, who knew two of the girls who were killed in the church bombing there in 1963, who had to overcome latent prejudice in academia, both as a woman and as an African American, should be a parrot for George W. Bush, a man so out of touch. What has she been smoking?
i.e., Republicans murder blacks. Ipso facto, black Republicans have been brainwashed.
And it also makes it obvious that liberals long for their heyday of the 60s when blacks were treated as sub humans and stuck on the liberal plantation.
I believe that liberals are actually disappointed that blacks in this country have progessed.
I still haven't figured out what Bush did WRONG after Katrina.
Didn't you know when disasters strike the proper order of response is Federal, State and then local? < /sarcasm>
The next time it floods in Central Texas, I'll be on the phone calling FEMA.
NOT!
Alright maybe there are some who would disagree with me on abortion, but that is my number one issue. I cannot even fathom seeing someone killing a baby for any reason or being for this. However, I guess clumping every Republican in the group was not right so I will rephrase to say conservative.
Good lord what is it with the pro baby killers? I am seriously amazed that you are on this website.
The question is not if Condi can be reprogrammed, but if Jennifer Hunter can be brought back into the realm of reality.
Apparently the dumb author has no idea that the KKK was composed of mostly democRATS.
After reading most of the replies, I get to her picture. Give her a few more years, and she will be giving Helen Thomas real competition for ugly. She already has the same dumb writing style.
 |
 What an incongruous juxtaposition of reality. I swear, if I were a journalist I'd be embarrassed by the writings of my fellow colleagues. |
Funny... I've often wondered why some people who seem to be intelligent in some ways are liberal. I always just assumed that their parents dropped them on their heads when they were little, or they have some other form of brain damage.
So, does it follow that all smart black women need to be Dems? Or, that women who are smart black and republican are dumb?
What an a$$. I hate the MSM.
That comment pretty much nails this article!
Why is it that every time some lib mentions prejudice against minorities, they fail to recognize that the institution being prejudicial is overrun by liberals? Hollywood, Jim Crow laws, KKK, MSM, etc.
I think misinformed, and embarrassingly so.
What a rank piece to appear in a major American newspaper. It doesn't contain much meaning, it confusingly alternates between straight reporting and partisan bomb-throwing. The mispelling of the word "disastrous" is egregious, especially to be not caught by the editor.
Isn't it amazing how little these knuckleheads at newspapers know about history? The "National Black Republican Association" recently published an article called "Democrats Hijacked GOP's Civil Rights Record". In the article I read the same story about Condi that I had read before- She remembered her father registering as a rep because the dems in the segregated south would not allow him to. She kept that in mind when it was her time. I have NEVER heard ANYWHERE that Condi was a dem- ever.
The dems history with blacks is a disgraceful one and one they should NEVER call attention to. Besides, Condi is WAY too smart to ever be a dem.
I'm "pro baby killer" now? You know absolutely nothing about me. This is what political discussion has devolved into. There is no neutral ground. You're either a right-wing Christian fundamentalist or you are pro baby killer.
You're right, why am I on this website? Can you suggest a site to me that allows thoughtful discussion without the go/no go crap that you're offering?
That's about the dumbest generalization I've ever heard.
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