WHY NOT THE GOP?

Well, you're in good company. It's the same for (us) Jews too. We're not *supposed* to be Repubs, but we are, hopefully in growing numbers, as with others.

Everyone does whats in their own percieved best interest...Some choose to leave the plantation for a chance of a better life....No guarentees...just a fair chance..

You forgot the Blacks who are tired of being told by their "so called" leaders they are still slaves and must continue to live in poverty in order to be accepted as a true balck person instead of an Uncle Tom.

I can't help it; my rant from another thread fits here:

Let's not forget that the Democratic Party is the party of KKK Kleagle Robert Byrd, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox and all the rest of the segregationist South. The party that kept Blacks in actual slavery before the Civil War, formed the Ku Klux Klan after that war and has herded them into crime ridden ghettos while keeping them in poverty in the 20th century. The party that has cynically consigned generations of poor black children to lives of illiterate despair because of the political debt it owes to the teacher’s union. The party that celebrates Communist dictators like Fidel Castro. The party that holds Osama Bin Laden up as an example to America. The party of Democrat kingmaker, black racist and anti-Semite Al Sharpton. The party of presidents that lie under oath, suborn perjury, rape women and sell pardons to the highest bidder. The party that votes early, late … and often. The party that divides rather than unifies.

Did Southern Democrats' racism and hatred stop sharecropper Fannie Lou Ham- er from demanding a place within the party, and at the 1964 convention? No, she and her allies (the Mississippi Freedom Democrats) decided that they identified with the principles of the party - even though their state's white politicians were defying those principles. And she made a difference by demanding a place at the table.

Blacks who, agreeing with the principles of the Republican Party, demand a place at the table in accordance with their merits will meet all the resistance encountered by J.C. Watts. Poor guy couldn't get no respect nohow . . .

</sarcasm>

WHAT SHOULD ATTRACT PEOPLE IS THE FACTS

As the Trent Lott imbroglio illustrates, we Republicans lose by forgetting the heritage of our Grand Old Party. That is the theme of "Back to Basics for the Republican Party" (see www.republicanbasics.com). The speeches and devotion by Republican heroes of the past are a vast, untapped resource for Republican leaders of today -- we should draw upon their zeal and eloquence in countering the Democrats' lies and calumnies. Here, for example, are excerpts from 1876 campaign speeches by a renowned Republican orator who along with so many others should be revered by the GOP today.

"The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life.

The Democratic party is incapable of learning. The Democratic party is incapable of anything but prejudice and hatred. Every man that is a Democrat is a Democrat because he hates something; every man that is a Republican is a Republican because he loves something.

I am opposed to the Democratic party, and I will tell you why. Every State that seceded from the United States was a Democratic State. Every ordinance of secession that was drawn was drawn by a Democrat. Every man that shot Union soldiers was a Democrat. Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was a Democrat. The man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat. Every man that sympathized with the assassin -- every man glad that the noblest President ever elected was assassinated, was a Democrat. Every man that wanted the privilege of whipping another man to make him work for him for nothing and pay him with lashes on his naked back, was a Democrat. Every man that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man that clutched from shrieking, shuddering, crouching mothers, babes from their breasts, and sold them into slavery, was a Democrat. Every man that wept over the corpse of slavery was a Democrat. Every man that cursed Abraham Lincoln because he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation -- the grandest paper since the Declaration of Independence -- every one of them was a Democrat. Soldiers, every scar you have on your heroic bodies was given you be a Democrat. Every scar, every arm that is lacking, every limb that is gone, is a souvenir of a Democrat. I want you to recollect it. Every man that was the enemy of human liberty in this country was a Democrat.

I am a Republican. I will tell you why: This is the only free Government in the world. The Republican party made it so. The Republican party took the chains from four millions of people. The Republican party, with the wand of progress, touched the auction- block and it became a school house, The Republican party put down the Rebellion, saved the nation, kept the old banner afloat in the air, and declared that slavery of every kind should be extirpated from the face of this continent. What more? I am a Republican because it is the only free party that ever existed. It is a party that has a platform as broad as humanity, a platform as broad as the human race, a party that says you shall have all the fruit of the labor of your hands, a party that says you may think for yourself, a party that says, no chains for the hands, no fetters for the soul.

I am a Republican because that party allows me to be free -- allows me to do my own thinking in my own way. I am a Republican because it is a party grand enough and splendid enough and sublime enough to invite every human being in favor of liberty and progress to fight shoulder to shoulder for the advancement of mankind. It invites the Methodist, it invites the Catholic, it invites the Presbyterian and every kind of sectarian; it invites the Freethinker; it invites the infidel, provided he is in favor of giving to every other human being every chance and every right that he claims for himself. I am a Republican, I tell you. There is room in the Republican air for every wing; there is room on the Republican sea for every sail. Republicanism says to every man: "Let your soul be like an eagle; fly out in the great dome of thought, and question the stars for yourself." But the Democratic party says; "Be blind owls, sit on the dry limb of a dead tree, and hoot only when that party says hoot."

In the Republican party there are no followers. We are all leaders. There is not a party chain. There is not a party lash. Any man that does not love this country, any man that does not love liberty, any man that is not in favor of human progress, that is not in favor of giving to others all he claims for himself; we do not ask him to vote the Republican ticket. I am a Republican because that party believes in free labor. It believes that free labor will give us wealth. It believes in free thought, because it believes that free thought will give us truth. You do not know what a grand party you belong to. I never want any holier or grander title of nobility than that I belong to the Republican party, and have fought for the liberty of man."

And so on, and on and on.

Excellent!

The biggest error black voters make is that we constantly vote along party lines (mainly for the democrats). The Democrats have taken us fore granted far too often. In order to gain full political power, there has to be a threat that black voters will vote for republican candidates, and turn out in large number.