Mississippi Tea Party: Meaningful Numbers of Black People Could Never Vote Republican
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The Black Republican section of the GOP website is a wonderful place to visit. It is part of the outreach program launched by Reince Priebus shortly after the last national election. It would have been difficult, not impossible, to admit that the Republican Party has wavered between hostility and indifference toward minorities for more than a generation. It isn’t only minorities that have been put off. Any person who is not committed to white supremacy has to have been offended.
The leader of the Republican Party had to offer something different.
So he made a promise on behalf of the Republican Party. The “Republican National Committee vows to be much more serious about outreach to African-Americans than ever before.”
Than ever before? Well, okay. The past is ambiguous and it’s the future that matters. Right?
Still, the turnaround, or the amplification of effort, or the much more serious than ever continuing outreach, has had a rough several months. Rand Paul has been the one faltering light in the darkness. He should be recognized for valor in confronting black students in his own awkward way.
Black candidates have carefully explained that Civil War era Democrats were for slavery while Lincoln was a Republican. And Dixiecrats were for segregation forever while Republicans were for civil rights now.
There was that best forgotten migration of “racial conservatives” to the Republican Party after Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights, and anti-discrimination, and Voting Rights bills passed. And there is the current season’s voting suppression efforts.
But as black Republicans point out, Democrats foster a plantation mentality. And besides, Party of Lincoln. Black people, or at least a lot of black people, are conservatives where it counts: in their hearts. Sooner or later outreach will work.
The delightful Black Republicans section of the GOP website remains a respite from the strife, a center of outreach in a racial storm.
This is a place where African Americans can come together to share why they are conservatives and what events, people or philosophies shaped their political thought.
Outside the wonderful outreach section of the official Republican internet presence, Tea Party people are angry as angry can be. Money is flowing to a legal challenge to one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate. Thad Cochran of Mississippi narrowly beat back a challenge from even more conservative Chris McDaniel.
From Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to Blanche Bruce and Edward Brooke, African Americans have a long history of involvement with the Republican Party.
Senator Cochran survived by appealing to non-traditional participants in Republican primary elections. He asked black voters to help him win. And so he won.
Chris McDaniel cried foul. He refused to concede. In fact, he promises to go to court over the vote.
Thanks to illegal voting from liberal Democrats, my opponent stole last week’s runoff election, but I’m not going down without a fight.
– Chris McDaniel, in a mass email, July 2, 2014
Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, housing, voting are issues that echo into today’s reality. For all the sleight of hand, everyone knows how the shell game has been played. Racial Conservatives have moved from one shell to another, from the Democratic Party of old to the Republican Party of today and tomorrow.
Plantation, conservative at heart, Party of Lincoln. The arguments vanish in the wind as outraged conservatives make a new case for truth. It is the truth that was already apparent.
Black people voting for a conservative Republican? In substantial numbers? Enough votes to swing a primary election? All declaring themselves to be genuine supporters of the Republican Party?
Conservative Republicans make their case, loud and strong. The Mississippi primary vote was a fraud. Meaningful numbers of black people would never, could never, be genuine Republicans.
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Sensible minorities are probably just like sensible majorities…there’s nobody left to vote for really
Thank you, Rachael and Timmy.
The new argument made by Tea Baggers strikes me as a direct contradiction to conservative outreach. The heart of their case is that sensible minority voters cannot be expected to ever vote for Republicans.
Tea Baggers are just sore losers.
I remember better times in America, before the Tea Party and the other crazies. The fools in Mississippi need to get over themselves. Thad Cochran won!