Hanging by a Thread

There is a political party in America that is hanging by a thread, a fiber even.  It has had recent successes and, indeed, controls one house of Congress.  However, its relevance and future success is imperiled by the fact that it exists only as long as it perpetuates a myth.  As Abraham Lincoln said, "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time."  Sure, it helps when the media provides cover for your fabrication.  Getting the truth out is like your eyes trying to penetrate a thick cloud to see reality.  It's very hard to do.  Plus, if the other party generally cooperates in perpetuating the lie, it's even harder to get at the truth.  If that party fails to strenuously rebut the lie and becomes a patsy for the other side, the lie becomes fact in the minds of the undecided. 

In this case, the party being lied about has within its means the power and the opportunity to effectively demolish the lie.  But, through tradition, inertia, and perhaps a false sense of guilt, they allow the lie to not only survive, but to be embellished and expanded.  After a number of years, the lie becomes fact in the mind of those who have not searched for the truth.  That's where we are today.

What is the myth?  What political party is the target of the myth?  It's the stupid party, of course, the Republican Party.  The me-too, squeamish Republicans who too often rise to positions of leadership within the party are, apparently, unable to stand up for the truth.  Or maybe they actually believe the lie.

The myth, the lie, is of course that the Republican Party is the party of racism.  There is no evidence of this.  In fact, the facts show clearly that the party of racism is the Democratic Party.  More than that, it is the progressive (liberal) wing of the Democratic Party that originated and fostered racism in the form of Jim Crow policies and segregation.  It is the Democratic Party that provided a comfortable home to US Senators who openly participated in the KKK.  It is the Democratic Party that blocked civil rights laws for decades.  And it wasn't just southern Democrats who voted to block such legislation, it was Democratic Senators from the north who joined with them.

Most folks think that open housing legislation was proposed and passed by the Democrats, but, in reality, it was President Richard Nixon who proposed such legislation.  And while President Harry Truman, a Democrat, issued an order to integrate the Armed Forces, it was a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, who actually implemented integration. 

Segregation was the brainchild of the intellectual left.  Progressive founder Richard T. Ely, along with his compatriots on the left, decided that black Americans had not sufficiently "progressed" to a point where they should be integrated with white Americans.  Ely and a blatantly racist President (who often used the "N" word) segregated the south and Washington, DC, as they gained power.  Woodrow Wilson, considered the founding father of modern liberalism, re-segregated the US government when he became president.  It's not too surprising when you consider that as a 12 year old, living at the time in Georgia, he cheered for the victory of the Confederacy.  Wilson remained throughout his life an unrepentant racist.

But the Democrats and the Progressives didn't stop with segregation.  They passed bills like the Davis-Bacon Act that is still law today.  It was passed with the express purpose of denying black Americans an opportunity to enter and compete in building construction trades.  A reading of the Congressional Record during the debate in Congress over Davis-Bacon makes one cringe.  It's a record of Democrat after Democrat, North and South, airing their racist comments and deploring the fact that newly skilled black workers are displacing white workers.  The Davis-Bacon Act was an undisguised attempt to bar black workers from competing with white workers in building and trades.  At that time, black workers were denied the opportunity to join unions, so the racist, Democrat controlled Congress passed a bill that specified that only union workers could be employed in government construction projects.

In his book, Chesapeake, James Michener, deplores the fact that skilled black tradesmen in nearby Maryland (on the Eastern shore of the Chesapeake) are denied the opportunity to work on construction of the Bay Bridge.  Michener, a proud liberal, never mentions whose fault this is (he may have been ignorant of the source), but he implies it is the fault of the Republicans.  In truth, it is simply the Davis-Bacon Act passed by a racist, Democrat controlled Congress that blocked black workers from working on the bridge.

Where did the early gun laws originate?  They were conceived and executed by white Democrat racists and were designed to keep guns out of the hands of black Americans.  Where did the racist policy of eugenics originate?  It originated with a group of progressive intellectuals, led by Margaret Sanger, who sought to curtail the births of black Americans.  Who were the first proponents of abortion?  You guessed it, a group of white, racist progressives who saw abortion as an opportunity to limit the number of children born to black Americans.

It is a matter of record that it was the Republicans who supported Civil Rights legislation over the objections of the "progressive" Democrats.  But the myth of Republican racism is so pernicious and widespread today that Republican President Abraham Lincoln is described as a Whig, not as a Republican.  Commentators and even history textbooks go to great lengths to point out that Lincoln ran as a Whig candidate for US Senate, and that he was a Whig longer than he was a Republican.  Duh!  He was assassinated by a racist, Southern Democrat, John Wilkes Booth, denying him the opportunity to live a normal life span.  And, of course, Lincoln was the second Republican nominee for President of the United States, the first being John C. Fremont, the famous trail blazer.  And it was Lincoln who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and, shortly before he died, advocated the enfranchisement of black Americans.

Today, of course, white conservatives are continuously smeared by the national news media.  Everything they do is denounced as being racist.  According to the news media, the Tea Party was and is racist, even though there is disproportionate black leadership in the Tea Party.  Using all sorts of contortions and illogical twists and turns, the progressive/liberal left identifies every policy of conservatives as racist.  Lower taxes are racist.  Smaller government is racist.  A strong national defense is racist.  Constitutional government is racist.

But, if you think it is tough to be a white conservative, think again.  The left reserves their most poisonous venom for black conservatives like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  Who can forget the famous article in USA Today by Julianne Malveaux who expressed hope that Justice Thomas would succumb to an early death?  Or even the attacks on liberal journalist Juan Williams, who had the temerity to appear on FOX News and to express his concern about turban wearing Middle Eastern men boarding an airplane he was riding on after 9/11?  And let's not forget about the attacks on comedian Bill Cosby, when he spoke out about welfare moms who did not control and discipline their children?  And we can't ignore the scathing attacks on Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell.

Why?  Why are African American conservatives subject to such wild and histrionic attacks by the left?  Why do liberals become unhinged when a conservative black American speaks out or gets elected to public office? 

The answer is simple—survival.  There is no group of Americans that threaten the survival of the Democratic Party more than black conservatives.  That's why liberals and Democrats reserve their most vicious and mean attacks for black conservatives.  Quite simply, black conservatives threaten the monolithic political grip that the Democrats have on the black community.  And while that grip is huge—more than 90% of black Americans vote for Democrat candidates—is survives by a thread.  That thread is the lie that Republicans hate black Americans and that they are at their core, racists.

I found it intriguing that even after the most outrageous and foul attacks on Clarence Thomas, his support in the black community remained near 60%.  The Democrats have a right to be terrified.  If they lose just 20% of the black vote, they are dead as a duck.  They have no hope of victory, nationally.  They are finished as a national party.

But, the Republicans, as normal, have ignored this opportunity.  They ignore the fact that on many issues the black community is with the GOP.  Black Americans care about quality education and they know that their children are getting a lousy education because they have been sold out by Democratic allegiance to teacher's unions.  When black Americans have an opportunity to experience the benefits of school choice (school vouchers in any form), they embrace it wholeheartedly.  The polls also show that black Americans support a return to prayer in schools, and they want inexpensive fuel and power—something that the Republican Party has historically supported.  Black Americans want a minimum of regulations and licenses that bar their entry into the marketplace.  Throughout the years, black Americans have started new businesses in numbers disproportionate to their population.  Democrats offer a hand out, Republicans offer opportunity.  Liberals favor abortion and gay marriage, two policies that the black community opposes by wide margins.  Democrats embrace a "new" morality, while African Americans hold on dearly to traditional moral values.  While Democrats deny black Americans the right to own firearms to protect themselves, Republicans support the 2nd Amendment.  On these and so many other issues, black Americans and conservatives have much in common, but on election day, conservative candidates typically get no more than 5% of the black vote.

Why, because the big lie that conservatives are racist keeps black Americans from even considering the idea of voting Republican.  Yet, it's only a matter of time until the dam bursts, and that is what scares the living daylights out of liberals.  White liberals know it is a lie and that's why they are so terrified.  The Democratic Party simply cannot survive if 20% or more of the black vote goes to the GOP.  That's a thread that is already frayed.

How scared are the Democrats?  They are terrified.  That's why they targeted Allen West and spent several million dollars to defeat him.  They targeted one candidate, not because he was the most conservative in the GOP, but because he was both black and conservative.  His very existence as a United States Congressman was a threat to their myth that all conservatives are racists.

So what's the answer?  Because of the far left media that aids and abets this terrible lie, the Republican Party will never penetrate the fog and get the truth to the black community.  That's a fact of life that conservatives and Republicans must accept.  This lie is guarded by the left like the crown jewels of England.  It is their kryptonite.  They die politically if the truth comes out.

But the solution is not nearly as difficult as it seems.  If the GOP will simply attack this problem by recruiting black conservatives to run for office at every level, they can demolish this myth in short order.  That's why the appointment of Tim Scott to the US Senate by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was so powerful and so threatening to the Democrats.

Just imagine what would happen if the GOP abandoned its tradition of letting candidates work their way up in the Party and instead openly recruited conservative black Republicans like Allen West to run in winnable Congressional districts.  It is either this or continued failure on election day.

And the same thing holds true for Hispanic Americans.  That's why my ticket for 2016 is Rubio-Scott.  Both Marco Rubio and Tim Scott are products of the Tea Party movement and both are rock-solid conservatives.  If you want to see the Democratic bosses squirm and pee in their pants, then this is just the ticket for 2016.  The Republicans can deny being racist until they are blue in the face, but it won't make any difference.  The only way to demonstrate that they are not racist is to nominate and elect both African Americans and Hispanics with solid conservative credentials to public office.  

There is always a tipping point in any argument.  The tipping point in this long, ugly debate is to simply nominate and elect conservative blacks and Hispanics to Congress in numbers previously unheard of.  Once the numbers are so large that they cannot be ignored, the death watch for the Democratic Party can commence.