The GOP, Coloring Inside Its Lines
By Kevin Merida
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday , August 4, 2000
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 3 –– So it's over.
The Republicans' four-day extravaganza of multihued embrace came to an end tonight with a performance by the rump-shaking diva of '70s R&B, Chaka Khan. Who would have thought it? By our count, the GOP put on more than 30 presentations of diversity--speeches, pictures, music.
The program included a blind mountain climber, an Asian American scholar, a Hispanic Internet mogul, an American Samoan wrestling champion, an openly gay congressman and a black Baptist preacher who brought a rollicking church service into the hall by video remote.
Americans are now left to ponder what it all meant: Did it matter, was it real, was it a charade, will it last? This is a familiar discussion. Diversity--in government, in the media, in education, in the workplace--is one of the nation's most wrenching subjects--wrenching because it's blurry, hard to pin down and yet still stirs the most amazing passions. Merit or tokenism? Preferential treatment or fairness? The past or the future?
It is right on the border of diversity that hope butts up against cynicism.
Which brings us back to the Republican National Convention.
"If this convention sends a message to African American families and Hispanics and Asian Americans and women and disabled voters that we want them, then we will have been successful," said Ed Gillespie, a GOP strategist who was in charge of the convention program.
It's not surprising that Gillespie and his colleagues have been besieged with doubters. This is often what happens to institutions with poor records of diversity. Motives are questioned.
As former Texas governor Ann Richards, the Democrat who lost her reelection bid to George W. Bush in 1994, commented to Larry King about the GOP gathering: "I feel like I'm watching some kind of masquerade ball."
In other words, all show. As many commentators pointed out, the stage was far more diverse than the state delegations. Only 7 percent of the delegates were black or Hispanic. At least seven delegations were entirely white. In an odd way, the convention program was a version of affirmative action that is not reflected in the party's policies or its hierarchy.
The same point about the GOP's "show" was made in a different way by NAACP leader Kweisi Mfume, who had wanted to address the convention on the civil rights challenges facing the country but was turned down. Now it's true that Mfume is a former Democratic congressman, that most of the NAACP's members are Democrats and that the organization disagrees with Republican policies more often than not. But the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group, and Bush himself addressed its convention last month.
In rejecting Mfume's request to speak, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson invited him to sit in his box instead. "Any additional guests you have could be accommodated in my hospitality suite," Nicholson wrote, "which has a good view of the floor."
Mfume declined the offer. He believed that the Republicans were more interested in having him there symbolically than in dealing with the substance of his remarks. Mfume did, however, address a group of black Republicans privately.
The true test of diversity, say those who spend their lives campaigning for it, is: Are you willing to listen to uncomfortable truths? Does inclusion require conformity?
"Some of that cynicism is clearly justified given the makeup of some of the delegations," said Arizona Sen. John McCain. But he added: "This is about what we want the Republican Party to be--not what it is, but what we want it to be."
"Unless you get some of that diversification," he continued, "you will never win a general election."
Reality often follows perception. So first, say GOP officials, the party must change the perception. Diversifying the state delegations, says Gillespie, requires a more diverse base of voters. So, the program was designed "to reflect Governor Bush's intention to increase the share of voters who traditionally do not vote for us."
"We wanted to emphasize that fact," he added. "I think Al Gore and the Democrats have been served notice. There is no precinct they should take for granted."
Politics is a game of calculation. Republicans are desperate to return to the White House. They also want to become the country's dominant political party, and so by necessity they must expand their reach. By 2050, a majority of the country's population is projected to be nonwhite.
Politics is also a game of marketing. For the GOP, the trick becomes how to draw new moderate voters while not alienating
the conservative coalition that Ronald Reagan helped build. That coalition, drawn from the South and West, has served the party well in national elections. A national political convention offers perhaps the most important four days of the election season in terms of party packaging.
"You can't miss an opportunity," said Tom Rath, a veteran GOP strategist from New Hampshire. "We're a little like the Democrats in '92. We want to win."
And so the opportunity was not missed.
You had Rabbi Marvin Hier introducing a presentation on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance. You had former Vietnam POW Everett Alvarez leading the Pledge of Allegiance. You had Cuban-born Jon Secada singing onstage. You even had outreach to the World Wrestling Federation vote. "Let me get this straight," said the strapping man with dark sunglasses as he prowled the stage. "You've invited The Rock to the Republican National Convention?"
You even had Condoleeza Rice, Bush's chief foreign policy adviser, interspersing a talk about America's interests abroad with a personal anecdote about her father.
"He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote," she said. "The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I."
Whether any of these speeches, performances or video clips will influence a change in voters' political thinking won't be known immediately. The Republican Party will have to get busy.
Said Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, an African American and one of the few elected officials who seemed to have no problem getting time onstage: "We've still got to work on what the image of our party is."
© 2000 The Washington Post
washingtonpost.com
As regards the 700+ millionaires who've allegedly funded GW Bush's presidential race, I'd just point to the fact that, at least, Bush was not anointed by the powerful Bilderberg lobby --here's a clue:
Bilderberg Fears Buchanan
By James P. Tucker Jr.
spotlight.org;
Behind the closely guarded gates at the Chateau du Lac, 20 miles from Brussels, Belgium, Bilderberg participants are deeply fearful of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign.
While the environment is on their agenda, Buchanan is much more on their minds. These sons of smokestack industrialists actually have little concern for clean air or water but for controllably creating a global environmental agency that will enhance their power.
They are using their immense power to pressure the media into ignoring Buchanan's campaign lest his ideas become more widely known among American voters. They are determined to keep Buchanan out of the presidential debates because they know he could toy with George W. Bush and Al Gore.
They are keenly aware that, if Buchanan's views were well known to Americans, he would be their choice for president. This would end Bilderberg's immense but hidden power.
Bilderberg is also anxious to suppress the fact (SPOTLIGHT, May 15) that neither the Democrats nor Republicans enjoy majority support of American voters and a great awakening could launch Buchanan into the White House.
Buchanan is the only viable candidate since the late Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio) to stand for everything Bilderberg opposes: an America-first foreign policy, jealously protecting national sovereignty, opposing "free trade" deals in favor of fair trade, not empowering the United Nations until it becomes a world government, non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries and not spilling American blood unless our borders are threatened.
They are also concerned that Buchanan is bucking the old left-right, liberal-conservative labels and is emerging as a classic populist. He has recruited a black woman and self-proclaimed leftist and reached out to all segments of American society, including labor, in a campaign that frightens the Establish ment and mainstream media.
Historically, Bilderberg has owned presidents.
Since President Nixon's years, they have owned both horses in two-horse races between Democrats and Republicans. George W.'s daddy, President George Bush, was a member of Bilderberg's brother group, the Trilateral Commission.
Gore's boss, President Clinton, is a member of the Trilaterals and Bilderberg.
For the first time since Bilderberg met as a formal group in 1954, it is on the defensive. For 46 years, Bilderberg has been able to conduct world affairs in secrecy, with virtually all of the human race ignorant of their existence. But Bilderberg awareness has grown since SPOTLIGHT prompted interest with the European newspapers and Bilderberg now lives in dread of exposure.
Despite extreme efforts at secrecy and cover-up with the help of the mainstream press sources always exposed their meeting site. Bilderberg is terrified of the thought of being destroyed by public outrage. They fear demands that they reimburse the human race for the costs exacted when they raise taxes, give away taxpayers' money for their own enrichment and spill American blood in contrived wars such as in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia.
syninfo.com
Now, you'll ask me, what the heck that Spotlight conspirascreed has to do with "Bush vs. Gore" since it basically pretends that Bilderberg's bugaboo was actually Pat Buchanan? Well, my answer is quite simple: BILDERBERG NEVER FEARED A BUCHANAN ENTERING THE US PRESIDENTIAL RACE!
Indeed, this whole yarn about Bilderbergers anxiously convening in a Brussels suburb and mulling over a possible victory for populist Buchanan was a HOAX.... Or, more accurately, a DECOY, that is, a media cover to deflect public attention from the Bilderbergers' REAL jitters: a Bush victory.... After all, who could really believe that the world's best clued-in brains and insiders (think of H. Kissinger, Soros and their likes) may ever have considered Pat Buchanan as anything else than a non-starter? There was no need for the Bilderbergers to raise the issue of "how to thwart Buchanan's rise to power?" because the guy couldn't possibly be an effective challenger to the US's political duopoly. However, GW Bush was the real bogeyman because of his isolationist leanings and his stubbornly sticking to Powell and Rice as his foreign policy's dream team.... Yet, Bilderberg would never let such a bombshell clue leak out to the media --can you imagine the PR-quake such a news would trigger?? The shadowy Bilderberg is conspiring to sort out between two MAINSTREAM candidates in the US Presidential election??? To be sure, that's really not politically correct.... Hence the Buchanan smokescreen and Bilderberg showcasing itself as a "neutral" observer of the US election, albeit with a rightful concern about radical ringers such as Pat....
Gus. |
