A friend of your's suggested I address this post directly to you... [ggg]. Enjoy.
Message 14935683
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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Saturday, Dec. 2, 2000 12:35 p.m. EST
How Bush Forfeited the Black Vote
Florida post-election squabbling aside, the most
astonishing development to emerge on Nov. 7 was
that African-Americans, whom George Bush made a
point of courting as no GOP presidential
candidate before him, deserted the Bush-Cheney
ticket in droves.
There's no disputing that Vice President Gore,
despite his insultingly condescending "Preacher
Al" speaking style while addressing black groups
and history of antagonism with Jesse Jackson,
cleaned Bush's clock in the black community.
Gore picked up 90 percent of all
African-American votes cast - more than
"America's first black president" Bill Clinton
had in 1996 running against Bob Dole. Dole's
campaign pretty much ignored the black
community, yet he still won 13 percent of their
votes.
Bush did even worse in his home state of Texas,
where more than a quarter of African-American
voters backed him for governor in 1998. This
time around he got just 5 percent of their
votes.
So what happened? Why did Bush's campaign fail
to resonate with African-Americans - despite all
the talk about reaching out, an amazingly
successful record of improving education for
Texas minorities, the promise of serious Cabinet
posts for black superstars like Condoleezza Rice
and Colin Powell and a convention that at times
looked like "Showtime at the Apollo."
Though surveys show most blacks support
traditional Republican issues like education
vouchers, school prayer, "three strikes and
you're out" laws and a $500-per-child federal
tax credit, when it comes to casting their
votes, African-Americans still don't trust the
GOP.
And this is one area where the Democrats have
run circles around Republicans, driving up
distrust with race-baiting rhetoric and
polarizing demagoguery. Democrats never think
twice about portraying Republicans as closet KKK
members who, as Gore once put it himself, "don't
even want to count you [blacks] in the census."
In this year's presidential campaign, the most
vivid example of Democrat race baiting was the
NAACP's commercial blaming Bush for the 1998
dragging death of James Byrd.
Despite this outrageously ugly and divisive
smear, the only response from team Bush was a
call for the NAACP to drop the ad. Democrats
merely laughed their protests off.
The controversy catapulted the "Bush killed
Byrd" ad onto national news shows, where it was
broadcast and rebroadcast as talking heads
pondered the commercial's fairness.
The result? Polls that had predicted low black
turnout for Gore turned around on a dime. A
record number of black voters made the
difference in the Missouri, Georgia and Florida
U.S. Senate races. In the Sunshine State,
African-Americans even outvoted whites as a
percentage of the population.
And in Texas, where Byrd's death hit home, 80
percent of black voters who had previously voted
for Bush jumped ship and backed Gore.
As Democrats had a field day ginning up racial
resentment against the GOP, Bush-Cheney took a
pass on a whole host of opportunities to fight
back. And there were many issues big and small
that Republicans could have - and should have -
raised in order to call the Democrats' bluff on
race.
For eight years, Bill Clinton has been allowed
to cultivate an image as savior to America's
black community with nary a discouraging word
from his critics, whose silence on the issue
helped Gore immensely in this election.
But when two witnesses came forward earlier this
year saying they heard Clinton repeatedly use
the "N" word in reference to a Little Rock black
leader, the GOP looked the other way, apparently
thinking the charge was too dicey.
Former Clinton bodyguard Larry Patterson and
Texas lawyer Dolly Kyle Browing, a longtime
Clinton paramour, told Fox News they heard
Clinton use the racial slur while he was
governor.
Similar charges that Hillary Clinton slurred
Jews nearly blew her U.S. Senate campaign out of
the water. Her support was plummeting like a
rock among New York's Jewish voters, a crucial
demographic for any Democratic candidate, until
her opponent Rick Lazio made it clear he
wouldn't touch the issue.
Had the tables been turned, and two witnesses
turned up on national TV claiming Bush had used
the "N" word, is there any doubt how Democrats
and their media allies would have treated the
story?
What if a tape recording of Bush's brother Neil
using the "N" word turned up. Imagine the media
feeding frenzy - and the commercial the NAACP
would make - if such a tape existed.
It doesn't. But there is a recording of First
Brother Roger Clinton slurring blacks with
reckless abandon:
"Some junior high n----r kicked Steve's ass
while he was trying to help his brothers out;
junior high or sophomore in high school.
Whatever it was, Steve had the n----r down.
However it was, it was Steve's fault. He had the
n----r down, he let him up. The n----r
blindsided him."
For every "Bush killed Byrd" NAACP ad, what if
the GOP had run a commercial featuring that gem
from the Clinton family album.
And what about the series of photos of President
Clinton himself cavorting in an Afro wig at a
1997 Martha's Vineyard soiree. The evening's
entertainment? An Afro wig-wearing band of white
folks who called themselves "The Boogies."
Blacks don't usually take kindly to white
minstrel shows. But on this one, the GOP gave
Clinton a pass.
And it's not just Clinton who is vulnerable to
the kind of race-baiting low blows the Democrats
have perfected. Gore has plenty to answer for -
or at least would have, if the Bush-Cheney
campaign had made any of it an issue.
Ignored by Republicans were the black Secret
Service agents who filed a lawsuit over the
summer claiming that they were discriminated
against on the vice president's security detail.
The charge made African-American Congresswoman
Cynthia McKinney angry enough to complain about
Gore's notorious "low Negro tolerance level."
Reaction from the Bush-Cheney team? Zilch.
And how about Mattie Lucy Payne, the Gore
family's black nanny who complained to a
Tennessee reporter that on trips up north, the
veep's parents would frequent whites-only
restaurants while she had to cool her heels in
their hot car like a family dog.
Somehow the Democrat media never found Payne's
account particularly interesting. But if she had
worked for the Bushes instead of the Gores,
Katie bar the door. You can bet that Jesse
Jackson would have been marching outside the
Texas governor's mansion within nano-seconds of
her first interview - complete with full media
entourage.
Are these the kind of issues on which a
presidential election should turn? Certainly
not.
But when Democrats make cheap-shot, low-blow,
race-based fear mongering the focus of their
appeal to African-Americans, and Republicans
don't call their bluff, guess which side is
going to win?
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