GOP second-tier slams frontrunners for skipping debate

September 28, 2007

Last night, Morgan State University in Baltimore hosted a nationally televised debate for Republican presidential hopefuls, billed as the first ever tailored specifically to the concerns of the African-American community.

As has been widely reported, all of the top four GOP candidates decided not to show up. Event organizers left podiums on the stage for them, just in case they had a change of heart, but Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney all said they had better things to do with their time.

They’ve been taking quite a bit of heat for their absence, even from fellow Republicans. Newt Gingrich had called their decisions an “enormous error” and “fundamentally wrong,” and had said the scheduling excuses were “baloney”; Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman urged the candidates to reconsider; and former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp said their decisions make it seem as though Republicans do not want black votes.

But the field’s second- and third-tier candidates really let Frudy McRomney have it on stage.

“I apologize for the candidates who aren’t here. I think it’s a disgrace that they aren’t here,” Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), a presidential hopeful, told the audience. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you and I’m sorry to those who are watching that they are not here.”

Asked before the debate whether he accepted his rivals’ claims of scheduling conflicts, Brownback said, “If it was a high enough priority, it would get on the schedule.”

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, another candidate who made the trip, called the situation “embarrassing” for his rivals. “We’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go, and we don’t get there if we don’t sit down and work through issues,” he told the appreciative crowd.

So, what were Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, and Romney doing last night?

They were raising more money.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is in California today, raising money and accepting the endorsement of former GOP governor Pete Wilson. The AP noted it was a “mixed blessing” for Giuliani “due to Wilson’s hardline stand on illegal immigration,” which was credited for “driving Hispanics from the GOP in California.”

Sen. John McCain will be in New York City tonight, appearing in an “Exchange of Ideas” campaign event with top Reagan White House speechwriter Peggy Noonan.

Ex-senator Fred Thompson is at home in Tennessee tonight where he is also raising money.

Like Giuliani, former governor Mitt Romney is in California for a San Diego fundraiser.

Those who did show up did their best to connect with the audience.

Several of the candidates took pains to cater to the mostly black audience, blaming inequality in America on continuing racism. Brownback said he wants Congress to pass a formal apology for slavery and segregation. Huckabee promised he would, as president, improve housing opportunities for minorities and address unequal treatment of different races in the criminal justice system. He also pledged to support voting rights for the District of Columbia.

Good for them. That’s part of the reason to hold the event in the first place.

For what it’s worth, Romney was the most aggressive to publicly push back against the criticism.

Romney turned the tables on the debate’s sponsors, the Public Broadcasting Service and Morgan State University, saying, “You call for one in the last couple of weeks in September, which is the last part of the quarter, most of us have got things lined up.”

It’s not a bad pitch, necessarily, but it’s wholly unpersuasive. For one thing, the GOP’s top tier has skipped every presidential forum with minority audiences, including those that were nowhere near quarterly fundraising deadlines. For another, when Morgan State hosted an event for the Democratic candidates, it was near the end of the second quarter, but all of them showed up anyway. It was about taking a constituency seriously, and showing a community respect.

In all likelihood, one of the top four Republicans is going to win the party’s nomination. Expect to hear about this again next year.

The candidates who didn’t show up do not care about black people. When people show you who there are, believe them.

  • I noticed that the WaPo article, as well as CB, neglects to mention that the crowd on hand was largely and enthusiastically supportive of Ron Paul throughout. The debate closed with chants of “Ron Paul! Ron Paul!”

    Also, there was this bald-faced lie from Senator Brownshirt: “We declared war in Iraq.” I found that all of the candidates except Dr. Paul were pandering to the Black Community, including Alan Keyes who put on his best Shakespearean performance.

  • I heard Brownback say that we declared war too, JKap. And right after Paul pointed out that we had not, too. It goes without saying that Ron Paul won the GOP debate. Ron Paul has and will win every GOP debate, but unfortunately that won’t stop Romney from getting the nomination.

  • Cheers to the event organizers for leaving those empty podiums up on stage. If the Democrats have any sense at all, those empty podiums will appear in lots of campaign ads against the R’s.

    It’s truly sad when you have a wingnut like Brownback appearing to be the voice of reason in your party…

    In the spirit of O’Reilly, I expect one of the R candidates who attended to do an interview and explain how ‘amazed’ he was at the civility of the audience. “No one was shouting, ‘where’s my health insurance, mo-fo!'”

  • From the GOP’s perspective the problem with last night’s debate was the same problem with the Lower 9th Ward after Katrina: too many black people and not enough money for the party.

  • Everything one needs to know about the true priorities of the Party of Confederate Treason and White Supremacy was on display last weekend at an event the top four candidates had no trouble finding time for on their schedules.

    It was the annual conference of the Michigan Republican Party, held at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. It’s a bit of Victoriana still in full bloom: men are not allowed in without coats and ties, women in slacks are not allowed in public. All the wait staff is black (and the jobs are open only to non-citizen blacks), all the “front desk” jobs – the clerks, the drivers of the carriages that are the only form of transportation, etc. – are reserved for whites only. The chefs in the kitchen are all white and the staff is all brown.

    It’s Republican Fantasy-Land come true, abnd Romney, Thompson, McCain and Giuliani not only had no problem getting there, they though it was all “just great.”

    Today’s GOP: definitely not the party my abolitionist great-great-great grandfather and founding member of the Pennsylvania Republican Party would want to support, now that it’s run by The Enemy.

  • Good day,

    I was at the debates last night and I can tell you what isn’t being covered by the mainstream media.

    On the road leading to the Murphy Fine Arts Center at Morgan there were at least 20 Ron Paul yard signs and one large “Ron Paul Revolution” banner.

    There were many RP supporters outside the doors with signs, and one fellow dressed up like a Colonial Soldier with a RP button on his lapel. I gave one of these supporters my extra ticket.

    Inside there were folks with RP t-shirts, buttons and lapel stickers throughout the auditorium. The applause for RP’s statements was significantly stronger than any other candidate. After the debate, RP supporters started cheering his name in unison. Finally, when the doors opened up, RP supporters who didn’t have tickets and had been waiting outside the doors flooded into the auditorium hoping to get a glimpse or Dr. Paul.

    In all honesty, I saw two people wearing Brownback stickers on their backs, and aside from those I saw not a single other yard sign, banner, sticker, button or anything else for any other candidate. I was completely amazed.

    I thought that the RP supporters described similar scenarios at other debates were full of it – they weren’t.

    The mainstream media is covering up the Ron Paul message. It isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s just the fact of the matter.

    Is anyone else on here who was at the debates last night and can verify this?

  • Re: Michael @ #7

    The MSM won’t be able to cover-up Ron Paul’s Q3 fundraising totals. He’s raised $500,000+ since Sunday (9/23) and I won’t be surprised if his campaign meets their new goal of $1M by Sept. 30. That would be $1M raised in one week.

  • Most of what I have read gave Huckabee good marks for his debate last night (although, notwithstanding the vocal Ron Paul crowd here, I have seen numerous commenters say that in an hobest accounting Huckabee has probably won all of the Republican debates).

    Perhaps CB, like a lot of us here, are so invested in and junkies to the political process that the Romney excuse seems reasonable, and in a pragmatic sense it is. That does not make it any less sad that what really matters – what drives the schedule, the message, everything – is the money. That quarterly deadline is sacrosanct, minority outreach be damned.

  • The six black journalists and the 28 white bloggers who saw the “debate” probably agree with the remarks made so far.

    This was a get together of Ron Paul and the seven dwarfs at a potentially hostile venue which will have no effect on the presidential race whatsoever. I think the last time that black voters were a significant part of the Republican vote was about 1880 – if they were even allowed to vote.

    The main Republican candidates lost nothing by avoiding the Baltimore event. They are trying to persuade the primary voters and will write off all those who won’t vote Republican this time around anyway (which appears to be 70% of the voters right now.)

    The ironic part is that many black voters are pro-life, anti-gay, and have other common concerns shared with the Republicans. It’s the rest of the Republican philosopy (e.g. “The rich get richer”) that turns them off. I doubt that even Ron Paul will draw many black votes simply because they will not show up in that primary in the first place.

  • Is it part of Ron Paul’s election strategy to blanket blog comment sections with pro-Paul genuflecting?

  • Brownback is part holy warrior and part holy fool. He apologizes to African Americans for slavery and then turns arond and co sponsors the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) that labels African American men abusers and criminals who must prove their innocence before they can communicate with a woman in a foreign country using a dating agency.

    Hmm… I wonder what Tiger Woods would think about this law?

    A little background: Brownback worked quietly with the ultra liberal Senator Cantwell (D-WA) who made the startling claim that American men who date foreigners are slave traders and the women they date are their property. So Brownback comes to the rescue foolishly sponsoring the IMBRA law that makes writing a letter to a foreigner a crime.

    Senator Cantwell’s supposition that dating services drag women into a life of sex slavery was nothing more than a feminist tall tale.

    Too late… Now all American men including African American men loose their constitutional rights to free speech and free association thanks to Senator Brownback and must prove they are not slave traders and undergo a background clearance before they can communicate with a foreign women. Thats right folks this insane law has been passed so get ready to tell them about your arrests including minor alcohol offenses 25 years ago, restraining orders that are easy to obtain, how many children you have, how many times you ‘ve been married, etc.
    Make no mistake about it.

    This is a rascist law designed to punish African American men who have higher arrest records then white men.

    This law needs to be repealed. Please contact your congressmen and ask that the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act H. R 3402, Public Law No. 109-162, Title VIII, Subtitle D be repealed.

    Google “IMBRA 2005” for more into.

  • You are absolutely right! This law makes absolutely no sense! Imagine Pat Robertson supporters teaming up with the radical, pro-abortion, pro-Gay, anti-family Feminist Lobby. If you can imagine that, then what do you get? The answer: IMBRA. It’s like the August 1938 peace treaty between Hitler and Stalin!

    This law does far more than target those with criminal records. It imposes extreme time delays on honest, law-abiding citizens who marry foreigners and have go to through a mountain paperwork and government beaurocracy before they can be united with their loved one. The average time delay has increased from 8 months to 1 – 2 years for spouse visas, and for fiancé visas it has increased from 3 months to 9 – 15 months! Further, it gives a government official the discretion to deny your application to unite with a partner, even if you are legally married in another country, because of how contact was initiated. As an applicant, you must prove that your beneficiary consented to communication with you before any contact was made. Further, your sponsor must prove that she received a government-sponsored packet with information about her rights, women’s abuse shelters, rape crisis centers and more, in her native language, before she said “hi” to you. If you met through a mom and pop site, or any of the flurry of “free” dating sites that have sprung up since this law’s passage, then you are in danger of having your application denied out-of-the-box. This is true EVEN IF you have a squeaky-clean record! The intent is to punish non-compliant agencies, but it punishes YOU, the lonely heart who merely wants companionship. Yeah! This law targets only criminals and serial abusers all right!

    The law also includes a lifetime “two strikes and you’re out” fiancé visa limit. This limit includes visa approvals that do not result in marriage. In other words, if you sponsor a fiancé who skips town on you before the wedding, you’re on a watch list. If it happens again you are permanently banned from applying for marriage to a foreigner again. Your “crime” is that you got scammed. Never mind that Elizabeth Taylor can divorce and remarry 8 times and that’s not abuse of our marriage and family traditions. Are we being biased and discriminatory here?

    Dave Root is absolutely right. This law is draconian, Orwellian, and needs to be repealed if we want to pretend to be a free country that honors the Constitution and Individual Rights.

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