I realize the GOP is anxious to try to win Maryland’s competitive open Senate race, but this is truly ridiculous. (thanks to PWalker for the tip)
Black Republican groups emerged from the political margins yesterday, launching a campaign to persuade African American voters to support Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele’s bid for the U.S. Senate. […]
The push was evident in a Baltimore radio advertisement targeting African American listeners that was sponsored by the Washington-based National Black Republican Association. The ad identifies Martin Luther King Jr. as a Republican and pins the founding of the Ku Klux Klan on Democrats.
It’s quite an ad. Listeners are told that Dems are responsible for Jim Crow laws, the KKK, and releasing vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks. “Democrats want us to accept same-sex marriages, teen abortions without a parent’s consent and suing the Boy Scouts for saying ‘God’ in their pledge…. Republicans freed us from slavery and put our right to vote in the Constitution.”
It’s probably safe to say the National Black Republican Association has wasted its time on this nonsense, and almost no thinking person will be persuaded by its ad. Ike Leggett, a former state Democratic chairman and the Dem nominee for Montgomery County executive, said, “To run that kind of ad, to assume we are so stupid to fall for that kind of baloney, to use Dr. King’s name in a cheap political ad like that, in my opinion, this will not be something African Americans will fall for.”
Frankly, I’m a little surprised a GOP front-group would even try — if they really want to start a conversation about which party is committed to civil rights in this country, I’m delighted.
Indeed, we don’t need to look to the 19th century to appreciate where the parties stand on racial issues; we need only look to this summer to see that the right’s racial problems are alive and well.
For what it’s worth, and while it’s tempting not to bother, the AP did include some fact-checking.
Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center, said Thursday that King never endorsed candidates from either party. “I think it’s highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there’s really no evidence,” Klein said.
A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said Thursday that King was nonpartisan. […]
The KKK, never a political party, was a racist group of white men that started in the South after the Civil War, when Republicans were almost unheard of in former Confederate states. The mainstream Democratic Party never endorsed the Klan nor claimed to have founded it.
In some ways, this front-group’s message reveals more than it should. When Republicans want to demonstrate to the African-American community that the GOP can be trusted on racial issues, activists have to point to the events of the distant past. It’s actually telling — when the last Republican to show leadership on race relations was Abraham Lincoln, you know the party has a problem.