There’s plenty of apologizing left to do

July 14, 2005

I think Ken Mehlman’s message about Republicans and race is a good start. But that’s all it is, and it only goes half way to acknowledging a much broader problem.

It was called “the southern strategy,” started under Richard M. Nixon in 1968, and described Republican efforts to use race as a wedge issue — on matters such as desegregation and busing — to appeal to white southern voters.

Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, this morning will tell the NAACP national convention in Milwaukee that it was “wrong.”

“By the ’70s and into the ’80s and ’90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out,” Mehlman says in his prepared text. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”

Yes, they were, and Mehlman was right to say so. The problem, however, is that Mehlman characterized the Republicans problems on race as a thing of the past. To the extent that the GOP exploitation was ugly and a disgrace, he’s right, but let’s not forget that the problems haven’t gone away.

Though they didn’t come up in Mehlman’s speech, I’d be interested in hearing the RNC also acknowledge to the NAACP some of the party’s more recent embarrassments, including the fact that congressional Republicans created a PAC to give “significant, direct financial assistance to first-rate minority GOP candidates,” but then didn’t actually give minority candidates any money.

Indeed, it’s a depressingly-long list from the past couple of years. Just from the last few years, we’ve seen Trent Lott (R-Miss.) praising a segregationist platform, Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) comparing African Americans to drug addicts, Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.) admitting to having “segregationist feelings,” Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) hanging out with a segregationist group, and Republicans in Michigan emphasizing the need to suppress the “Detroit vote” during the 2004 elections.

Mehlman said Republicans’ outreach to the African-American community hasn’t been “effective” in the recent past. That’s true, but unless Mehlman appreciates the full scope of the Republicans’ problem, acknowledgements of past wrongs will only go so far.

And of course, while they officially no longer use Blacks as a wedge group, they have just replaced them with Gays as the new wedge group!

  • There’s also the point that Republican policy priorities continue to discriminate against African-Americans and other minorities, simply by dint of systematically short-changing cities where African-Americans are concentrated.

    I’d add that, to the extent the Republicans no longer use “law and order” as a code word for racist appeals, it’s probably because Clinton and the Democratic Congress took that issue off the table with legislation in the 1990s. If it still worked, they’d still do it.

  • “congressional Republicans created a PAC [to render] “significant, direct financial assistance to first-rate minority GOP candidates,” but then didn’t actually give minority candidates any money.”

    Well, perhaps they decided that none of their minority candidates were of sufficiently high quality?

  • Speaking of political exploitation of gays, I notice in today’s Globe and Mail (Canada) that the Roman Catholic Church is now complaining that the public isn’t being nice to them. Seems they want to be able to continue their hate-gays campaign there, in spite of the government’s decision to treat gays fairly, and they resent people taking offense at that. Wonder how long it’ll take the Republicans to similarly insist on their right to dish it out without having to take it … and calling that “fair”.

  • I just tried my own link (which worked for me earlier this morning) and found that (free) registry is required. For some reason you can get in w/o registering if you news.google “cathoic gay marriage” and scroll down a bit. Here’s a sample from the aricle:

    By GLORIA GALLOWAY

    Thursday, July 14, 2005 Page A1

    OTTAWA — Canada’s top Roman Catholic cardinal says vocal opponents of same-sex marriage will risk criminal charges if the institution is legally extended to include gay and lesbian couples.

    “Already, the appeal to conscience in any matter pertaining to homosexuality risks being dismissed as ‘homophobia,’ ” Cardinal Marc Ouellet told a Senate committee hearing arguments for and against Bill C-38, the same-sex marriage law.

    “These attempts to intimidate persons who do not share the state’s vision of marriage may well multiply after the adoption of Bill C-38. Once the state imposes a new standard affirming that homosexual sexual behaviour is a social good, those who oppose it for religious motives or motives of conscience will be considered as bigots, anti-gay and homophobes, and then risk prosecution.”

    Cardinal Ouellet said the language used by proponents of homosexual marriage has made it difficult to challenge those unions, even from the pulpit.

    “There’s a type of climate that exists where we no longer feel we can express our opinion,” he told reporters after his presentation to the Senate committee.

    There’s much more where that came from.

  • I don’t understand. Does Mehlman’s apology mean that Mondale or Dukakis get to be president? If not I don’t see what the hell good it does.

  • Too bad he didn’t expand his apology to include the Republican Senators who failed to co-sponsor the lynching apology.

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