{"id":4695,"date":"2005-07-14T12:45:58","date_gmt":"2005-07-14T16:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4695.html"},"modified":"2005-07-14T12:45:58","modified_gmt":"2005-07-14T16:45:58","slug":"theres-plenty-of-apologizing-left-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/theres-plenty-of-apologizing-left-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s plenty of apologizing left to do"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think Ken Mehlman’s message<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) comparing African Americans to drug addicts<\/a>, Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.) admitting to having “segregationist feelings<\/a>,” Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) hanging out with a segregationist group<\/a>, and Republicans in Michigan emphasizing the need to suppress the “Detroit vote”<\/a> during the 2004 elections.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}