{"id":5391,"date":"2005-09-29T11:30:52","date_gmt":"2005-09-29T15:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5391"},"modified":"2005-09-29T11:30:52","modified_gmt":"2005-09-29T15:30:52","slug":"a-step-backwards-for-mehlmans-african-american-outreach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-step-backwards-for-mehlmans-african-american-outreach\/","title":{"rendered":"A step backwards for Mehlman’s African-American outreach"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was just a couple of months ago that Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman was getting serious about political outreach to the African-American community<\/a>. One problem, however, is that Mehlman characterized the Republicans’ race problems as a thing of the past — and they clearly remain a part of the GOP’s present<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Consider, for example, State Rep. Stacey Campfield’s (R-Tenn.) thoughts<\/a> on the Tennessee’s Black Legislative Caucus.<\/p>\n

A white Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state’s Black Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n

“My understanding is that the KKK doesn’t even ban members by race,” said Rep. Stacey Campfield, adding that the KKK “has less racist bylaws” than the black lawmakers’ group.<\/p>\n

The freshman Republican from Knoxville was rebuffed earlier this year when he asked for the Black Caucus’ bylaws and inquired about joining. There are 18 black state lawmakers in Tennessee.<\/p>\n

Caucus chairman Rep. Johnny Shaw, a Democrat, dismissed Campfield’s request and called him a “strange guy” who was simply interested in stirring up trouble.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Campfield also notes on his blog<\/a> that “many of my friends and neighbors are considered minority.” It’s not “some of my best friends are black,” but it’s close.<\/p>\n

Conservative blowhard Bill Bennett is about as offensive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Addressing a caller’s suggestion that the “lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years” would be enough to preserve Social Security’s solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such “far-reaching, extensive extrapolations” by declaring that if “you wanted to reduce crime … if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies “would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do,” then added again, “but the crime rate would go down.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Back to the drawing board, right Mehlman?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was just a couple of months ago that Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman was getting serious about political outreach to the African-American community. One problem, however, is that Mehlman characterized the Republicans’ race problems as a thing of the past — and they clearly remain a part of the GOP’s present. Consider, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5391","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=5391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}