{"id":6826,"date":"2006-03-10T13:02:38","date_gmt":"2006-03-10T18:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6826"},"modified":"2006-03-10T13:02:38","modified_gmt":"2006-03-10T18:02:38","slug":"yet-another-step-backwards-for-mehlmans-african-american-outreach-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/yet-another-step-backwards-for-mehlmans-african-american-outreach-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"Yet another step backwards for Mehlman&#8217;s African-American outreach initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was less than a year ago when Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman starting getting serious about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2005\/07\/13\/AR2005071302342.html\">political outreach<\/a> to the African-American community. One problem, however, is that Mehlman characterized the Republicans&#8217; race problems as a thing of the past &#8212; and they clearly remain a part of the GOP&#8217;s present.<\/p>\n<p>Consider, for example, a state lawmaker in Colorado who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockymountainnews.com\/drmn\/government\/article\/0,2777,DRMN_23906_4530453,00.html\">sent around an email<\/a> that accused &#8220;welfare-pampered blacks&#8221; of waiting for the government to save them from Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Rep. Jim Welker, a Republican, said Thursday morning that he forwarded the article [written by someone else] because of its message about society victimizing people by making them dependent on government programs. He said he didn&#8217;t agree with everything in the essay.<\/p>\n<p>One passage says, &#8220;President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Welker, who is white, backpedaled yesterday and said sending the email around &#8220;showed poor judgment on my part.&#8221; He also added &#8212; I swear I&#8217;m not making this up &#8212; &#8220;Some of my best friends are of different skin color.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The mind reels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was less than a year ago when Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman starting getting serious about political outreach to the African-American community. One problem, however, is that Mehlman characterized the Republicans&#8217; race problems as a thing of the past &#8212; and they clearly remain a part of the GOP&#8217;s present. Consider, for example, [&hellip;]<\/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-6826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826","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=6826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}