First, there’s a big distinction between the Allen style unreconstructed racists in the GOP (and there are some… and I think you’ll find more there than anywhere else in the mainstream political spectrum)… and the rest of the GOP that just doesn’t see where racial and sex equality is a big priority on the agenda.

You don’t have to have a racist bone in your body to carry an agenda with racial or sex equality on the back burner. One doesn’t even have to be conscious of the fact that a segment of your voters might find it appealing that you don’t make those things front & center on the priority list. You can have iced tea with blacks & women all day and still go to congress with a legislative agenda that does nothing to advance their equality.

Obviously, appointing a secretary does little advance an agenda of equality… that just adds one or two to the total number of well-employed minorities/women - which doesn’t add up to a big percentage. It does also offer a demonstration of the value of women and minorities, and that is appreciated… it just stops rather short of being a unifying party platform.

Yes, there are conservatives who have given a prominent place to good legislation - like Enterprise Zones - aimed primarily at evening the playing field. But there are reasons besides “demonization” and “the past” that blacks and women still support the Democratic party. They aren’t stupid - they can’t be hoodwinked, en masse into accepting the “demonization” of republicans, or conservative blacks/women. They do actually know who understands the economic and cultural situation, who works hard on understanding the economic and cultural situation, who is really willing to give something to the cause of fixing it. And, right now, that’s the Democrats…

You made a point in your comments to Alice: Married women favor Republicans. It could be because they were “hoodwinked” - or it could be because Republicans found out what was important to married women, and worked hard to ingratiate themselves with married women. They could do the same with women generally - and they could do the same with ethnic minorities generally. They just haven’t much.

It can change & probably will. These constituencies are far too valuable to write off & eventually the GOP will need to rebuild their coalition with some new friends. But there isn’t much sign that they have done so yet - so far the prime beneficiaries of the tax cuts & all the domestic policy (which secs of state don’t get much say in, btw) seems to be enriching most the demographics who are already pretty well off - and that includes a lot more white dudes than anyone else.

I’ll have to reply substantively later today.

!#$% it.

Ummmm…. this sounds to me a lot more like, if a member of the party appoints a black person to a cabinent position, then you get a free pass.

No, not at all. My original question was who \”is against giving women or non-white folks a fair shake?\” Sandra Day O\’Conner (first female USSC) wasn\’t appointed by LBJ. Clarence Thomas wasn\’t appointed by Clinton. No black woman has been appointed to a position of power by any Dem president. The late Maynard Jackson - imminently more qualified than Terry McAuliffe - was given the short shrift and cast aside when he ran for head of the DNC in favor of a rich white Clintonint. Does that mean Clinton/Carter & the others were against \”giving women or non-white folks a fair shake\” when it comes to actual power? No. Does appointing various folks to positions of power mean you get a free pass? No.

The results, however, speak for themselves. For someone to hint that the modern day GOP looks to give women & people of color the short shrift goes against the hard, cold, factual data.

This isn’t just about affirmative action, though it’s worth pointing out that both Rice and Powell see a need for it. It’s about why Repbulicans have fought tooth and nail against affirmative action without being just as vocal in recognizing that the situation today is a failure of equality, and without being just as aggressive in pursuing some social action or political policy to correct that, if they believe affirmative action is the wrong answer.

I remember when Enterprize zones were laughed at by the left. Then, Clinton realized how valuable they were & jumped on board and suddenly they were \’okay\’.
School choice is a political policy that would result in social action; but the unions have the DNC in tow speaking \”they want to dismantle the public school system\”.
Welfare reform was a political policy that Clinton signed and, in retrospect, the GOP was right all along. I doubt there\’ll be many apologies forthcoming for the decades of race-baiting whenever a Republican said that welfare was holding down \”women and non-white folks\”, but Clinton\’s signature on that bill most certainly helped raise many from the grips of dependency.

There have been and there are many political policies put forth. The thing is, folks are called racist or it\’s alleged that they don\’t care about \”women and non-white people\” if they don\’t walk down the politically correct solution: affirmative action. This post and alice\’s comment are exhibits A and B.

Whether or not you think Steve Gilliard’s blackface satire was racist

Actually, I do not. It was racially inflammatory, demeaning and an example of the lowest common denominator that folks like him adhere to when it comes to political debate, but it wasn\’t racist. A racist is someone who thinks that one race is inherently inferior. Now, if Glenn Reynolds had ANYONE in blackface, how long before he was castigated by the left as a racist and dropped by the right as a voice (see: Lott, Trent)? But, Gilliard is \”okay\” because he\’s on the correct side of the double-standard.

He isn’t from a culture or party

Stop. Right. There.
He\’s a Democrat. \’nuff said.
Were he a Republican: flush

but it has virtually nothing to do with the quality of life of any given minority family.

It was an attempt to do to a black man, Michael Steele, what is nowadays the equivalent of being branded a traitor to one\’s country, except in that case it was to brand a successful person a traitor to his race. Let\’s not mince words, there is a cottage industry out there that attempts to portray any black person who doesn\’t walk in line correctly as \”not sufficiently black\”, thereby putting a proverbial scarlet letter on that person and besmirching his very humanity. That\’s what was in play and that\’s what happened. But, Gilliard is the \”right\” kind (Democrat) and the \”right) pigmentation (he\’s black) so he\’s still a viable voice whereas any person alive who is either a Republican or anti-affirmative action who painted, say, Barak Obama in blackface would be destroyed. Let me emphasize that last word, destroyed. There is a double standard. Now, with the history of the GOP & the right in the 60s & part of the 70s, there *should* be a jaundiced eye towards racial policies….but let\’s be honest, the history of the DNC and the history of liberals give cause for the exact same jaundiced eye. The school busing riots were taking place in Boston not Austin. But that doesn\’t mean that the Democratic party or liberals anywhere are more apt to be racist or bigoted.

Hey, you & I live in the most integrated region in America, the south. The various folks think & vote differently but we\’re not apt to see many racial episodes and we really haven\’t in recent decades (not that they don\’t happen, but they\’re few & I think in part because it\’s tough to hate the color of someone\’s skin when you\’ve just spent a shift working beside someone of color & realize how petty such thinking is). Where have the race riots been? LA, Cincinnatti, NYC, Boston, etc.

But, somehow, I\’ve found out that if I suddenly decided to switch party affiliations and decide to adopt federal legislation that gives preferences based on race and gender, I\’m less likely to be accused of being a bigot.

…why not just understand why black people, women, religious minorities, sexual minorities, etc., don’t look optimistically at a republican politician in hopes of finding someone to advance the cause of equality.

A. Part of that is due, correctly, to the abysmal past of the GOP (primarily before I was born).
B. Part of that is due to the Gilliard-esque method of demonizing anyone who associates with the GOP; thus any black supporting Steele is really supporting an Uncle Tom, anyone supporting the confirmation fo Clarence Thomas is accepting of a sellout, etc. I posted a challenge not long after I started blogging that called for someone to give me the name of any prominent or quasi-prominent black conservative or black GOPer who I would not find being called some incarnation of Uncle Tom or sellout or self-hater or handkerchief head or the like within 10 minutes of googling. No names to date have passed muster. That says quite a bit. The \”if you don\’t vote Democrat, you\’re not really black enough\” mindset is pretty powerful and to deny it exists is to deny reality.
C. The quoted portion above also pertains to Democrats & national security (as well as family values and repect for those who hold religious views). I\’ve long called for the GOP to reach out even more to minorities in order to make up for past miscues; is it not the fault of the DNC, in some part at least, that they don\’t understand why not just understand why Americans don’t look optimistically at a Democratic politician in hopes of finding someone to advance the cause of national security, for instance?

The title of the post is \”Rice won\’t run\”. It\’s a story because she\’s a prominent figure and would be a formidable candidate. Colin Powell made headlines in the early 90s for much the same reason. It\’s news when a black woman or black man decides not to run for the GOP nomination. It\’s not news when a black woman entertains the notion of running for the Democratic nomination because there isn\’t one out there who\’d stand a chance and the black men who\’ve run are preachers who get few votes from the affirmative-action-supportin\’ Democrats.

But somehow, the GOP is less \’user friendly\’ for blacks.

If you\’ve made it this far, I reiterate that I\’m of the mindset that simply because someone is on the left or right, it matters not a whit as to their heart or \’soul\’ if you will. Just because I think federal spending is too high in various areas, how in the world would that jibe with some notion that I would harbor ill-will towards people of a certain ethnicity even if I happened to enjoy Mel Gibson\’s movie? Likewise, just because someone is for higher taxes on, say, estates of the newly deceased, it doesn\’t make them any more or less likely to feel uncomfortable being around blacks, even if they voted for Robert Byrd and support affirmative action. And, let\’s not kid ourselves: many people on the right & in the south are flatly agin\’ affirmative action but they sit in church with blacks and share tea over dinner with blacks while folks in the north are adamantly pro-affirmative action but who have never and probably will never be caught dead breaking bread or sharing a porch with someone of a different color. Go check the census data by race & you tell me who has trouble being around blacks.

In summation, I state that the continued hints that being on the right or being a Republican somehow makes you less minority friendly is as apt an assumption to make as hinting that someone on the left or someone who is a Democrat is less capable of standing up to terrorism. Neither makes sense, but both parties have a long way to go to mend fences on those issues.

BTW, I\’d like to know when Senator Allen stated or sanctioned the notion that women or non-whites shouldn\’t get a fair shake.

alice: married women vote Republican and have for a long time. Are you asking yourself why Democrats only attract single/divorced women and can\’t seem to recognize why married women want no part of them?

Or why, in a recent Harris poll looking at the November Congressional elections, 50% of women favored a Democratic candidate, while only 28% favored a Republican.

Seems an interesting comment about the first black female secretary of state in the history of our nation, who succeeded the first black male secretary of state in the history of our nation. Perhaps not everyone subscribes to the “if you’re pro-choice and pro-affirmative action, you get a free pass!” ideal of logic?

Ummmm…. this sounds to me a lot more like, if a member of the party appoints a black person to a cabinent position, then you get a free pass… This isn’t just about affirmative action, though it’s worth pointing out that both Rice and Powell see a need for it. It’s about why Repbulicans have fought tooth and nail against affirmative action without being just as vocal in recognizing that the situation today is a failure of equality, and without being just as aggressive in pursuing some social action or political policy to correct that, if they believe affirmative action is the wrong answer.

Whether or not you think Steve Gilliard’s blackface satire was racist - and I, personally, do, not because of the blackface but because of the implications of his satire - the cultural context is a heap’a different. He isn’t from a culture or party who only wants to discuss racial equality when he is opposing a measure meant to advance it, nor does he have a personal record of it. And, yeah, that’s probably because he grew up black in America. Even so, as racial ugliness goes, it’s pretty small potatoes. It may be reflective of a bad attitude, but it has virtually nothing to do with the quality of life of any given minority family.

I’m not so sure about what point Jane Hamsher was trying to make with her Blackface Joe. It looks to me like hers may have been just a poorly aimed effort at satirizing Lieberman’s self-rigtheousness on racial matters. If there is an unhealthy racial attitude in her Blackface Joe, I coudln’t find it.

Do you want to know a real example of racial ugliness from the Democratic side? Andrew Young’s recent comments about Jews & Koreans were abbhorent, and I wouldn’t vote for him for dog-catcher now… but his problem is not that he doesn’t give a crap about minority rights, but that he is too stupidly focused on his own minority groups rights to recognize some basic facts about humanity at large. For some reason, that’s not unusual among minority groups that have significant populations growing up in the slums, with little economic and educational opportunities. It’s an ugly “us against them” attitude, and is a very unfortunate side effect of a culture that lacks equality.

So, if it’s a game of “you did it, too”, then think about stacking Young’s comments, or Jesse Jackson’s Hymietown remark against the Republican record of going to the CCC, Bob Jones University, and the John Birch society for their bona fides, their years of inaction and apparent unconcern on equality, and their tooth and nail opposition to Democratic efforts toward same.

But instead of the game of “so did you”, why not just understand why black people, women, religious minorities, sexual minorities, etc., don’t look optimistically at a republican politician in hopes of finding someone to advance the cause of equality. And, if you are one of those “enlightened” Republicans Alice mentioned (and I think you are), then maybe think about ways to reverse the party’s failures on those issues, and maybe do something about the party’s coddling of the likes of Senator Allen and the WASPS to whom he makes his appeals?

But her party isn’t exactly famous for getting out in front and leading on those issues in the last 40 years or so.

Seems an interesting comment about the first black female secretary of state in the history of our nation, who succeeded the first black male secretary of state in the history of our nation. Perhaps not everyone subscribes to the “if you’re pro-choice and pro-affirmative action, you get a free pass!” ideal of logic?

alice, perhaps you could forward your comment to Steve Gilliard so he could paint another blackface on someone. If he doesn’t, I’m sure Jane Hamsher would find it a hoot.

Oh, wait, they’re both pro-affirmative action, so they get a free pass.

Thanks, by the way, for recognizing that there are enlightened conservative people. How generous a person you are! WOW, I sure hope I qualify.