September 28, 2007
Race & The GOP: Six Out Of 10 Ain't Bad
The highly anticipated season premiere of "Grey's Anatomy" opened
with --
Oops, wrong post.
In case you missed it, and you probably did, there was a Republican presidential debate last night at Morgan State University in Baltimore. As with the Democrats' turn in June, radio and talk-show host Tavis Smiley was on hand to host the All-American Presidential Forum on PBS before a mostly black audience on the historically black campus.
What was different this time around? The four empty podiums on stage.
Out of the belief that the gains made by the GOP under President Bush's leadership have been hopelessly eroded (by President Bush's leadership), or the belief that with independents out of reach, their socially conservative, mostly white base is more crucial than ever, front-runners Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson skipped the event.
The six candidates chasing them were smart enough to take advantage.
"Frankly, I'm embarrassed," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee of the no-shows. Citing the 48 percent of blacks who voted him into office, Huckabee continued, "We have a long way to go, and we don't get there if we don't sit down and work through the issues that are still very deep in this country when it comes to the racial divide."
"I apologize for the candidates who aren't here," echoed Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who is something like Huckabee's doppelganger in this contest. "I think it's a disgrace for our party. What they're doing is sending a message of narrowing the base."
Of course, one of the reasons Huckabee and Brownback spent last night in Maryland, hardly a key primary state, is because they need all the face time with voters they can get. Lest the leading candidates pooh-pooh their attendance as a mark of lowly desperation, they'd do well to remember that the Republican nomination is remarkably fluid, and not one of them has truly caught fire with the base. And let's not forget that out of the six men on stage, Huckabee stands the best chance of posing a dark-horse challenge. Fear Huckabee, you guys. FEAR HIM.
Horse racing aside, the real reason to watch was the Republican Party's palpable diversity problem. Bush was able to help build momentum for the party in the burgeoning Latino population, only to see it crushed by his base over immigration reform. The president's emphasis on public life and moral values also won him support in religious black communities. Then came Hurricane Katrina.
Party leaders including Newt Gingrich, Maryland's former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts and Bush himself scolded the top-tier for skipping the forum. The event's organizers didn't seem to buy their "scheduling conflict" excuses -- the invitations went out in March -- and in a counter-dis, kept the podiums where they would have stood on stage for the symbolism. (The four absentees were all at fundraising events as the fiscal quarter winds down: Giuliani in Las Vegas, McCain in New York, Romney in California and Thompson in his home state of Tennessee).
As he honored the 50th anniversary of a landmark in school desegregation efforts last night, Steele, who is black, said, "Together, the Little Rock Nine and President Eisenhower changed the course of the nation. Since that time, Republicans and blacks have stood at arm's length of each other. Both have missed opportunities to communicate and reach out to one another."
Judging by the applause after a line pointing to them, there were quite a few black Republicans in the audience.
If the absentees bowed out because they were afraid to pander to the audience at MSU and rile the party's base, Tom Tancredo showed it was possible to talk about issues concerning minority communities without placing so much emphasis on race.
"[President] Reagan did something for every single American by increasing individual liberty," Tancredo said to boisterous applause. "It is destructive to talk about the politics of race; it really does not do a service to us as Americans."
Tancredo, remember, was the lone Republican to appear at the NAACP's annual convention in July, which he made sure to point out (take that, Huckabee & Brownback). The Colorado congressman's battle cry in this contest is illegal immigration, which he couches before certain audiences as an epidemic that "depresses wage rates for the lowest income earners in this country."
California Rep. Duncan Hunter, who also is running on an anti-illegal immigration platform, wouldn't go that far, and it produced a somewhat awkward effect. He refused to tailor his responses to minority audiences because he "practiced law in the barrio" with no regard to income or race. And in response to a question about criminal justice in black and Latino communities, he said, "We ought to learn from the military. We ought to find the common ground that brought them together." Racial harmony by way of boot camp -- interesting.
Moderator Smiley interrupted and asked Hunter to answer the question. The congressman said that Americans ought to be "tried by juries of their peers," and that "the jury trial under the law is the best system of justice on the face of the earth." That may be so, but the startlingly disproportionate presence of blacks and Latinos in U.S. prisons and on death row is of major concern to those communities. Hunter probably didn't win over any audience members with that one.
One of the funniest moments of the forum came courtesy of -- you guessed it -- Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Brownback was answering the criminal justice question, and opened with, "I was in jail...." Paul, standing to the senator's immediate right, quickly shot a look at Brownback with his mouth agape in shock and wonder. (If anybody out there has a photo of this, please send.)
Brownback, of course, has spent several nights in prison voluntarily as part of his campaign to promote faith-based rehabilitation for convicts. The pro-life senator also opposes the death penalty, except in cases "when we cannot protect society from that individual" -- i.e., Osama bin Laden.
Brownback and Huckabee are two candidates who probably rue the day Team Bush coined the phrase "compassionate conservative," wishing they'd gotten to it first. With Bush so unpopular these days, the term may be most effective when used sarcastically. That's too bad, because it suits both their platforms particularly well, especially before an audience like the one at MSU.
Both Brownback and Huckabee were the quickest to acknowledge racial disparities and discrimination in the U.S., and the latter at times treaded dangerously close to traditionally Democratic territory. After saying that "80 percent of people in jail" are there in part because of drugs and alcohol, he called long-term incarceration for many offenders "a huge mistake."
"We've got to quit locking up all the people we're mad at and lock up people we're afraid of," such as sex offenders and murderers, Huckabee said, adding that the "three strikes" statutes had "created a system that's overrun." Former President Clinton, by the way, was a champion of those laws.
Huckabee hasn't gone soft, though. He is arguably more consistently conservative than the top four contenders, which may explain his second-place finish in the Ames Republican straw poll in August. Asked what role the U.S. had in Darfur, the former Baptist preacher said, "I think we have some role to play in it," and then reminded the audience of the "slaughter of millions of unborn children... in our own country." Adding that poverty also plagues parts of the U.S., he said, "We don't have to go halfway around the world to find" poverty or genocide (his word), "we've got it right here in this country."
We almost forgot how much fun it is to listen to the loquacious Alan Keyes, who did not disappoint in last night's forum. Keyes, the lone black Republican presidential candidate, also joined Tancredo and Hunter in refusing to talk about the issues at hand in terms of race.
"I don't believe there is this deep divide between blacks and whites in America. The core of that community is not race, it is not money, but the moral consensus that we are all created equal and endowed by our creator, God, with unalienable rights," he said. Keyes also delivered probably the most eloquent line on Darfur when he said, "If somebody's being hurt somewhere in the world, somebody in America grieves for them."
He wasn't without his head-scratchers, though. Answering the criminal justice question, Keyes pushed "neighborhood self-government" as the cure. "Sometimes you're dealing with young people who can be put on a path that would be constructive," and appointed "justices of the peace" in the community would be better equipped to handle offenders, he said.
Coverage of the forum was not overwhelming, but National Review, Huffington Post and the Baltimore Sun also have reports.
Photo Illustrations: Ryan Merrill
Posted at 9:00 AM
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Alan Keyes, Bush Administration, Campaigns, Democrats, Duncan Hunter, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, President Bush, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, WH 2008
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