Scott Spiegel

“I’m particularly offended by these people who want to take the nation back…  If you read the Republican Contract with America, you can see the bigotry in between every line.” – Maida Odom, “One Nation Working Together” rally attendee, October 2, 2010

In a desperate, last-ditch attempt to salvage their miserable midterm election prospects, Democrats have been tarnishing Republicans and Tea Partiers with the smear of—wait for it… racism!

Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth…

At a recent rally in Philadelphia, President Barack Obama warned the audience, “They’re counting on young people staying home and union members staying home and black folks staying home.”  Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Harold Jackson declared that the Tea Party is the ignorant, Negrophobic reincarnation of the pro-slavery wing of the Know Nothing Party.

Zora Neale Hurston, Ida B. Wells, Roy Innis, Eldridge Cleaver, Samuel B. Fuller…

Actually, Democrats have been crying racism throughout Obama’s whole presidency.  For example, New York Times columnist Frank Rich has been using this trick to try to fool Americans into thinking conservatives oppose ObamaCare because they don’t like black people such as bill architects Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Maureen Dowd proposed that Joe Wilson’s exclamation regarding coverage for illegal Mexican immigrants was… anti-black.  Leftist civil rights leaders sullied their reputations by falsely accusing Tea Party protestors of calling Representative John Lewis the N-word and spitting on Representative Emanuel Cleaver.  Obama supporter Henry Louis Gates, Jr. falsely accused a poor working-class cop in Massachusetts of racial profiling.

Martin Luther King, Sr., Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Alveda King…

Democrats have been playing the race card since even before Obama was elected, as in their ludicrous claim that failure to elect Obama would lead to race riots.  Such efforts have done miracles for Obama’s promised improvement in race relations: Rasmussen recently reported that perceptions about black-white relations have gotten much more pessimistic since Obama took office.

Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Shelby Steele, Mychal Massie, Deroy Murdock, John McWhorter, Erik Rush…

To hear Democrats tell it, you would think there were no African American historical figures, civil rights leaders, commentators, politicians, judges, authors, athletes, or celebrities who are Republican, conservative, libertarian, right-leaning, or Tea Party supporters.  Or if there are, that they’re all misguided, brainwashed Uncle Toms.

Armstrong Williams, Lloyd Marcus, Stanley Crouch, Angela McGlowan, Amy Holmes, Sonja Schmidt, Alfonzo Rachel…

You might also be forgiven for thinking that such organizations as the National Black Republican Association and The Alliance of Black Republicans were apocryphal, mere fictional entities.

J. C. Watts, Gary Franks, Alan Keyes, Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell, Rod Paige, Allen West, Star Parker, Tim Scott, Ryan Frazier, Isaac Hayes, Robert Broadus…

Because Democrats view individuals as voting blocs and interest groups to be Balkanized along racial and ethnic lines, they’ve been caught engaging in some appalling acts in recent years.  Since Obama took office, we’ve been treated to the spectacle of the NAACP applauding Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod for reporting that she had once racially discriminated against a white farmer; Barbara Boxer condescendingly lumping ideologically opposed black groups together based on skin color; and Bill Clinton defending Robert Byrd’s Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops positions as necessary for getting elected to public office as a Southern Democrat.

Clarence Thomas, Janice Rogers Brown, Ward Connerly, Colin Powell, Michael Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Michael Steele…

It’s hard to discern who exactly is supposed to be offended by these smears.  Any thinking black person is surely aware of the black conservative movement, and any unthinking black person is clearly uninterested in the movement and mindlessly committed to the Democratic Party.

Jackie Robinson, Don King, Ernie Banks, Karl Malone, Jerome Bettis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Herschel Walker…

And any thinking non-black person waits for leftists to produce actual evidence of conservative racism and reserves judgment until that time.  Any non-thinking non-black person is happy to accept lies about Republicans spread by race hucksters and reject evidence to the contrary.

James Earl Jones, Jimmie Walker, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, L. L. Cool J, 50 Cent…

When accusations of racism are thrown around often enough, with as little evidence as they typically are, in place of discussion of the issues people really care about, the net effect can only hurt one-trick pony politicians who know that running on their record and their positions will hurt rather than help them.

…and on and on and on and on.

But if Democrats want to spend their dwindling political capital on a charge so old and worn-out even they don’t believe it, hey—I won’t let myself be prejudiced against their strategy.



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Related articles

• Race and the Race (politico.com)
• Black Republicans offer hope after Barack Obama’s failures on race (telegraph.co.uk)
• So much for the ‘post-racial’ president | Lloyd Marcus (guardian.co.uk)
• Lack of new black Dem leaders forces first lady to campaign (thegrio.com)
• “Crying Bigotry: Last Refuge Of The Liberal” and related posts (investors.com)

Two ineluctable facts stand out when scrutinizing politicians’ actions on gay issues over the past 30 years: (1) Republicans are not anti-gay and (2) Democrats are not pro-gay. By 2009, there are few differences between Republican and Democratic politicians on gay issues, except that Democrats are more likely to jerk gay voters around and Republicans are more likely to quietly favor pro-liberty stances. There may have been a difference between the two parties once, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time.

In 1978, California governor Ronald Reagan opposed the Briggs Initiative, which would have barred gays from teaching in public schools. In an op-ed penned as he was beginning his presidential campaign, Reagan wrote, “Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.” This, in the late 70s, while Jimmy Carter was publicly refusing to meet with gay groups. The initiative was overwhelmingly defeated, mostly due to Reagan’s efforts, and this momentum was instrumental in forming the Log Cabin Republicans.

Reagan was the first president to invite two openly gay men—interior decorator Ted Graber and his partner—to spend the night at the White House. Washington Post reporter Robert Kaiser called Reagan a “closet tolerant.” If Reagan was closeted, it was because no one asked him his views, not because he was hiding anything.

The number of gays discharged from the military dropped every year under Reagan. In contrast, the number of gays discharged increased every full year under Bill Clinton except one, doubling from 617 in 1994 to 1,231 in 2000. The number of gays discharged decreased again every full year under George W. Bush except one, halved from 1,273 in 2001 to 612 in 2006. Gay rights groups report the number of gays discharged over decades, but they never break it down by administration, because the numbers make Democrats look bad and Republicans look good.

More recently, Obama claimed he would repeal the ban on gays in the military—and has spent precisely zero time working to fulfill this promise. He refused to issue an executive order staying the investigation of gays until the law is changed, and is content destroying through inaction the military careers of servicemen like Arabic translator Dan Choi.

Our Gay Marriage Opponent-in-Chief kicked off his inauguration with an invocation by Rick Warren, robust financial sponsor of the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. Happy days are here again!

Independent Gay Forum reports that around the 100-day mark of Obama’s presidency, WhiteHouse.gov removed discussion of almost all gay issues from its Civil Rights page including mention of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, cut its number of “promises” to gays from eight to three, and slashed discussion of gay issues from half a page to a few sentences. After bloggers objected, some material returned but not the promise to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or a quote about gay civil rights. “Change we can believe in” apparently means “we can be confident that campaign promises to gays will get scrubbed from Obama’s website on a regular basis.”

In Washington D.C., former Democratic mayor Marion Barry recently woke up from a nap to realize he had accidentally voted with a unanimous City Council to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, and subsequently asked the council for a do-over so he could take back his vote.

Meanwhile, gay-friendly candidates and policies are making inroads even in the religious wing of the Republican Party. In the 2008 presidential primaries, televangelist Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Guiliani, the most pro-gay major Republican candidate, a man who shacked up with a gay male couple after his divorce and promised them if New York ever legalized gay marriage he would preside over their ceremony.

Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s group, recently expressed their openness to a gay Obama Supreme Court nominee: “The issue is not their sexual orientation. It’s whether they are a good judge or not.” Sexual orientation “should never come up. It’s not even pertinent to the equation.”

If, in 2009, gays want to support the Democratic Party because they happen to agree with every one of their non-gay-related positions, fine. It’s a bit suspicious that so many gays tout the full Democratic Party line, from global warming to Guantanamo Bay. But if they’re voting for Democrats because of their superior stance on gay issues, they’re not getting much out of the bargain.

How about these “pro-gay” positions? Republicans are more aggressive than Democrats in the war against Islamic extremists, who are extraordinarily harsh in their condemnation and punishment of gays.

Republicans are tougher on law enforcement than Democrats—a boon for gays, who are more likely to suffer bias crimes. Republicans are more likely to support gun rights, as in the recent D.C. gun law Supreme Court case, which included as plaintiff a gay man who wanted to protect himself against anti-gay violence.

Republicans favor lower taxes than Democrats, and gays have more disposable income than heterosexuals.

Why is the Republican Party the real pro-gay party? The fact that Republican politicians aren’t anti-gay and Democratic politicians aren’t pro-gay helps. The fact that Republican positions make more sense than Democratic positions on some gay issues (e.g., opposing “hate crimes” laws for preferred minority groups-of-the-moment) also helps. But the main reason is that the Republican Party is more inclined to protect individual liberties, inarguably in economic realms, and even in some social realms (e.g., smoking and nutrition-related). They’re more likely to support tough law enforcement that allows liberties to be protected. And they’re more likely to support national defense, which allows us to maintain a country that protects liberties in the first place.

If the Republican Party is better for this country, and the party that is better for this country is better for all of us, then the Republican Party is the real pro-gay party.