QUOTE(azwhitewolf @ Mar 9 2008, 04:15 AM)

And with such "colorblind" guys at the helm, like Robert Byrd, J. William Fulbright (Bill Clinton's mentor), Al Gore Sr., Sam Ervin, Richard Russell, Andrew Cuomo, Dick Gephardt, and Donna Brazile to name a few - it's hard to believe that you could make a claim that the Democrat Party is the party of the black person, much less the black candidate.
And the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.
Here's Al Gore at a fundraiser. At the home of Fred Phelps Jr. Yeah, the godhatesf**s guy... Even our Log Cabin Republican friends are wanting answers.
Here's a answer for you. In 1984, in his race for the Senate, Gore opposed a "gay bill of civil rights" and said homosexuality was not something "society should affirm." Evil Fred did indeed hold a fundraiser for Gore in 1988 and served as a delegate for him at the Democratic Convention that year.
However, Phelps soured on Gore when he became Bill Clinton's vice-president.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Phelps protested Hillary Clinton during a campaign speech in support of the Clinton-Gore ticket at the University of Kansas on October 14, 1992. In Bill Clinton's second presidential campaign, Phelps and the Westboro church also opposed Clinton and Gore because of the administration's support for gay rights. The entire Westboro congregation picketed a 1997 inaugural ball, denouncing Gore as a "famous fag pimp." In 1998, Westboro picketed the funeral of Gore's father, screaming vulgarities at Gore and telling him, "your dad's in Hell." linkGood try though at guilt by association,
azwhitewolf.
I'll see your Byrd, Fulbright, Gore Sr., Ervin, Russell, Cuomo, Gephardt, Donna Brazile (the first African-American woman to be campaign manager for a major presidential candidate? What's SHE doing on this list?) and raise you with Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, Richard Nixon, Lee Atwater, Bob Barr, Katherine Harris, Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, Strom Thurmond, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, George Allen, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz, William Rehnquist, Conrad Burns, George W. Bush and John "I voted against the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday" McCain.
I could go on, but why belabor the obvious?
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It took the hard work of Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and Republican Whip Thomas Kuchel to pass the Civil Rights Act (Dirksen was presented a civil rights accomplishment award for the year by the head of the NAACP in recognition of his efforts). Upon breaking the Democrat filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Republican Dirksen took to the Senate floor and exclaimed "The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here!" Sadly, Democrats and revisionist historians have all but forgotten (and intentionally so) that it was Republican Dirksen, not the divided Democrats, who made the Civil Rights Act a reality. Dirksen also broke the Democrat filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act that was signed by Republican President Eisenhower.
I guess it's real easy to convince people who don't know their history that the Republican Party is a group of white guys led by an ex-cheerleader. Yeah, okay. You got me there. That's embarassing, but not as embarassing as being compared to a bunch of Suth'rn Dem'crats who were members of the KKK and fought segregation tooth and nail.
If you know your history so well, azwhitewolf, why have you spun the role of the Republican Party in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?
Two weeks into the new year, conservative outlets continue to promote the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar, a 12-month wall calendar "celebrating a century and a half of civil rights achievements by the party of Lincoln."
The stated purpose of the Republican Freedom Calendar is to promote the story, "as remarkable as it is untold," of "the many important Republican achievements in advancing civil rights." But actually the calendar does a good deal more than that. Not only does the calendar ignore the civil rights achievements of Democrats, it paints the Democratic Party as a perennial enemy of civil rights. The calendar also omits the embarrassing chapters in Republican history.
President Johnson also helped to push through the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Yet the Republican Freedom Calendar describes these laws as Republican triumphs. The calendar does not mention that Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, won five Deep South states because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. It does not mention that Republican George H.W. Bush opposed the Civil Rights Act in his 1964 run for the U.S. Senate. (Bush lost to Democrat Ralph Yarborough, who was the only Southern senator to vote for the Civil Rights Act.) The calendar does not mention that Ronald Reagan, in his 1966 campaign to become governor of California, endorsed repeal of California’s Fair Housing Act, saying, "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so."
What the calendar does say is this: "Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act overwhelmingly, and by much higher percentages in both House and Senate than the Democrats. Indeed, the 1964 Civil Rights Act became law only after overcoming a Democrat filibuster."
Like similar statements made by black conservatives over the past several years, this account suggests that the Civil Rights Act was a partisan contest between Democrats and Republicans. In fact, Congressional votes on the Civil Rights Act did not break along party lines – they split along regional lines. In the North, both parties supported the Civil Rights Act; in the South, both parties opposed it. The difference was that the Republican Party had very little presence in the South, which had been dominated since the 1870s by the segregationist wing of the Democratic Party.
Today, of course, the old Dixiecrats have nearly disappeared, and white Southerners vote heavily for the GOP. This is not a coincidence; it was the 1964 split between Northern and Southern Democrats that opened the South to anti-civil-rights overtures from Republicans such as Goldwater, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. The realignment of the South is one of the most important consequences of the civil rights movement, yet the Republican Freedom Calendar makes no mention of it. link2Can I interest you in a Republican Freedom Calendar,
azwhitewolf? It's three years out of date and plays fast and loose with the facts, but that shouldn't bother you much.
QUOTE
The fact that the Republican Party doesn't have a black nominee is because blacks aren't being elected by the populace.
When I see sentences like:
QUOTE
Why is it the Republicans have failed so totally in getting Blacks elected to high political office?
... I really have to laugh.
Fewer black presidential candidates = Republicans r teh racist!!!!1!1!!!
The GOP, the Republican Party... none of them have anything to do with getting blacks elected at all. Or anybody else.
It takes votes. It takes grassroots campaigning. It takes a leader who is willing to stand up and be counted on his merits.
And it also takes a commitment by the national party to recruit, train, and prepare those "leaders," which is why the last Black Republican Congressman, J.C. Watts left the House to join
GOPAC as their chairman until 2007 when he was replaced by Michael Steele. GOPAC calls itself "the premier training organization for Republican candidates for elected office."
Apparently, Watts isn't all that impressed himself with the GOP's commitment to broadening their base. "Republicans want to say we reach out. But what we do instead is 60 days before an election, we'll spend some money on black radio and TV or buy an ad in Ebony and Jet, and that's our outreach. People read through that," Watts said in a
The Washington Times interview.
QUOTE
But here is a list of
Black GOP Elected Officials. Please knock yourself out riddling how unimportant these positions are compared to President, but apparently there is a growing opposition to the Democrat Party as being
the party of the black voter.
Just because we don't have a Jackson or Sharpton-like pundits on MSNBC doesn't mean black Republicans don't exist. Or win.
Nobody ever suggested Black Republicans don't exist. They most certainly do.
They just don't
win above a local or state level.
QUOTE(Mrs. Pigpen @ Mar 9 2008, 11:38 AM)

ONLY because Powell chose not to run. Until Obama took the platform, Powell was the most likely black candidate to win the presidency by far. I still think he could have taken Obama if he would have chosen to run, though I don't blame him for not running. The second most-likely candidate would be Rice. If not for the unpopularity of Bush, she would have given Hillary a run for her money. I think that Rice (even with Bush's unpopularity) or Powell would produce a far higher percentage of the votes than any of the aforementioned black Democratic presidential candidates with the exception of Obama. Nearly anyone can choose to run for president. That more black Democrats have chosen to do so than black Republicans is hardly proof of who would be the more likely to win in the near future.
A few too many "woulda/shoulda" and "I could have been a contender" scenarios there
Mrs. Pigpen.
Either you do or you do not, as Yoda said, and Powell and Rice did not choose to run. I agree that Powell, if not Rice, would have been far more productive as a vote-getter than Braun, Chisholm, Jackson and Sharpton, but first you got to have the fire in the belly to get in the ring. They didn't and history is not created by those who sit on the sidelines watching the ones making it happen.
My explanation may not be the right one, but it doesn't mean I should accept yours.
QUOTE(BaphometsAdvocate @ Mar 9 2008, 11:55 AM)

As for your list - who's the more racist party? The one who put up the most blacks and DENIED them the opportunity to run for President or the one who had the fewer black candidates because they have fewer black constituents?
Say what?
How exactly did the Democrats "deny" Chisholm, Braun, Jackson and Sharpton the opportunity to run for President? It helps if you can raise the money, build the organization and win some primaries and a caucus or two. Until Barack Obama came along, the only one who even came close to that kind of success was Jesse Jackson.
If the Republicans have fewer Black candidates because they have fewer Black constituents, why don't you give some consideration to why Blacks bolted from the GOP to the other side. Could it be that Franklin Roosevelt and subsequent Democratic presidents offered a new deal to Blacks that Herbert Hoover and subsequent Republican presidents have not?
QUOTE(Macura @ Mar 10 2008, 12:02 AM)

First black field grade officer - Maj. Martin Delany, special commission given by President Lincoln, a Republican.
First black Lt. Gov. - Oscar Dunn of Louisiana, a Republican
First black to vote in an election after the 15th amendment, Thomas Mundy Peterson, active Republican
First black Gov. - P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana, a Republican
First black Senator - Senator Hiram Rhodes Revels (Republican, Mississippi)
First black Congressman - Joseph Rainey (Republican, South Carolina)
Hmmm...seems there one party that seems first to actually win with black candidates.
Yep. Especially if you go back in time. You left off your list Macura one Oscar DePreist, a Black Republican from Illinois who was elected to the House of Representatives in 1928 and was the last Black Republican elected to the House for another
56 years!
The last two African-Americans elected to the House were Gary Franks (1991-1997) and the already mentioned J.C. Watts (1995-2003). The last Black Republican elected to the Senate was Edward Brooke (1967-1979).
This is despite the Reagan Revolution, the Republican Contract with America and Republican control of the White House, Congress and Supreme Court under George W. Bush. All that and the GOP still can't get a brutha or a sista elected to a national office? The Arizona Cardinals will win the Super Bowl before the Republicans elect a Black Senator.
QUOTE(azwhitewolf @ Mar 10 2008, 01:41 AM)

Jesse Jackson says the racist, Jew-hating Louis Farakkhan is "free to express himself." How sad. You cannot condemn some racists, then ignore others.
The way you ignore Republican racists?
QUOTE(azwhitewolf)
I *did* vote for Alan Keyes in past primaries, because I find his speaking style amazing, and his morals to be upstanding. Not because he's black. But because he's a genuinely talented man. I also noted that the media was quick to dismiss him, including the debates where his time was much shorter.
Perhaps because he's a perennial extremist outsider always running for positions he'll never win since he's to the right of Rush Limbaugh and Attila the Hun.
QUOTE(azwhitewolf)
Dennis Kucinich is a creepy little clown regardless of what he does. He and his little communist anti-war followers found no footing with the American people from start to finish. But to his credit, he had what would have been the hottest First Lady ever.
Yeah, a First Lady with a tongue stud. Nothing sexist about that.
QUOTE(azwhitwolf)
This whole "We r teh bestest 4 gitting a black presidunt in teh white hows furst!" is pretty ridiculous. It's like the party that gets there first gets First Prize for some imaginary race relations award. Or the bragging rights to point at the other party and call them mysogynists for not thinking of running a woman in the last decade. We're in a completely screwed up war, our relations with other countries is at risk, our economy is still somewhat strong, but dropping fast, and our enemy (Al Qaida, remember them?) still hate us and want to see Western Civilization destroyed. They have 80 barges, and could easily detonate an EMP scud 11km over Kansas, knocking out the entire electrical structure of the country.
And we're biatchin' about the color of the president. Is anyone else feeling stupid? Because I am.
I'm sorry but I have to ask---your first and last sentences---is that a lame attempt at Ebonics or do you just write in a language of your own creation?
QUOTE(azwhitewolf)
I have just one question left. If Jackson AND Sharpton ran for President, was it the post-1968 racism in the Democrat Party that kept BOTH of them from being elected? Or is it actually possible that issue or character, and not race, that kept them from appealing to the American public?
Maybe they were just lousy candidates who ran boutique campaigns that never had a chance of garnering broad appeal or actually winning the nomination. Kind of like Rudy Giuliani. Remember him?