Clinton, Obama, and Racial
Politics
by Paul R. Hollrah
Watching Democrats commit politics is an intriguing pastime. In
recent days they’ve engaged in some especially outrageous behavior as the
Clinton and Obama campaigns sparred over the issue of race and the Nevada
caucuses.
The first shot in the internecine battle was fired when Barack
Hussein Obama made a primary-night victory speech in New Hampshire… celebrating
his second place finish.
In his speech, Obama said, "… in the unlikely story that is
America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced
down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we
shouldn't try, or that we can't (Obama failed to mention that it was white
Democrats who were saying those things to minorities in order to keep them from
wandering off the Democratic plantation), generations of Americans have
responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people…
"It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached
for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King
who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land…"
His reference to the "King who took us to the mountaintop" was
a clear reference to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a tribute to Dr. King
that no member of the Republican Party… the party that was founded out of
opposition to slavery, the party that has always been at the forefront of civil
rights for all Americans… would ever object to.
However, it was not a statement that white Democrats could take
lying down because it totally ignored what has been the single most significant
factor in Democrat political success for the past fifty years: the party’s
shameless exploitation of the black vote through the "soft bigotry of low
expectations" and promises of bigger and better government handouts.
Within hours, Hillary Clinton rose to the challenge. She said,
"I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when
President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964… The power of that
dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said, ‘We are
going to do it,’ and actually got it accomplished."
Well, almost. The fact of the matter is that the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 was almost identical, word-for-word, to the Civil Rights Act of 1875
which was passed into law by a Republican Congress and a Republican president,
and which Democrats subsequently had overturned by a Democrat-dominated Supreme
Court. It is also a fact that the 1964 Act became law only because of the strong
support of congressional Republicans. The bill was supported by 80% of House
Republicans (138-34) and only 61% of House Democrats (152-96), and by 82% of
Senate Republicans (27-6) and 69% of Senate Democrats (46-21).
Yes, Lyndon Johnson supported passage of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act, but only because he was forced to do so by Supreme Court rulings and by
pressure from the increasingly militant civil rights movement. But how did he
really feel about equal rights for African Americans?
As columnist Bruce Bartlett tells us in his forthcoming book,
"Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past,"
then-Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson said in a 1957 speech, "These
Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us
(Democrats) since they've got something now they never had before, the political
pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this,
we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not
enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their
(Republican) allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping
them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all
sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."
Those were Lyndon Johnson’s thoughts on the subject just three
years before moving to the White House as Vice President of the United
States.
Finally, on Tuesday evening, January 15, the American people
tuned in to NBC, hoping to see a lively debate between Senators Clinton and
Obama and former senator John Edwards. What they saw, instead, was a political
softball game with Meet The Press host Tim Russert and NBC Nightly
News anchor Brian Williams serving up batting practice softballs for the
Democrats.
As the candidates engaged in a hastily-arranged love fest,
their lawyers were working feverishly, drafting rules requiring all participants
in the upcoming Nevada Democratic caucuses to show photo IDs before being
allowed to participate in a caucus. These, of course, were the same Democrats
who argued passionately before the U.S. Supreme Court just a week earlier that
Indiana’s law requiring voters to show photo IDs before voting should be
declared unconstitutional.
Who ever said that Democrats didn’t know who they are and what
they’re about? If they are so convinced that they can’t trust each other, then
how can they expect any of us to trust them? But they are fun to watch.