Sophia Nelson Needs to Return From the Gamma Quadrant

She writes:

It's My Party, But I Don't Feel Part of It: Election night was a bittersweet night for me.... [A]s a black Republican, I was chagrined that the political party I've belonged to for 20 years... lost 96 percent of the black vote and 67 percent of the Hispanic vote.... We'll have to decide whether we want to be the party that believes in smaller government, lower taxes and less regulation, or whether we're going to be a litmus-test party that responds only to the demands of social conservatives.... [W]e'll have to confront our most disastrous modern legacy: our poor relationship with black Americans, the very people the party was formed to protect....

John McCain that seemed to simply concede the black vote... only one high-level black adviser or spokesperson on his full-time paid campaign staff. The GOP convention was embarrassingly devoid of people of color -- among more than 2,000 delegates, only 36 were black. The problem, former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele told the Washington Times last week, is that party officials "don't give a damn."... It didn't have to be this way....

I joined the Republican Party in 1988, attracted by George H.W. Bush's message of a "kinder, gentler" America and Jack Kemp's mantra of economic development and urban enterprise zones, which seemed a natural fit for the black community.... [B]eing a moderate black Republican isn't easy. My black GOP colleagues and I endure endless ridicule and questioning from other African Americans, including close friends and family members who wonder how we can belong to a political party that is so overwhelmingly white, male, Southern, conservative and seemingly closed to ethnic minorities.

And truth be told, it's sometimes an ill fit.... Shannon Reeves... started a college Republican chapter at Grambling State University in 1988. In 2003, he wrote an open letter to the party after it was disclosed that in 1999, a newsletter published by the then-vice chairman of the California Republican Party had carried an essay suggesting that the country would have been better off if the South had won the Civil War. "I am tired of being embarrassed by elected Republican officials who have no sensitivity for issues that alienate whole segments of our population," Reeves wrote. "This embarrassment is different for a black Republican. Not only do we have to sit in rooms and behave professionally towards Republicans who share this ideology, we have to go home to a hostile environment where we are called Uncle Tom and maligned as a sell-out to the community because of our membership in the Republican Party." With those words Reeves expressed what many of us have felt over the years -- and felt again during the recent campaign as we listened to racially coded Republican ads and speeches aimed at scaring working-class and rural white voters about Obama...

Sophia: Jack Kemp lost. The Republican Party is now controlled by people who would rather have the votes of those who think it's a damned shame the South lost the Civil War than your vote. That is how it is. That is how it has been since Nixon.

Comments

[max]

"The Republican Party is now controlled by people who would rather have the votes of those who think it's a damned shame the South lost the Civil War than your vote."

"...the votes of those who think it's a damn shame we didn't ship the blacks back to Africa than your vote."

(If the North had seceded and there had been a war and the North lost and slavery had continued, that would've been just fine. "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.")

max
['No colored Democrats need apply.']

[SvN]

It is a shame that people like Sophia Nelson are so alienated by the Democratic party that they would rather be counted as Republicans? I'd like her views on why that is.

[CN]

The Republican party never believed in smaller government, etc. Look at how they've governed. That smaller government stuff was just propaganda. And she, along with many others, was duped by that propaganda.

[CBBB]

I don't think Sophia is ALIENATED by the Democratic Party, I think she believes the Republican Party stands for policies and issues that it doesn't any longer.

[sm]

And when was the last time it actually stood for those policies? When Sophia was 4?

[Noni Mausa]

A question for discussion: suppose that the GOP had done all the things it said it wanted, instead of just a couple of them -- shrunk the government, cut programs, cut taxes to match, and also cut regulations of financial and other industries. Lets say that 9/11 never happened and by some stroke of luck, Bush accomplished all these things at once without distractions.

Now fast forward to Now. As the financial buffalos race toward the cliff, what would Bush -- or anybody -- be able to do to avert disaster? Who would help the Americans that business just fleeced and turned out into the pre-Christmas snowdrifts?

It seems to me you can have small government and strict regulation, or loose regulation and a big government to sweep up the wreckage after the flywheel mechanism shatters like an ormolu wrench. But you can't have loose regulation AND a gormless government. Well, not for long.

Noni

[bluespapa]

Republican ideals ought to have a solid place in America, Main Street Republicans who work hard, pay their taxes, want their children to succeed, what good schools, have a life that includes religion. The problem is what they have become in adopting the worst prejudices to win votes, scaring whites with threats of blacks in charge, gay marriage, and always abortion. There used to be pragmatic Republicans, not just crony capitalists. When patriotism becomes jingoism and xenophobia, when equality is subverted by backroom old boy networks, when the value of hard work is perverted into the landing of a government contract, when military families are openly hostile to liberals, it perverts what they can stand for.

And what they stand for now is an end to Affirmative Action with nothing to replace it, an end to "illegal" workers, even when they pay taxes, create wealth, and are better risks among first time home buyers.

What Delay, Hastert, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all the behind the scenes incompetents have managed is to make Republican be equal to the desire for naked, unalloyed power. That's it. The rest are treasonous. The rest are enemies.

There was a party that had some ideals. Lincoln Chaffee, Christine Todd Whitman, Colins, Jim Leach should be the standard bearers. Integrity is meaningful, but so is pragmatic solving of problems.

[AIMAI]

Has anyone here forgotten that Christie Todd Whitman willingly lent herself to the coverup of the health hazard that was ground zero? New Yorkers kinda haven't.

aimai