The Truth about Black Political History

February is Black History Month, and I hope the few Democrats who have the good taste to read my blog have enjoyed Black History Month so far, because I am about to rain on your parade.

According to the website of the National Black Republican Association, "It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks."

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, pretends to be the party of the downtrodden African American, and paints Republicans as the downtrodders, but, as the ancient sage observed, "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."

A brief peek at a few key points in African American History:

May 22, 1856: Two years after the Republican Party's birth, Sen. Charles Sumner (R-MA) rose to decry pro-slavery Democrats. Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC) responded by grabbing a walking stick and beating Sumner unconscious. Sen. Sumner could not resume his duties for three years.

1865: Congress proposes the 13th Article of Amendment to the several States, outlawing slavery. Congressional Republicans unanimously approve the proposal, Democrats vote against it – 63% in the Senate and 78% in the House.

1866: Congress proposes the 14th Articles of Amendment to the several States, requiring the States to guarantee equal protection. Republicans approve it by votes of 94% in the Senate and 96% in the House. Democrats are unanimously against it.

1868: The Democratic Party's campaign slogan is "This is a white man's country: Let white men rule."

1870: Joseph Rainey (R-SC) and Hiram Revels (R-MS) become the first blacks elected to the US House and US Senate, respectively. In fact, every African American member of Congress until 1935 was a Republican.

1872: Republican Pinckney Pinchback is elected by Louisiana as America's first black governor.

Regarding the post-bellum South: We will stipulate to the numerous abuses heaped upon the former Confederacy by carpetbaggers and other northern scalawags, noting that these were individual acts, not acts of institutional policy.

We also note that the Republican-controlled Congress fought what was almost a second war with Southern Democrats all through that era, with charges of corruption and violence on both sides that were more true than any of us in the 21st Century care to admit.

However, we must point out that the "Jim Crow" laws championed by local Democratic Parties all over the Union prevented many African Americans from voting. They probably reached their height with Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decision legalizing the "separate but equal."

August 17, 1937: Pres. F D Roosevelt nominated Sen. Hugo Black (D-AL), to the US Supreme Court. Black was a former Ku Klux Klansman who defended Klansmen against race-murder charges.

September 24, 1957: Following the historic Brown v Board of Education ruling, Democratic Gov. Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to maintain segregation at Little Rock's Central High School. Republican Pres. Dwight Eisenhower responded by deploying the US Army's 101st Airborne Division to insure desegregation at Central High.

January 3, 1959: Robert Byrd (D-WV), a Ku Klux Klan alumnus, joins the US Senate. In 1966, Byrd had written to the KKK's Imperial Wizard, "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." In 2001, Byrd told an interviewer, "There are white ni----rs. I've seen a lot of white ni----rs in my time. I'm going to use that word." Byrd served in the Senate until his death in 2010; he was never challenged in a primary by another Democrat.

1960: Republicans propose the 1960 Civil Rights Act; 18 Senate Democrats filibuster for 5 days and 5 hours, then admit failure. Pres. Eisenhower signs the Act.

1964: After a 14-hour filibuster, Robert Byrd (D-WV), Al Gore, Sr. (D-TN) and 21 other Democratic senators fail to scuttle the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-IL) rallies 26 Republicans and 44 Democrats to invoke cloture and allow passage – 82% of Republicans and 66% of Democrats vote in favor. Sen. Dirksen, by the way, was also a champion of 1957, 1960 and 1965 civil rights acts. Democratic Pres. Lyndon Johnson took the lion's share of the credit for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, then showed his anger with Dr. King's protest against the Vietnam War in 1967 by calling Dr. King "that ni--er preacher."

1975: Republican Pres. Gerald Ford promotes Daniel James as the Air Force's first black 4-star general.

1982: Republican Pres. Ronald Reagan promotes Roscoe Robinson as the Army's first black 4-star general.

1983: Pres. Reagan establishes Dr. King's birthday as a national holiday.

1987: Pres. Reagan names Colin Powell America's first black National Security Adviser. Two years later, Reagan names Gen'l Powell as the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

1991: Former Klansman David Duke runs for governor of Louisiana as a Republican; The Louisiana Republican Party endorses incumbent Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards.

[In fairness, we note that Democratic Pres. Bill Clinton promoted J. Paul Reason as the Navy's first black 4-star admiral in 1996.]

2001: Republican Pres. George W. Bush appoints Colin Powell first black US Secretary of State and Dr. Condoleeza Rice as National Security Advisor. Four years later, when Bush nominates Dr. Rice to succeed Sec'y Powell, Sen. Byrd leads Democrats in stalling Rice's confirmation for a week. Former Republican James Jeffords (Ind-VT) joins 13 Democrats in voting against Rice, the most votes against a State nominee since Henry Clay in 1825. Dr. Rice recalls, "The first Republican I knew was my father, and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I."

In other news:

The 'War on Poverty' originated in Pres. Johnson's 1964 State of the Union address. The proposals enacted by Congress totaled just 1.2% of the US gross domestic product (GDP). By 2008, it rose to 5% of GDP and, for fiscal year 2011, Pres. Obama proposed just short of $1 trillion, a 50% increase over FY 2007.

"Our aim," said Johnson, "is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it." Did he and his successors succeed? In 1959, the US poverty rate was 22.4%, and had already declined to 19% by 1964. It reached an all-time low of 11.1% in 1973, then hit its post-1964 high of 15.2% in 1983. After dropping again, the poverty rate rebounded to 15.1% in 1993 and, as of 2008, stood at 13.2%. One could say that the poverty rate has been steady, wavering between 11% and 15% for over 40 years.

What has this to do with African Americans? So glad you asked! According to the Bureau of the Census:

Among married families: 8.3% of blacks live in poverty, compared to 5.8% of Americans overall.

Among unrelated individuals living alone: 27.9% of blacks; 19.1% overall.

Among single parent families: 40% of blacks; 26.6% overall.

Dr. Thomas Sowell – African American, Libertarian pundit – in a 2004 column on the 'War on Poverty,' adds, "The poverty rate among black families fell from 87% in 1940 to 47% in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs."

Speaking in 1988, President Reagan said, "The federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won."

Dr. Sowell also said, "While some good things did come out of the 1960s, as out of many other decades, so did major social disasters that continue to plague us today." The invoice for this particular plague has passed $7 trillion, with no compelling evidence of positive effect. Thanks, Lyndon.

One more, just for fun:

Barack Hussein Obama II, apart from his suspect natality, has been no friend to his fellow African Americans. Oh, wait, is he an African American? His mother was European American and his father was African. Back in 2007, Leslie Fulbright, of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "People across the political and racial spectrums started discussing presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's race after he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Some insist he is not African American and is unsuited to be a black candidate, because he is not a direct descendant of slaves and hasn't had what they see as an authentic African American experience."

That technicality aside, we have just passed the halfway point of the first black president's term. What has he accomplished?

In speaking of his presidency, we decline to make an issue of the fact that he began his political career with a fundraiser at the home of confessed domestic terrorist William Ayers (of "Guilty as sin, free as a bird!" fame), and that the family attended Trinity United Church of Christ for some 20 years, but never heard Pastor Jeremiah Wright's anti-American rhetoric.

In reviewing his presidential record, however, his campaign promise for a more ethical administration is fair game. Two top-level nominees – Tom Daschle (Health & Human Services) and Nancy Killefer (Chief Performance Officer) – withdrew when the nation learned they had failed to pay federal taxes. Three others –Timothy Geithner (Treasury), Hilda Solis (Labor) and Ron Kirk (Trade Representative) – were confirmed despite ethics questions. One, Hillary Clinton, was confirmed as Secretary of State despite the fact that she was Hillary Clinton.

He also promised a "no lobbyist in the White House" rule. Apparently, he was talking about the White House in Moscow or the Kyrgyz Republic, because one reporter estimated that 10% of Obama's choices for senior staff posts have ties to lobbying firms.

The $750+ billion stimulus/bailout was proposed and enacted with a stated purpose of keeping unemployment below 8% and preventing Chrysler, Ford and GM from going bankrupt. Unemployment went above 8% in January 2009, peaked above 10% and is still above 9%. Chrysler and GM went bankrupt, while Ford, which refused bailout money, reported a near-$1 billion profit in 2009.

Obama also presented additional recommendations that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated would result in a $1.2 trillion deficit for FY 2009. The CBO was wrong – by year's end, the deficit passed $1.4 trillion, and is projected to top $1.55 trillion for FY 2011. Of particular interest to African Americans, these budgets defunded a scholarship program specifically designed to get deserving black children into private schools in Washington, the type of schools that the first couple chose for their children. The budgets also cut millions in aid to historically black colleges.

In 2010, three federal courts declared his moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico unconstitutional; he did it anyway. A federal court and Congress called his new Internet regulations unconstitutional; he imposed them anyway. A federal judge pronounced his healthcare bill unconstitutional; he proceeds with its implementation in direct contempt of a federal judge.

Not only has the Democratic Party foisted upon the United States a black man whose only value is as a bad example, the Party's policies continue to destroy the "land of opportunity" that has allowed so many African Americans – as well as Asian Americans, Native Americans and European Americans – to succeed, prosper and create their own version of the American Dream.

 
Thanks for listening, tune in next week for another rant!