Are Republican Party Presidential
Hopefuls Shunning the Minority Vote?
By
Sherman N. Miller
I was reading a September 14, 2007 column,
GOP Front-Runners Bypass Smiley,
in the on-line Richard Prince's
Journal-isms publication of
the Maynard Institute that suggested that the Republican presidential
candidates are shunning minority votes in the 2008 Presidential
election.
“In a conversation with Journal-isms, one of a series
[Tavis Smiley] was having with representatives of the news media, the
activist television and radio talk-show host castigated the missing
Republicans for their "missed opportunity" in declining an invitation to
the Republican edition of the ‘All-American Presidential Forums on PBS,’
scheduled for Sept. 27 at the historically black campus [Morgan State
University] in Baltimore.
“The campaigns of former New York mayor
Rudolph Giuliani, former Massachusetts governor Mitt
Romney and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have
cited scheduling conflicts.
“Their absence will follow a decision by the
Spanish-language Univision network to postpone its Sept. 16 forum for
Republican contenders after only one candidate — McCain — said he would
attend.”
The
above report suggests that the Republican presidential hopefuls have
written off the African American and Hispanic votes in the 2008 General
Election. The Republicans are suggesting that they can win with only
white votes. It appears that the Republicans learned nothing from the
wrath of Black America that David Duke (Ku Klux Klan) felt when he
attempted a similar strategy in 1990 in the State of Louisiana.
Joshua Benton states in a May 1, 1999
Post-Gazette.com article,
National: David Duke reverts to unabashed racism in Congress run,
offers the reality of the minority vote in a close contest.
“[David Duke
] . . . had announced his candidacy for the 1990
U.S. Senate race, in which he scored 44 percent of the vote against a
three-term Democratic incumbent. Louisiana
's 30 percent black population prevented Duke from
reaching the U.S. Senate. . .
The old way almost
worked. Duke, 48, came close to becoming Louisiana's governor and
senator. He got the majority of the state's white voters to back him --
twice.”
Before the Voting Rights Act, Duke
would
have been celebrating his victories and the exploitation of yesterday’s
Ku Klux Klan’s racist antics may be today’s paradigm. However, Duke
felt
the full wrath of the black vote for African-Americans had disdain for
yesterday's racists attempting to run roughshod over today's Black
America.
As a long time Black Republican who possesses respectability in the
black community, I worry that the so-called Republican presidential
frontrunners are committing
political suicide. I do not know who is advising these Republican
presidential hopefuls, but I think Republican presidential candidates
need to take their heads out of the sand and realize that all votes
count equally. In 2006, the Republicans lost control of both the US
House and Senate. I believe the Republican presidential hopefuls are
working at giving away The White House in 2008 because if the
Presidential Race is close the minority vote may be the Republican
Achilles’ heel.
Thus I advise the Republican presidential candidates to work out some
arrangement for candidate debates with Tavis Smiley of PBS and Univision
as soon as possible. It now is disingenuous for even African American
and Hispanics Republicans to help the current crop of Republican
presidential hopefuls who appear to be shunning the needs of minority
communities. Will Republican
presidential hopefuls get a course called The Losing Strategies of David
Duke in the 2008 General Election?
