The Conservative-Black Alliance: Nothing New
If you voted for Buchanan in 2000, then you have voted for a ticket with a black woman on it. Your detractors cannot say that. Unless they voted Communist in the Angela Davis days. Did they?
Civil Rights was passed by an all-white Congress as conservative as any elected in the Sixties was bound to be. It only passed with Republican votes. And the Democratic President who signed it into law was not only white, but very, very Texan. Surely, no one here would wish to return to Jim Crow? After all, you most likely voted for a black Vice-President in 2000.
That alliance is now as vital as it was in the days of the struggle against Jim Crow, and of the struggle alongside white Republicans against the Vietnam War. Today’s causes are protecting blue-collar jobs, controlling immigration, making and keeping English America’s national language, returning to a strong defense capability used strictly for its proper defensive purpose, safeguarding marriage as only ever the union of one man and one woman, and ending the triple genocide of the black male in the womb, on the streets and on the battlefields.
And that alliance is nothing new.
David, no one voted for Buchanan because of Ezola Foster. Her presence on the ticket likely hurt Buchanan because it was such an obvious (and lame) attempt to join the identity-politics bandwagon. Foster, who has never held any sort of elected office, was an obvious amateur, completely unprepared for national politics — Palin looks like Bismarck in comparison.
Propping up more Ezola Fosters will be about as effective for paleocons as propping up Michael Steele was for mainstream Republicans; that is, it won’t gain them one damned vote and will make them look ridiculous.
But you (or, at least, rather more TAC readers than voters in general) voted for her. That is the point. And that she accepted the nomination is also the point.
“Hurt Buchanan”? How many people who might have voted for him other than as a major party candidate, or indeed might have voted for him at all, were ever not going to do so, no matter what?
I’m not calling for any sort of affirmative action. If this alliance emerges, it won’t be necessary. Michael Steele, for example, needs to be called out on protecting blue-collar jobs, controlling immigration, making and keeping English America’s national language, returning to a strong defense capability used strictly for its proper defensive purpose, safeguarding marriage as only ever the union of one man and one woman, and ending the triple genocide of the black male in the womb, on the streets and on the battlefields. Realistically, only other blacks can do that. Sad, perhaps. But true.
And a great potential way of identifying alternative candidates.
I heartily embrace all your priorities. That said, the history of GOP or Conservative outreach to Blacks as a group offers no positive encouragement to the alliance you propose. Like our foolish outreach to Hispanics, it fails because we wish to enlist the Hispanics as fellow citizens, and they only see such alliances as short term meal tickets. It’s the same with Blacks. We can never, and should never, get into a bidding war with the Dem’s on such terms.
One quibble re, Black triple genocide. Black troops do not suffer disproportionate casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blacks tend not to volunteer for infantry and special forces. They are concentrated in support positions. So they are killed/wounded rather less than White and Hispanic troops. But you are right that Black abortion is up and Blacks murder each other at alarming rates.
They cast the decisive votes for traditional marriage in Florida and California without having to be offered anything by the Republicans, and despite having been told not to by the state Democrats, for whose national candidate they still voted anyway, not least (presumably) because he agreed with them about traditional marriage.
There would be no price attached to the things that I list. Rather, this *is* the price list. As for social programs, let’s face it, they would happen anyway, one way or another. Even pre-twentieth century England and Scotland had the Poor Laws, although the Scottish one was even harsher than the English one. But something will always be there, so long as poor people are there.
The military being one such program, really. Which is why blacks volunteer for it disproportionately. The triple genocide is a term that I took from a black article, so to speak, although I can’t off the top of my head remember where. It was something to do with Martin Luther King’s niece, a Civil Rights and pro-life, pro-family activist.
When it came to things on which your disagreed, then yes, the price of something you wanted (or not having something you didn’t) would be something you didn’t want (or not having something you did). But that’s just politics. How much do you want the alliance that could deliver protecting blue-collar jobs, controlling immigration, making and keeping English America’s national language, returning to a strong defense capability used strictly for its proper defensive purpose, safeguarding traditional marriage, and reducing abortion?
I don’t know what even Jesse Jackson, not someone whom I would usually defend, got in return for intervening in the pro-life interest in the Schiavo case. But once a Baptist minister (as much as Mike Huckabee is, at least), always a Baptist minister. And there are a lot of them about. Often, even usually, a great deal sounder than Jesse Jackson on the issues listed here.
Blacks stopped volunteering for the armed forces in disproportionate numbers around the time the Iraq war started. This was pointed out some years ago by Andrew Bacevich. Whether it was because the blacks were adverse to the particular war, adverse to Bush or adverse to getting killed, their common sense is to be commended. I’ve not heard if black volunteers for the armed forces have trended up again since the recession started or since Obama took office.
Elsewhere on this site, Philip Giraldi excoriates certain neocon’s for writing about war with a frivolous ignorance. The same applies here. David has never dealt with American Blacks or their politicians. America is for him, a chessboard on which to play. He is impervious to contrary information and utterly innocent of American cultural history.
This is one of the stupidest things I’ve read in the American conservative.
Triple Genocide?
Blacks disproportionately kill eachother and have abortions; but it’s all blacks doing it to themselves. How is that a genocide?
As for the battlefields, Blacks make up over 13% of the population age 18-30, but made less than10% of the deaths in Iraq.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22452.pdf
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs/phc-t9/index.html
Whites, in contrast, make up only 60% of the population aged 18-30, but make up 75% of the deaths in Iraq.
Do you make the distinction between conservatives and the current GOP? If so, you can’t conflate the two in the 60′s. Actually, you can’t conflate the two no matter how you answer this question. The white Republicans who voted for civil rights were Rockefeller Republicans – certainly not conservative in today’s terms – that have been completely driven out of the GOP today.
Have you heard of the Southern Strategy before? The Zell Miller type of party switcher? Conservatives have done nothing for civil rights for blacks – whether they were Southern Democrats in the 60′s or Republicans today.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for blacks to call out Steele in favor of your agenda. I would guess the only issue that breaks through to be considered very relevant is the plight of black males, and neither Republicans nor conservatives have any solutions for that.
Dear Norwegian Shooter,
I do not know you, but I wonder if you have much more experience with American Blacks than David Lindsay.
Firstly, if my memory serves me well, 21 GOP Senators voted for the CRA, 6 against. I imagine those 21 were half-Rockefeller, half-Nixon Republicans, not mostly liberals.
Rockefeller Republicans also helped bring us free trade and a range of globalist economic arrangements that cause a serious transfer of wealth from producers (workers and farmers) to financiers. The average Southern Democrat, on the other hand, has tended to support protection for our domestic agriculture and industries, which are disproportionately located in the South and Red Midwestern states, and which are disproportionately Black.
Now, Reagan Republicans are a different issue, but you imply conservatives of the Southern type are racists and never have Blacks’ interests in mind (unlike Yankee Republicans from snow-white New England states), which shows an extremely shallow, or worse, prejudicial, understanding of America and its history.
You can pass all the civil rights laws in the world, but if you take away stable, well-paying jobs, these new protections and, dare I say, privileges are absorbed and enjoyed only by the highest class Blacks.