Advance Indiana, quoting the Washington Times-Herald brings us the tin ear of Todd Rokita.
Rokita spent some time revisiting the party’s history, especially concerning the African-American vote. He said that African-Americans vote 90 percent Democrat and questioned why.
“How can that be?†Rokita said. “90 to 10. Who’s the master and who’s the slave in that relationship? How can that be healthy?â€
Rokita went on to stress that the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, abolition, and the civil rights movement and they should be proud of their heritage. It’s the fault of the national media, however, that this heritage gets lost when folks think of the major political parties and race relations in America. No mention of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, the defection of the Dixiecrats to the Republican Party, the almost total shift of the GOP center of gravity to the South, and really pretty much everything having to do with race and politics for the past 40 years. Nope, blacks vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats because of the national media and their slave-like relationship with the Democrats.
I don’t think Rokita meant anything bad by his statements. But I think his statements are disingenuous, patronizing, and a maybe a little naive.
Update Finfinito has an entry on the incident over at Blue Indiana. Rokita’s comments have been picked up by Kevin Rader of WTHR-13. Mr. Rader is requesting that Mr. Rokita provide an on-camera clarification.
I can’t believe an elected official would even spout such nonsense…
Black voters are informed voters. They know which party is responsive to their best interests. There are clear differences between the ideals of the GOP and the Dems on matters of race and equality.
Sounds like Rokita would rather black people were in a battered-wife-like relationship with the Republican Party, where all the beatings they’ve been getting lately are supposed to be forgiven thanks to the lavish wedding and extravagant honeymoon.
Rokita and I have a mutual friend, and my impression is that the guy is something of a dullard (I’ve never met him, that just my impression about what I have heard about him). I wouldn’t be surprised if his grasp of history just isn’t that great. As Gary noted, this comment was made in Daviess County, which has a negligible black population. This statement wasn’t made for black ears, it was made for white ears. The problem with criticizing African Americans for overwhelmingly voting Democratic is that it’s difficult to make such a blanket statement without sounding like one is accusing black people of not being smart enough to vote their self-interest. If you want to attract black voters, Republicans, you might want to find a way to craft or market your policies to attact such voters. Insulting them won’t do the trick. But again, this statement wasn’t directed toward black people, it was red meat for the white Republican base.
Despite my impression of Rokita as a fairly low-voltage guy, I’m a little less charitable about his motivations than you are, Doug. Can you imagine him giving this speech to a Republican dinner in Marion County, or Lake County, or Allen County, where there would actually be some black faces looking back at him? My guess is that Rokita never intended this comment to leave the room.
And you’d think in this day and age that people realize there are cellphones and blogs which will spread such stuff far and wide quickly.
Yea, I’d like to invite him to make the same speech in Marion or Lake County.
But then those who practice to discriminate and marginalize one group ( gays and lesbians) can hardly help themselves when they get the chance to do it to others.
When I hear something like this, I run it through the filter of some folks I know who aren’t mean-spirited, but who are very upper class white males who believe that the Wall Street Journal editorial page is gospel. Their lives never bring them into contact with much of anything that would give them a basis with which to disagree with the wingnuts at the WSJ editorial page. In other words, they aren’t hateful; their perception is simply skewed by group think. And so stuff similar to Rokita’s statement just spews out of their mouth.
Now, as Secretary of State of Indiana, Mr. Rokita should, perhaps, be expected to have a wider perspective. But, my impression of his statements are bad enough even if I give him the benefit of the doubt, so I’ll leave it at that for the moment.
What little of a Republican party there was in the post-Reconstruction South was African-American. The minor stumbling block was the inability to vote.
Barry Goldwater personally tossed ’em out–including Martin Luther “Daddy” King, Sr. That’s the genesis of the Southern Strategy and the flight of the Dixiecrats: Goldwater decided to use race as a wedge against Johnson’s support of Civil Rights legislation, even though Republican support for it in the East and Midwest was strong, and a crucial component of its passage.
I think you’re too kind, Doug. I think willful ignorance of four-hundred years of history, not to mention the racism and inequality we need only open our eyes to see around us, does qualify as hatefulness; it’s just that it’s easy (and necessary) to pretend otherwise. And Rokita knows he’s spewing creamed corn. Nobody’s that dull.
At the very least, such kindness makes for a nice rope-a-dope effect. I can wear him down, damning him with faint praise. Then you guys can throw the haymakers.
A nasty homophobic bigot, Jocelyn Tandy, has now spammed Gary’s blog with massive cut&paste screeds from national Black Republicans. The GOP as a party drives away LGBT folk with the Anti-Marriage Amendment and then tries to attract Blacks by using that homophobia. Tandy is a prolific anonymous poster espousing “Black Republican” issues but she also has penned grossly anti-gay harangues.
After the Indpls HRO vote, she was hanging out with Eric Miller — Jocelyn was heard muttering about “Sodom and Gomorrah”. Pitiful!
Uh…who’s Gary?
Gary Welsh who writes Advance Indiana.
That the Repubican Party is the party of Lincoln and that Republicans are the civil rights party isn’t new spin..I go into political chat groups occasionally and these are recurring talking points to fend off anti-Black charges against Republicans.Republicans feel very vulnerable to charges of being racism enablers ( as perhaps they should). President Nixon was the last Republican president who had a decent social issues agenda.But those were different times ,and that’s when I was a Republican.In a way it’s too bad Watergate spoiled it all: this new ‘reformed’ Republican Party is spin and mirrors,and serves no one well..not even their own followers.
Wilson, you have a serious Jocelyn Tandy obsession, which tells me that she’s getting a little close to the mark with you.
doghouse riley, your attempted characterization of Goldwater as some sort of closet racist is absurd, and likely some new Dem spin. Did you get that from taking down words?
The reality (for Goldwater at least, surely some Republicans had racist motivations just like Al Gore Sr. and many Dems did) is that he was against it from a constitutional standpoint. As I recall, it had to do partly with his belief that much of the Civil Rights Act was constitutionally redundant, just like the ERA is. I haven’t read his book in a while, but that’s my memory of what he said.