New Calculations Involving Herman Cain's Presidential Bid

As I write this early on Thursday afternoon, 13 October, Herman Cain made the front page of the Wall Street Journal for moving out in front of Mitt Romney by a few percentage points in a recent WSJ/NBC News poll of primary voters.

I've written in prior posts that it makes sense to me that GOP voters should nominate the candidate who would draw the most independent voters. But that was before Herman Cain became a realistic choice to win the nomination.

Now, that arithmetic has to be modified.

This became evident to me earlier this week, when Bill O'Reilly discussed the results of the Bloomberg GOP candidate event with Karl Rove. O'Reilly flatters himself as capable of divining the intent of voters, though he claims to be non-partisan. I don't really think he really understands Tea Party members at all. But O'Reilly proclaimed, and sort of bludgeoned Rove into agreeing with him, that Cain is too far right for most independents, while Romney is not.

Therefore, according to O'Reilly's calculations, Romney is the guy the GOP should nominate.

Not so fast, Bill.....

You see, for Cain, the equation is unique among GOP candidates. It looks something like this:

Total General Election Votes = GOP + share of independents + share of black votes.

Whereas all other GOP candidates effectively share the equation, without the red highlighted term, Cain's is different in that he can draw substantial black votes from Wonderboy.

Thus, while other candidates can, in fact, be reasonably evaluated on the share of independents they attract, since registered Republicans can probably be counted on to vote for whomever the party nominates, Cain can offset a lower share of independent voters with black voters on which no other Republican can depend.

Cain has been quite explicit about this segment, provoking charges of racism from other blacks.

But it does change the calculation for GOP voters. And makes Cain's appeal among blacks important for pollsters to begin measure. Because Cain's net additional, non-GOP voter appeal could well exceed Romney's, if one measures the disaffected blacks who, for the very first time, would have a black alternative to a Democratic national candidate, as Jason Riley noted in his recent WSJ column.

Cain's Threat To Wonderboy's Base

No less an accomplished black journalist than the Wall Street Journal's Jason Riley, a member of its editorial board, wrote a provocative editorial in last Friday's edition of the paper, entitled Cain's Post-Racial Promise.

Writing of Cain, who is unabashedly not a victim, and harbors no acrimony toward America for racial discrimination as experienced in his youth, Riley explained,

"Black individuals who don't see themselves primarily as victims are a threat to the political left, which helps explain why MSNBC commentators have derided Mr. Cain as a token and why Jon Stewart has mocked him in tones that evoke Amos 'n' Andy or Stepin Fetchit. To secure political victories, Democrats need blacks to vote for them in unison. Independent thinking cannot be tolerated.

No one is hoping more than the White House that Mr. Cain fades away. If he doesn't, Mr. Obama's fear of Mr. Romney winning independent voters next year could turn into a fear of Mr. Cain peeling away black support. Black enthusiasm for the president remains high but has slipped in recent months, and a black alternative to Mr. Obama is not a scenario that Democrats would welcome."

Quite an analysis coming from a black who doesn't even bother with the phrase "African American."

Never the less, I believe the people who are warming to Cain do so only because of his accomplishments and attitudes, not his race. Thus making him doubly-dangerous to Wonderboy.

Imagine seeing both independents and a substantial percentage of black voters desert the president for Cain, enabling the latter to sweep into the White House by a double-digit margin.

Let me add to my thoughts regarding my endorsement of Cain in this recent post. Beyond my list of reasons why I find each other GOP candidate lacking, there's also this simple approach.

Who would I prefer in the following one-on-one matchups?

Romney-Cain: Cain
Perry-Cain: Cain
Bachmann-Cain: Cain

In each case, Cain has attributes I prefer over the other candidate, while typically sharing some positive ones.

For example, he can match Romney and Perry for gubernatorial executive experience, and probably raise Romney on the type of business experience he has.

Cain shares Bachmann's outsider, Tea-Party-esque views, but trumps her on.....executive experience.

Then there's Romney's suspicious flexibility on issues which he discovers are suddenly important. He's less than convincing as a latecomer Tea Party enthusiast. He authored RomneyCare, yet won't just admit it was a mistake.

By contrast, Cain comes to politics with a clean slate and an impressive life story.

And, now we have a respected conservative black journalist suggesting that Cain will be Wonderboy's worst nightmare as the GOP presidential nominee.

That's another big reason to seriously consider Cain for the job.

Harry Reid: Racist

I've been away for about 11 days, and, thus, have probably missed some priceless political moments. I'm told Elena Kagan has been confirmed to join the Supreme Court.

But I did catch this little gem from the past few days.



Here's Megan Kelly on Fox News moderating a discussion of Reid's remarks.

It's truly disappointing that the Senate Majority Leader so explicitly engages in racially-based political statements and behaviors. That he seeks to divide Americans based on their race, and expectations likewise attributed to that source.

Hopefully, come November, we'll learn that Harry will soon be leaving his current office.

The Shirley Sherrod Affair

The Shirley Sherrod affair seems to have become one of those uniquely summertime stories which gain so much traction in the lull of the hot summer vacation months.

Except that there's actually quite a bit still going on this summer.

How to begin to tackle this story? Here's the video clip of Glenn Beck airing the Brightbart video clip for the first time, on Tuesday evening, then explaining the administration action, and then...the full context.



I guess the best way to view this whole mess is that many wrongs result in, well, a mess.

Over two decades ago, Shirley Sherrod engaged in racist behavior toward a white farming family. Later, feeling guilty about it, she made amends to the aggrieved party.

She spoke about this at an NAACP conference, it became public, and the administration pressured the Agriculture Secretary to fire Sherrod, without any knowledge of how long ago her apparent transgression occurred, or that it was actually just the first part of a larger story of redemption. Sherrod resigned under pressure, as desired by the administration, in its haste to cleanse itself of what it believed would be a racist burden.

But, for her part, upon having all of this aired, Sherrod steadfastly refused all invitations from Fox News to appear on any of their programs. Fox's Bret Baier read a quote from Sherrod, given in an interview to another media outlet, in which she berated Fox for wanting to turn the clock back on integration and see blacks as second-class citizens once more.

It turns out that Sherrod is very liberal, perhaps fully socialist, with a lot of activism in her past, including suing her employer, a government agency.

The whole situation is quite a mess. But it's clear that Wonderboy acted quickly, and, as usual, without complete knowledge of the situation, to distance himself from an apparent racist situation. As did the NAACP.

The final chapters to this, unfolding yesterday, were that Wonderboy's mouthpieces and the network and print media were casting themselves as victims, claiming that Fox News misled everyone, and is the real villain in the matter.

Nevermind that the person Sherrod mentioned as being feared by Wonderboy's minions, Glenn Beck, didn't even air the material on the day they expected. And, in fact, defended Sherrod.

You can't make this stuff up, can you?

Wonderboy Turns To Racism To Win In November

This video was posted on YouTube in November of 2008. In it, according to the description, Wonderboy, newly-elected as president, castigates 'Karl Rove' style politics and appeals to minority voting blocs, claiming that is now ended.



Well, not yet, anyway....

Welcome to yesterday's speech- isn't there at least one a day now?- by our First Rookie. I saw the transcript of it on Fox News yesterday afternoon while working out.

In it, our self-proclaimed post-partisan, unity president appealed to 'latinos, african-americans and women' to get out to vote next November, because his agenda and their benefits are at risk.

Sound unifying to you? No, me neither.

Where were the references to calling on whites, males and others to vote?

It sure does seem that Wonderboy has already turned to focusing on race, appealing to specific minorities and....well...doing the very thing he once accused Karl Rove of doing, suggesting, of course, that these are bad things.

Isn't what's good for the goose..........?

Harry Reid's Latest Gaffe

It's almost too hilarious hearing that Harry Reid described Wonderboy as a light skinned Negro who spoke well and could actually get elected president.

I find myself agreeing with people who don't see his comments as racist, so much as just stupid.

More importantly, as others have contended, the real reason Reid should be run out of the Democratic party for his comments is how insulting they are to voters.

In effect, Reid, viewing the First Rookie through his own biased, old-timey lense, thought that Americans could not possibly elect a black as president unless he possessed the particular qualities that he saw in Wonderboy.

Truly disgusting. It says so much more about how despicable Harry Reid is, than anything else. And how disgusting the many black and other liberal so-called leaders are who have rushed to his defense.

Second Thoughts About Bill Cosby

It was with great shock and sadness that I saw a report on Bill Cosby's reaction to the evolving charge that anyone who criticizes Wonderboy's health care plans is racist.

Only two months ago, I wrote that Cosby would have made a better president than our First Rookie.

I am sorry I was so in error, and now formally retract that post. Evidently, this passage was completely wrong,

"I can't conceive of Cosby engaging in such empty, meaningless rhetoric while ramming society-changing legislation through Congress."

Don't these blacks see that by engaging in senseless race-mongering and accusations, they are only proving that they are racist? That they cannot stop claiming victim status?

And that, by doing so, they lose all credibility with thinking, reasonable Americans?

Jimmy Carter Embarrasses Himself Again While Playing The Race Card

Leave it to a cracker from a cracker state to let his own guilty feelings cause him to accuse anyone who legitimately disagrees with Wonderboy's socialistic health care designs to be a racist.

Yes, I'm talking about our still-living, national embarrassment, yellow stain on the Office of the President, Jimmy 'Jimmuh' Carter.

Won't this man just die (naturally or accidentally, of course) and leave us all in peace?

Anytime I see Carter in the news, I know I won't need to think too hard to come up with a topic for the next day's political post. Today is no exception. Listen to the tripe spewing from idiot's mouth.



Can you believe this guy's unmitigated gall? Calling anyone who dares to object to our First Rookie's attempt at a takeover of 1/6th of the American economy racist?

How could Carter possibly know what is in the mind of each and every legitimate opponent of this socialist grab for the entire US medical and health insurance system?

Does he see no grounds for objecting to mandating a government provider as introducing "competition," when the same Democrats won't take the more logical, simpler and less-expensive step of removing legislation mandating policy contents and allowing interstate purchase of health care insurance?

Is he blind to Medicare's cost overruns? Does he not see any problems with the current tort law situation in medicine?

No, Jimmy doesn't see any of this. He's too dense and, now, evidently mentally impaired.

After Carter's disastrous term as president, he apparently found his true calling in building simple houses for the poor and validating the regimes and rigged elections of communist strongmen across the globe. These, it seems, are his real skills.

That said, we can safely ignore anything he has to say on the subject of domestic politics.

Does This Signify Racial Harmony? Or Simple Human Compassion?

Back in July of this year, Wonderboy saw fit to stick his nose into a local matter in Boston which he decided smacked of racism. His gaffe was the type one expects of his hapless VP. And, sure enough, Lying Joe Biden was included in the famous "Beer Garden" event. Probably just to make things look even for the cameras. Otherwise, we'd have seen one white, blue-collar Boston cop sitting with two Ivy League blacks in suits.

My question today is, if our First Rookie was so concerned about a whiff of racism in Boston, involving just one black resident and one white policeman, why is he not all over the airwaves this week commenting on the recent incident at Sunday evening's MTV Video Music Awards?

I'm referring, of course, to the scene created by black singer Kayne West, in which he interrupted white female singer/songwriter Taylor Swift's acceptance of her first VMA award at only twenty years of age.

Here's a video clip of the incident from YouTube.



Some questions come to mind from this incident.

Was West engaging in racism by claiming that singer Beyonce Knowles deserved the award, despite what voters had decided?

If so, why isn't our racially-sensitive, self-appointed racial arbiter president all over this affair?

Will Taylor Swift, Kayne West and Beyonce Knowles all be invited to the White House for an appropriate beverage? Or will two more whites, and perhaps one female, be required, too?

As it happened, Beyonce Knowles did win an award later that evening. She exhibited class and poise by inviting the much younger Ms. Swift back onstage to finish her acceptance speech.

The original digital version of that moment has been removed from YouTube, so all that remains is this rougher version of that scene.




This second, consummating moment begs further questions.

Was this ever about race, or was it only about one boorish, ego maniacal singer, and one more generous, sensitive one, both of whom just happened to be of the same race?

If it was racial, does Beyonce Knowles' action confirm that we do now live in a 'post-racial' society? One in which an accomplished black female singer/songwriter can call out a fellow black entertainer for his unacceptable behavior, and correct the injustice to a white female singer/songwriter?

If the latter, why isn't Wonderboy all over this as a celebratory moment of racial harmony and justice in America?

Wonderboy Inflames Racial Tensions

The story involving Wonderboy and the run in between police and a Harvard professor in Cambridge is just too good to be true, isn't it?

Mr. post-partisan and racial healing criticized police for doing their job, and instinctively sided with the black person in the case.

I guess Wonderboy is showing us how it's done in the new America, isn't he?

Then, to add insult to injury, after putting his foot in his own mouth, he alleged that, because his statements caused such an uproar, it proves that racial tensions still exist.

Just incredible. This guy can't let well enough alone and simply believe in peoples' inherent goodness.

As president, his comments make extra waves, but our First Rookie still thinks he can serve via sound bites, speeches and press conferences. I don't think the real gravity of office has hit him yet.

Maybe it never will.

Ricci vs. New Haven: Where's Red Sonia's Empathy?

There does indeed, as some pundits have noted, seem to be a double standard at work in the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor.

For example, as one editorialist in the Wall Street Journal observed, Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer decried a Bush appellate nominee for being Catholic. But he finds no problem with Sotomayor's sharing, however notionally, that church affiliation.

But perhaps the more curious question is, in the Ricci case, where was Sotomayor's famous "wise Latina" empathy?

The lead plaintiff, in an interview on Fox News last week, explained that he expected a full review of the case from the Second Circuit's Appellate Court. Instead, Sotomayor's response was terse and lacking in any discussion of the case.

Yet, here we have a group of wronge firemen, some with meager means, scrounging money to fund their own tutoring for an exam, the passing of which would provide them with career advancement and better compensation.

What was really horrifying was, in the same broadcast, hearing the discussion of Supreme Court Justice Alito's explicit identification of the case's origin. That is, a New Haven black minister visited the city's mayor and threatened him with electoral defeat if he didn't overturn the exam results.

Alito called Sotomayor's and her colleagues' review of the case in error and completely missing the obvious racial aspect.

Hmmmm.....wronged blue collar union workers. A racist minister pressures a mayor to overturn fair exam results. Sounds tailor made for a heavy dollop of judicial empathy, doesn't it?

Unless, of course, the jurist is Sonia Sotomayor, and the plaintiffs are neither Hispanic, nor black.

An Example of Racism In America

I happened to see a few minutes of Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program earlier this week. In the segment was some video footage and outtakes or after-event interviews from the Black Entertainment awards. A black actor and, I guess, comedian named Jamie Foxx looked like a clown, dressed in what what was supposed to be Michael Jackson clothing. If I heard correctly, Foxx credited the recently-deceased Jackson with Wonderboy's election to president.

Words almost fail me with how ridiculous that is. What was more sickening was the roar of approval from the largely black audience.

Later, I've read where Al Sharpton is now magically at the elbow of the Jackson family, ostensibly advising them.

Who knows with what else the unfortunate, freakish deceased singer will be credited?

Personally, I've never been able to stand any of Jackson's music or performances. Sure, long ago he sold a lot of records and, I am sure, made much money in concert.

Like a lot of other musicians/singers, he eventually succumbed to fame, money, drugs and/or alcohol. He wasn't the first. His talent ebbed away, and he became known for an increasingly-bizarre string of events.

But if any black entertainers deserve credit for breaking the race barrier in America, it surely would be those of an earlier generation. Singers like Nat "King" Cole, Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. And many of the early '60s black rock 'n roll artists.

But Michael Jackson? Please!

He's a beneficiary of the dissolution of color barriers, not one of the pioneers.

To see Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton suddenly swarming all over this poor guy's death is truly sad. And demonstrates just how racist they are. It is as if any once-famous black person's trials or death demand the black quasi-faith squad.

If this doesn't send a signal of a racist America, what does? But you can bet Wonderboy won't touch this one, nor the racist overtones emanating from the entire sordid melodrama now unfolding.

Shelby Steele On The Sotomayor Court Nomination

Shelby Steele wrote a scathing, blunt editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday entitled "Sotomayor and the Politics of Race."

Steele begins his piece by observing, early on,

"The Sotomayor nomination commits the cardinal sin of identity politics: It seeks to elevate people more for the political currency of their gender and ethnicity than for their individual merit. (Here, too, is the ugly faithlessness in minority merit that always underlies such maneuverings.) Mr. Obama is promising one thing and practicing another, using his interracial background to suggest an America delivered from racial corruption even as he practices a crude form of racial patronage. From America's first black president, and a man promising the "new," we get a Supreme Court nomination that is both unoriginal and hackneyed.

This contradiction has always been at the heart of the Obama story. On the one hand there was the 2004 Democratic Convention speech proclaiming "only one America." And on the other hand there was the race-baiting of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Does this most powerful man on earth know himself well enough to resolve this contradiction and point the way to a genuinely post-racial America?"

You can never accuse of Steele, of the same race as our president, of pulling punches. Hackneyed! Unoriginal!

He continues,

"But the Sotomayor nomination shows that Mr. Obama has no idea what a post-racial society would look like. In selling himself as a candidate to the American public he is a gifted bargainer beautifully turned out in post-racial impressionism. But in the real world of Supreme Court nominations, where there is a chance to actually bring some of that idealism down to earth, he chooses a hardened, divisive and race-focused veteran of the culture wars he claims to transcend.

Sonia Sotomayor is of the generation of minorities that came of age under the hegemony of this perverse incentive. For this generation, challenging and protesting were careerism itself. This is why middle- and upper middle-class minorities are often more militant than poor and working-class minorities. America's institutions -- universities, government agencies, the media and even corporations -- reward their grievance. Minority intellectuals, especially, have been rewarded for theories that justify grievance.

And here we come to Judge Sotomayor's favorite such ingenuity: disparate impact. In the now celebrated Ricci case the city of New Haven, Conn., threw out a paper and pencil test that firefighters were required to take for promotion because so few minorities passed it. In other words, the test had a disparate and negative impact on minorities, so the lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci -- a white male with dyslexia who worked 10 hours a day to pass the test at a high level -- was effectively denied promotion because he was white. Judge Sotomayor supported the city's decision to throw out the test undoubtedly because of her commitment to disparate impact -- a concept that invariably makes whites accountable for minority mediocrity.

With the Sotomayor nomination, Mr. Obama has made the same mistake his wife made in her "This is the first time I am proud of my country" remark: bad faith toward an America that has shown him only good faith."

If nothing else, the Ricci case should have been enough to disqualify Sotomayor from consideration for the high court. Steele's noting that Wonderboy knew of Sotomayor's racist comments about 'wise latinas' prior to nominating her for the Supreme Court. I guess it's a new low in vetting, i.e., to find something crippling and hideous about your nominee, then push her forward anyway.

Elsewhere in his editorial, Steele revisits his perspective on minority politicians and how they behave towards whites, as distinct from the face they show to their own race.

Summed up, Steele reveals Wonderboy for being the ever-shifting, politically-expedient hack that he really is. Obama has dreamt up some cute concepts to fool many voters, but in the end, he's an empty suit, both in terms of accomplishments and feasible, useful concepts.

New Haven's Fire Department Reverse Racial Discrimination Case

Funny how the New Haven fire department's little reverse-racism case has left the media so quickly, isn't it?

Only two weeks ago, an editorial on the subject appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

The case, if you've forgotten, involves a test given by the New Haven fire department to promote members to the ranks of lieutenant and captains. Among the highest-scoring candidates, who would have been promoted, were latinos and whites, but no blacks.

So the New Haven civil service board threw out the results as racially unacceptable.

Of course, we all know that, had the opposite occurred, and no whites, nor latinos were promoted, it would have been business as usual, and the results would have been certified.

Isn't this a natural case for the First Rookie to swoop in and declare New Haven wrong, in the spirit of post-partisan racial healing?

Not on you life. Wonderboy's racist solutions still only cut one way- and it's not a colorblind way.

Shelby Steele On The Attraction of Conservatism

Monday's Wall Street Journal featured an incredibly well-written, personal view on the GOP's challenge in luring minority voters, as expressed by prominent black conservative and Hoover Institute member Shelby Steele.

Steele explained, by way of personal attestation,

"What drew me to conservatism years ago was the fact that it gave discipline a slightly higher status than virtue. This meant it could not be subverted by passing notions of the good. It could be above moral vanity. And so it made no special promises to me as a minority. It neglected me in every way except as a human being who wanted freedom. Until my encounter with conservatism I had only known the racial determinism of segregation on the one hand and of white liberalism on the other -- two varieties of white supremacy in which I could only be dependent and inferior."

This is something that I have always suspected. That is, open- and fair-minded minorities eventually realize that liberalism plays on their sense of inferiority and victimhood, rather than their equality as a person, irrespective of the very attribute which characterized their minority status.

But Steele went further, writing elsewhere in his piece,

"When redemption became a term of power, "redemptive liberalism" was born -- a new activist liberalism that gave itself a "redemptive" profile by focusing on social engineering rather than liberalism's classic focus on individual freedom. In the '60s there was no time to allow individual freedom to render up the social good. Redemptive liberalism would proactively engineer the good. Name a good like "integration," and then engineer it into being through a draconian regimen of school busing. If the busing did profound damage to public education in America, it gave liberals the right to say, "At least we did something!" In other words, we are activists against America's old sin of segregation. Activism is moral authority in redemptive liberalism.

But conservatism sees moral authority more in a discipline of principles than in activism. It sees ideas of the good like "diversity" as mere pretext for the social engineering that always leads to unintended and oppressive consequences. Conservatism would enforce the principles that ensure individual freedom, and then allow "the good" to happen by "invisible hand."

And here is conservatism's great problem with minorities. In an era when even failed moral activism is redemptive -- and thus a source of moral authority and power -- conservatism stands flat-footed with only discipline to offer. It has only an invisible hand to compete with the activism of the left. So conservatism has no way to show itself redeemed of America's bigoted past, no way like the Great Society to engineer a grand display of its innocence, and no way to show deference to minorities for the oppression they endured. Thus it seems to be in league with that oppression."

Steele is, in my opinion, completely correct. Conservatism's "invisible hand" offers no splashy and expensive programs to demonstrate itself. Rather, it relies on each person's comfort in the security of their own beliefs and the liberty to pursue their self-determined goals without government intervention or interference.

For a white to state these things is suspect. Coming from Shelby Steele, however, they are both elegant and credible.

Obama By Another Name?

Have you ever known a person of Indian extraction, in America or England, with one of those long, unpronounceable names?

Long ago, one of the people working for me joked about an auto salesman whose business card read:

(Unpronounceable first name) 'Al' Gupta.

Perhaps our newly-elected President has the same issue. I mean, he, himself, introduced racism into the campaign when he charged that, to paraphrase,

'They'll try to scare you into voting for their guy. They'll say he has a funny name. And that he looks different than all those guys on our paper money.'

Thus, when a commenter on my blog mentioned "Barry O," I got a flash.

Perhaps someone should start a contest to provide the incoming President with a new, properly western first name.

Sure, Barry is okay. But, why stop there?

Why limit it to names beginning with B? Perhaps the Illinois rookie has always craved a different first name.

Mike? Sam? Alex?

That's a good one. Alex...like Alexander...the Great? Perfect for the Messianic One, isn't it?

Or maybe he should tackle all this comparison nonsense with Lincoln, and just assume his first name-

Abe.

Abraham "Abe" Barack Obama.

Abe Obama. Not lilting, but it could work.

Or, perhaps another comparison, Frank(lin)?

"Frank" Obama.

Well, you get the idea. Maybe someone will suggest dropping pretense, and go for the big one....

Jesus.

"Jesus" Barack Obama.

God help us, it could happen.

Good News For The GOP!

Only a week after McCain's defeat, the GOP already has good news for the upcoming election cycle.

Michael Steele, the prominent, articulate conservative former lieutenant governor of Maryland, has filed to run for chairman of the GOP. Rather than fight Newt Gingrich, who was also rumored to want the post, Steele has the former's explicit backing for the job.

Oh, yes. Besides being very good in front of cameras- he has often subbed for Sean Hannity on his Fox channel program- Steele happens to be black.

If race is what sells now in America, the GOP has an oar in that water, too.

Meanwhile, Gingrich's name is appearing as a possible 2012 Presidential contender. While there are some negatives about Gingrich, he is a very smart, sharp guy who has spent years in the wilderness reshaping and reforming his image. I've watched him countless times on Hannity & Colmes and O'Reilly. The man has something intelligent and informed to say on each and every major national issue.

If Newt can curb his lust for power, which got him into trouble as Speaker, lose some weight, and recruit a crack manager and staff, he'll be good to go for 2012. With Steele as his party chief, they could well be unbeatable.

The Wrong Way To Elect The First Minority US President

In my opinion, there's a right way, and a wrong way, to elect minorities to the office of President of the United States. I believe Americans went about electing the nation's first black, or mixed-race candidate last week in the wrong way.


The right way, to my way of thinking, was expressed in this post almost exactly one year ago. I wrote, in part,


"What is surprising is how the media continues to behave as if gender or race is the only reason people wouldn't vote for Hillary or Obama.


I won't vote for Hillary because she's a largely inexperienced, power-hungry socialist.

It has nothing to do with her gender. To not vote for Hillary is not to reject women candidates for President. Merely that woman candidate.


The same is true for Obama. Again, the Journal article made it seem as if a vote against, or not for, Obama, is a racist vote. But that's not true. It totally overlooks Obama's nearly-total absence of any legitimate experience which would prepare him to lead this country.

As with Hillary, I'm not against Obama because he's black. I don't think he's a qualified person to be President. To reject Obama is not to reject minority candidates. Only that minority candidate.


What really bothers me is how easily the media turns these two candidates' campaigns into litmus tests on gender and race, thus obscuring their relative inexperience and lack of qualifications for the high office they seek.


This is the sort of coverage that results in false impressions that America isn't ready for a woman or minority President.


Of course we are. We just need to see some women or minorities who are actually capable of executing the office of the President effectively."

I expressed this line of thought to a naturalized citizen/friend recently, and was horrified to discover that this was a new concept for him. He felt that my rejection of the President-elect constituted racism, as did Geraldine Ferraro's fair observation last year that if the Illinois rookie Senator wasn't black, none of this would have happened to/for him.

Of course, Ferraro is correct. My friend's view notwithstanding.

When I asked my friend what the Democratic candidate had done to merit being elected, much less running for President, he murmured something about the Senator having 'done something in Illinois.'

No such luck. Well, no matter.

My friend proudly stated that it was a wonderful thing that America had its first black President. Period. Nevermind, he implied, the winner's (lack of) qualifications. Now, my friend would he unashamed to travel the globe and identify with his adopted country.

To me, this is truly awful. Suffice to say, he and I disagree on the importance of whether foreigners like the American President, or what we do globally.

I remain mystified that so many Americans are gushing so shamelessly about this wonderful thing of electing a non-Caucasian President.

Who cares? The Office of President of the United States is not some equal opportunity program reward. It's hopefully where we send a qualified, competent American to lead our Federal government for the next four years, while also faithfully executing his oath of office.

Thomas Sowell wrote some years ago that any job or position which is seen as having been filled due to racial or other quotas or preferences immediately becomes viewed as a lesser position. No longer a job earned by merit.

Let's hope we haven't just done that to our office of President of the US.

No Mandate- Just Good Ol' Fashioned Racism

I wrote this post last week about McCain's campaign mistakes. In it, I mentioned,

"Given that, in the words of one pundit this morning, a switch in results from only 40 counties across the US would have made McCain President-elect this morning, the latter's campaign mistakes are really what caused his loss.

In the end, McCain just seemed unable to mount a vigorous, clear, vibrant and coherent message to give voters something to be for, rather than merely be against reasonable fears of Democrat hegemony."

What is even more remarkable is how close McCain came in a Presidential election featuring such total racist voting patterns.

I'm referring, of course, to the Illinois rookie garnering something approaching 96% of the black vote. If, instead, the usual split in Presidential elections had obtained, Sarah Palin would be handing her job to her lieutenant governor, and Arizona would have a newly-appointed Senator in a few months.

And, of course, if the media had reported a white voter preference for McCain in the same proportion as that of the blacks for his opponent, charges of racism would have flown thick and fast Tuesday night, and ever since.

Several pundits, among them the eminent Karl Rove, noted that the Illinois freshman Senator won by no more of a margin than Clinton.

Hardly a mandate.

Remember that when you begin to hear of the wholesale socialism the newly-elected President and his Congressional cronies want to inflict on America.

Obama Plays The Race Card In Desperation

The freshman Senator from Illinois must be getting scared of John McCain, because last week, Obama played the 'reverse' race card.

In a rambling, off-the-cuff patter at some campaign function, he alleged that 'they' would tell voters not to support him because he is 'different' than previously-elected Presidents.

In the Black Adder's own words,



Amazing, isn't it? What, precisely, do you think the rookie Senator means when he says 'those Presidents on the one and five and other dollar bills?'

That he doesn't wear a wig or have long hair? Wear outdated clothing?

And what, by the way, does George Bush have to do with anything? He's not running.

Or doesn't Obama realize this yet?

No. He is clearly attempting to paint any critic as a racist.

Rather than simply admit he has no relevant experience to even run for President, Obama is already playing the race card, in reverse.

So this is 'post-racial' politics, eh?

Sounds like desperate measures by an inexperienced, flash-in-the-pan candidate.