All this time I assumed that the National Black Republican Association was nothing but a humorless right-wing fringe group that nobody took seriously, but it must be far more powerful than I had imagined as it apparently has the capacity to absolve White Americans of their sins and guilt:
White Guilt Emancipation Declaration
We, black American citizens of the United States of America and of the National Black Republican Association, do hereby declare that our fellow white American citizens are now, henceforth and forever more free of White Guilt.
This freedom from White Guilt was duly earned by the election of Barack Hussein Obama, a black man, to be our president by a majority of white Americans based solely on the color of his skin.
Freedom is not free, and we trust that the price paid for this freedom from White Guilt is worth the sacrifice, since Obama is a socialist who does not share the values of average Americans and will use the office of the presidency to turn America into a failed socialist nation.
Granted this November 4, 2008 - the day Barack Hussein Obama was elected as the first black president and the first socialist president of the United States of America.
When the National Black Republican Association announced just a few weeks ago that it was going to place 50 billboards in Denver proclaiming to those attending the Democratic convention that "Martin Luther King Was A Republican" we were a bit skeptical, wondering where they were getting the money for this and, more importantly, how they planned on finding available space for the ads on such short notice. The NBRA says it has pulled it off, but the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports that the spots they secured are well away from the convention itself and the ads are unlikely to ever be seen by anybody attending:
Sarasota Republican Frances Rice may not be in Denver, but her presence is being felt. Rice, the leader of the National Black Republican Association, has dozens of billboards all around Denver proclaiming that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Rice said she wanted to do something to greet Democrats as they arrived in Denver. But the billboards have not been in prime locations near the two sports arenas where Obama and Democrats are scheduled to speak. Most of the billboards are just outside the downtown area, away from view of the convention goers.
One thing that has always confused me is the Right Wing’s obsession with recounting the racist history of the Democratic Party and the anti-slavery origins of the Republican Party that inevitably seems to end right around the mid-1960s.
For example, we wrote a report about right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton a few years back that examined a video he produced called “American History in Black and White” in which he diligently recounts the atrocities committed by early members of what was then the Democratic Party and ties them into positions held by current members of the party:
Barton claims that Democrats hailed the Dred Scott decision because it affirmed “their belief that it was proper to have slavery and hold African Americans in bondage.” He then takes it a step further, making a direct comparison between this decision and modern Democrats’ support of reproductive choice for women, claiming “Democrats have largely taken that same position in unborn human life, that an unborn human is really just disposable property to do with as one wishes. African Americans were the victims of this disposable property ideology a century and a half ago, and still are today … For over a century and a half, Democrats have wrongly argued that some human life is merely disposable personal property and black Americans have suffered most under this philosophy.”
On and on he went, until he reached the for passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, at which point his “history lesson” ended.
This tactic continues even today – just last week the Wall Street Journal ran a piece accusing the Democratic National Committee of posting a history of the party on its website that is “so sanitized of historical reality it makes Stalin look like historian David McCullough.” Not surprisingly, the WSJ piece received prominence on the website of the National Black Republican Association, whose leader, Frances Rice, has made it her mission to inform the world about what “Democrats have done in the past and are doing now to black people … They are keeping blacks in virtual slavery."
The obvious question raised by all of this is not why the Democrats are reluctant to discuss it, but why right-wingers who are obsessed with it never manage to explain the so-called “Southern Strategy” employed by Richard Nixon to win over traditional Southern Democrats who were angry by the party’s emerging pro-civil rights positions. As Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips explained it:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Ronald Regan’s strategist Lee Atwater was even more blunt about the reasoning behind the strategy:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Given that, beginning in the late 1960s, the GOP made a concerted and successful to court Southern voters who had traditionally been supporters of the Democratic Party which, as the Right loves to point out, was fundamentally racist, it has been confusing to understand how those who hammer this point rationalize this obvious disconnect. Usually, they do so by not talking about it.
But finally someone shed some light on this question when the NBRA’s Rice explained the history of the “Southern Strategy” at a sparsely attended conference earlier this month. You see, it was not that Nixon and the GOP were courting racist Southern voters; Nixon was really just trying to get the “fair-minded people in the South to stop discriminating against blacks”:
That strategy was designed to get the fair-minded people in the South to stop discriminating against blacks and to stop supporting a party that did not share their values. So those fair-minded ones who migrated to the Republican Party did so. They joined us, we did not join the racists.
If Rice's history is correct, how does she explain that both President Bush
and former RNC chair Ken Mehlman apologized for the Southern Strategy, with Mehlman admitting in 2005 that "Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."
As we’ve noted severaltimes in the past, the National Black Republican Association is a fringe right-wing group that seems to have little in the way of staff or money, yet still manages to generate attention for itself every election cycle by running ridiculous ads and then waiting for the media to report on them:
[NBRA Chair Frances] Rice managed to put up a "Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican" billboard in South Carolina this year, and, leading up to the elections, ran a radio ad in swing states. In the ad a black woman says, "Dr. King was a real man," and another responds, "You know he was a Republican."
Rice said she wanted to start a conversation about the history of the Republican Party. The tactic proved its worth in media coverage. She ticks off the news outlets that covered the campaign.
"I spent a few thousand and garnered half a million in free coverage by my estimate," Rice said.
Given the success the NBRA has had with this tactic, they apparently have bigger plans in mind:
A Sarasota-based group that grabbed national headlines when it put up several billboards in Florida proclaiming "Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican" says it will be doing it again.
This time the National Black Republican Association says it would like to put up 50 of the controversial billboards in Denver. The group wants the billboard to be up in time for the Democratic National Convention which is scheduled for August 25th - 28th.
Hmm … considering that the convention is now less than two weeks away, that seems like an expensive and almost impossible task. But just to make sure, I called the advertising specialists at The Media Team in Denver to inquire about the cost and possibility of actually doing so.
When I told them that I was interested in finding out the cost and availability of 50 billboards in Denver for the week of the convention, they literally laughed at me. They then explained that the only things available at this late date would be Spanish language and low traffic billboards and, when I asked how much it would cost, hypothetically, to rent just one prime location billboard for the week of the convention, the estimate was $25,000, with the rates for other billboards ranging from $5,000 to $18,000 depending on location.
So unless the NBRA has several hundred thousand dollars on hand – and a time machine that allows them to go back and make reservations for the billboards before they were all booked – it looks like this is just another self-aggrandizing boast designed to make it seem as if the NBRA has any influence at all.
We’ve written about the National Black Republican Association a few times in the past, mostly to point out that they are a small, fringe group that tries to make a name for itself every election season by doing things like running ridiculous ads about how the "Democratic Party is a racist party.”
Over the weekend, the Sarasota Herald Tribune published a lengthy profile of NBRA Chairman Frances Rice and her antics, which seem to be accomplishing little more than angering and alienating her would-be political allies:
When hearing that the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer, had expressed disappointment in her magazine, The Black Republican, which Greer had secured party money to publish, Rice dismissed it with a wave of her hand.
The magazine featured a picture of Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross, with the caption "Every person in this photograph was a Democrat."
Article titles included "Democrats embrace their child molesters," and "Top 10 Democratic sex scandals in Congress," and "Democrats wage war on God."
…
"Obviously we weren't consulted before she decided to do any of this," said Tony Cooper, president of the Tampa Black Republican Club. "It's a fruitless debate and it may conjure up more ill will toward the party. We should be spending money on debating the Democrats on the issues."
Said Deon Long, president of Florida's Federation of Black Republican Clubs: "We thought those billboards were asinine."
…
Greer, the state party chairman, said the party is no longer donating to the NBRA. While pictures of himself and Gov. Charlie Crist were on the cover of the magazine, along with favorable articles about them, Greer said he had no knowledge of the other content until after the magazine was published.
"Mrs. Rice has some very strong views on certain issues," Greer said. "It showed us that before we donate to anything, regardless of how it appears, the party needs to ensure it takes a look at all the content."
The article notes that Palm Beach County Republican Party donated $20,000 to start the NBRA back in 2005 and, since then, “nearly everyone else originally part of the NBRA … has since dropped out. The original board included eight members from around the country, and Rice's husband. In a matter of months, all the board members except Rice, her husband and Cadogan resigned.” Apparently the final straw came after Rice insisted on sending out a press release praising President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Rice appears to run the organization with an iron fist, accusing those who disagree with her or not a being “a real Republican” and seemingly having a complete disregard for tax laws governing non-profit organizations, with the Tribune reporting that Rice has shuttered NRBA’s 527 and is relying on donations that have come through the NBRA’s non-profit 501c4 arm to engage in what appears to be partisan electoral work despite the fact that “under the IRS code, [501 c4s] are not allowed to help elect candidates or push partisan politics as their primary purpose.”
But Rice seems to have no regrets about her tactics or her role as a fringe, right-wing activist – in fact, she seems to thrive on it:
"This is the first time in my life that I have felt I am actually doing something about what the Democrats have done in the past and are doing now to black people," Rice said. "If the Democrats had left us alone after the Republicans freed us from slavery we wouldn't be having this discussion today. They are keeping blacks in virtual slavery."
Via Sam Stein, we learn that the National Black Republican Association has made another of its election year forays onto the political scene with yet another series of ads spouting all sorts of nonsense.
They first made a name for themselves back in 2006 when they ran a few ads, with one claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican and another stating that “Democrats have bamboozled blacks” and “want to keep us poor while voting only Democrat.” And now that the 2008 election if upon the nation, the NBRA has re-emerged with a new series of ads – one calling the Democratic Party racist, the other calling Barack Obama an elitist (Stein has the video):
1. Racist Democrats and Obama
Narrator: The Democratic Party is a racist party.
Bill and Hillary Clinton played the race card against Barack Obama.
Hillary supporter Paul Begala said the Democratic Party can't win with just "eggheads and African-Americans."
Democrat Gov. Ed Rendell said a large block of white Democrats in Pennsylvania would not vote for Obama because he is black.
Hillary said her supporters are white Democrats who will not vote for a black man.
The Democrats claim all the racist Democrats became Republicans.
That's not true.
Racist Democrats declared they would vote for a "yellow dog" before a Republican because the Republican Party was the party for blacks.
Bull Conner, Lester Maddox, and George Wallace died Democrats. Former Klansman Robert Byrd is still a Democrat in Congress.
Today racist Democrats will not vote for Obama, a black man.
These ads raise the questions of what the NBRA actually does other than running controversial ads every couple of years and just how much of an impact the organization has within the conservative movement? Judging by their appearance at last year’s CPAC conference, the answer to both is not very much.
This is the main hall where most of the speakers and panels were hosted:
This is the tiny room at the end of a well-hidden hallway where the NBRA assured a few dozen listeners that the organization was slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with because last year their website received over one thousand visitors:
Perhaps nothing sums up the current state of the conservative movement like seeing a Hummer back into a limousine in the parking lot outside the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and seeing Mitt Romney beat John McCain in the CPAC straw poll on the question of “If the election were held today to decide the Republican Nominee for President in 2008, for whom would you vote?” despite having appeared at the conference only to drop out of the race. And while attendees were asked not to boo McCain, it didn’t stop them from doing so when he spoke … or whenever his name was mentioned by any of the other speakers.
Aside from the weirdness of Mike Huckabee basing his entire on speech on Phyllis Schlafly’s "A Choice, Not an Echo" despite the fact that Schlafly hates him and the sense of overwhelming despair at the possibility of a McCain nomination, the rest of CPAC consisted of typical right-wing fare, such as Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily delineating the dangers of the Fairness Doctrine, warning that if Democrats take control of the White House and Congress, “there will be no stopping these people” who operate with a “neo-fascist mentality,” only to be followed by David Horowitz who ranted about “fair-minded” conservatives being oppressed by liberals who want to “exterminate us.” Or, as he put it, when liberals control the universities, they merely send conservatives to sensitivity training, but when “they control they state, they shoot you.”
But it wasn’t all fear-mongering. There was some good news too, such as the announcement by the National Black Republican Association that they were slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with, because last year their website received over one thousand visitors. Of course, the NBRA might be even more of a force within the GOP if their panels weren’t relegated to a tiny room at the back of the convention
Though the event appeared to be less-well attended than in previous years, there was no shortage of red meat for those in attendance, as demonstrated by the hundreds of convention-goers who lined up hours in advance to get in to hear Ann Coulter
But despite the seeming disarray of the right-wing movement at the present, there still appears to be at least one thing that can unify them in this country: hatred of Hillary Clinton
The National Black Republican Association made headlines a little over a week ago when it began airing radio ads in Maryland and Ohio claiming Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. The ads included gross distortions of civil rights history intended to make the Republican Party sound palatable to African Americans, who usually vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Now the NBRA’s at it again. Apparently not content to insult listeners with merely 30 seconds of distortions, the NBRA has released a new 60-second version of its ad (audio here). The new ad contains plenty of additional warped history, and also attempts to stir up anti-gay sentiment. Here’s the transcript:
Voice 1: Dr. King was a real man. You know he was a Republican.
Voice 2: Dr. King? A Republican?
Voice 1: Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan.
Voice 2: White hoods and sheets?
Voice 1: Democrats fought all civil rights legislation form the 1860s til the 1960s. Democrats released those vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks.
Voice 2: Seriously?
Voice 1: And the Dixiecrats? Remained Democrats and vowed to vote for a yellow dog before a Republican. Republicans freed us from slavery and put our right to vote in the Constitution.
Voice 2: What?
Voice 1: Republicans started the NAACP, affirmative action, and the HBCUs.
Voice 2: Sounds like Democrats have bamboozled blacks.
Voice 1: Democrats blocked the minimum wage passed by Republicans, and over $200 billion have been spent on education health care and job training since President Bush took office.
Voice 2: So Democrats want to keep us poor while voting only Democrat.
Voice 1: Democrats want us to accept same-sex marriages, teen abortions without a parent’s consent, and suing the boy scouts for saying God in their pledge.
Voice 2: See, we need to think and vote on our own values.
Voice 1: Exactly. Democrats have talked the talk but the Republicans have walked the walk.
Thankfully, Barton, the NBRA, and their allies are not going unchallenged. Respected African American Democrats and Republicans, as well as nonpartisan leaders such as Rev. Timothy McDonald, the national chair of African American Ministers in Action, are standing up against these distortions and for the truth.
