Last week, in criticizing evangelical Jim Wallis for giving the Democrats’ radio address, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins claimed that activists on the Religious Right were the nonpartisan ones, and he cited Maryland’s Bishop Harry Jackson as one who “typifies” the style of “boldly address[ing] both parties.” Despite this claim, as we noted, Jackson’s partisan credentials are still secure.
Today, Jackson himself makes that point in a column bemoaning the Republicans’ “political bloodbath” in the recent midterm elections. Chalking it up to “the Liberal Media” and Democratic pandering to minorities, Jackson offers some “out of the box thinking” to help the Right in 2008. Dismissing as “unimaginative” the Democratic platform of raising the minimum wage, he writes:
A new breed of entrepreneurial, religious blacks will be to glad accept heart felt invitations to join the conservative movement. People like Herman Cain and a host of other successful black business people are showing that there is no glass ceiling in many companies or industries. Growing numbers of black mid level managers, doctors, lawyers, and professions are looking for positive ways to contribute to their community. Men like Michael Steele Lt. Governor of Maryland proved that large numbers of Blacks are willing to entertain the conservative message.
Steele, who is black, won just one-fourth of the black vote. So confident were Republicans of Steele’s appeal to African Americans that they bused in homeless men from Philadelphia on Election Day to distribute fliers in black precincts presenting Steele as a Democratic candidate.
And if the name Herman Cain sounds familiar, you might recognize him as the public face of an organization called America’s PAC that ran thousands of radio ads on black radio stations encouraging African Americans to vote Republican by claiming that the “Democrat Party” was “decimating our people” through abortion, linking Democrats to Klan leader and Louisiana Republican politician David Duke, blaming Democrats for Hurricane Katrina and Florida voting problems, and this classic script:
Michael: And if you make a little mistake with one of your ho’s, you’ll want to dispose of that problem toot sweet, no questions asked, right?
Dennis: Naw, that’s too cold. I don’t snuff my own seed …
Michael: Huh. Really? (pause) Well, maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican!
Perhaps Cain and Steele were not the best examples of “positive ways to contribute” to the community.
