Last week, the GOP elected its first African-American as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Immediately, news journalists and political pundits hailed the historical election of Michael Steele as ground breaking and the reinvention of the Republican party. Oh really?`
Just in case anyone forgot, the Republican party membership has a long history of racial hatred and inequality. Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace personally blocked the doorway to prevent school desegregation in his state back in 1963, and he was a Republican. White Supremacist and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate from Louisiana in 1996, and he too is a Republican. And just try picking out at least five black faces in the crowd at any Republican event. The Republican party has long been a landing pad for racists, anti-abortionists, gay rights opponents, christian conservatives, and just about anyone who takes a passionately strong stance against any way of thinking that is different from their own. It’s been that way in the GOP for many decades now (which should explain why the party has been losing steam — and elections). So why does the arrival of Michael Steele at the helm suddenly change everything? It doesn’t!
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Just because a hotel meeting room full of delegates chooses a leader doesn’t instantly make him one. And that one afternoon of balloting simply does not turn back or erase decades of racial thinking. In spite of his newly acquired title of “Chairman,” Michael Steele is still a black man going against a party of some who absolutely will not play follow the leader. Already David Duke has gone on record in calling Chairman Steele a “black racist,” “Obama Jr.” and a “servile dog of Israel.” So put whatever lipstick on that pig you want, but the true Republican party and all its ways of thinking are still right there behind it. With cutesy slogans like “Family Values” and “Pro Marriage”, the reality is the Christian Coalition and the social and racial conservatives are the REAL Chairman of the Republican party. They have the numbers, they have the strength, and they wield the true power. They’ve worked too many years, donated too many dollars, and they’re not about to relinquish their party simply because a lone African-American man said so. Truth be told, this unique group of GOPer’s simply have no place else to go if they don’t hold their ground. “Change” and “Obama-mania” have swept the Democratic party, attracting multiculturalists, youth, and 21st Century free thinkers. So the older, conservative, race conscious, gun toting, value-themed voter has no choice but to hunker down and hold on to the only place they know as home.
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Since becoming Chairman, Michael Steele has appeared on numerous talk shows touting it’s a “new day” in the Republican party. But then he followed up all that contemporary talk with the same old outdated and hard lined Republican positions that already has the party on the brink of irrelevancy. If the messenger is going to be spewing the same old rhetoric, what difference does it make if he’s black, white, hispanic, or martian? So the question remains: what exactly is going to be new? Apparently not much. It seems Michael Steele is just a darker shade of lipstick being applied to the same old pig!
