So now it has happened and the venom is flying. The bigwigs in the GOP have gotten their money and interest behind Michael Steele and that hate is just flying. Mark down the names of these guys because they sound like jilted lovers. How dare the Republicans back a black candidate!
It's almost as if the RNC and I were reading the same page. Just yesterday in the other thread I was saying how much of a no-brainer it is for the right African American candidates to walk into the open arms of the Republican Party. Of course it's no walk in the park for anyone, including Steele, but there is not, contrary to urban myth and Liberal lie, a color bar in the Republican Party. But that's hardly what Steele's ascendancy proves. What it proves is that the class of blackfolks who are Old School, and having met Steele I can attest, are natural candidates for filling in the gaps in the GOP. Steele is neither ideologue nor puppet. He's my kind of people, and I think once again, as with the debut of the Cosby Show, America is in for a pleasant surprise.
I'm going to step out on a limb and stick a big thumb in the face of all the whiners who have been saying, for as long as I've been right-blogging, that black Republicanism was both an impossibility and an oxymoron. The Party is stepping up to the [$1,000] plate and putting some energy behind a serious black candidate. This could very well be the watershed event we've been waiting for. I am very curious to see how far Steele is going to echo the 'Cosby Republican' (which is much of what we've been all about over here) rhetoric to capitalize on the buzz still surrounding that. I don't think that's much like Steele's style, but if he's got Rove behind him, you can be certain that the opportunity won't be missed.
I expect that I'm going to have to suppress a lot of 'monkey' comments that will inevitably issue from haters and idiots. Let's not forget what has been said (and drawn) about our Secretary of State when she ascended to that post. So let the flames begin.
References:
Oliver Willis pays no attention to the man himself at all, and dismisses him in a skinny paragraph. The Ascent Blog doesn't give as much as the benefit of the doubt but doesn't condemn. Faint praise indeed. That Colored Fella dismisses Steele as well.
So all in all, there doesn't seem to be many folks who are willing to take Steele seriously, despite the fact that I see him as the genuine article, and right smack in the middle of the Old School. From my point of view, he is precisely the kind of candidate who can speak up for both the aggressive business blacks on the right (for lack of a better term) and blacks of the Christian Right. He is too much of neither but comfy with both.
Recent Comments