The 2012 GOP convention organizers made much of
the announcement that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former
Democratic Congressman Arthur Davis, and Saratoga Springs, Utah Mayor Mia Love
will be among the featured speakers at the convention. They are supposedly the
GOP's loud public rebuke to the relentless charge that it has snatched in the
welcome mat to blacks. But the three black speakers notwithstanding the 2012
GOP convention may be the whitest GOP convention in more than 40 years. The
2008 convention was bad enough. Only 36 of the more than 2,300 delegates to
that convention were black. That was a sharp contrast to the 167 black
delegates at the 2004 convention. The plunge in numbers was a stark reversal of
the GOP's much touted pledge in 2000 to make the party a model of diversity.
In 2000, then GOP presidential candidate George
W. Bush spurred the talk of GOP diversity. That year's convention featured more
black faces than at any time in living memory. The convention stage in
Philadelphia pulsated with the sound of black soul and gospel groups, a popular
black singer belted out a stirring rendition of the national anthem. There were
continual cutaway camera shots of black delegates wildly cheering and shouting
at the speakers and activities. Colin Powell and Rice gave prominent speeches
along with a few lesser known black speakers.
Bush seemed to back up his words about diversity
with his pick of Powell and Rice, and a handful of other high profile blacks to
top policy making administration posts. Bush kept up the appearance of
diversity in 2004, with a new twist. He actively courted the black evangelicals
with a mix of bible thumping fundamentalism and support of school choice, and
anti-abortionist and anti-gay rights rhetoric. He sweetened the pot for some of
the top black evangelical ministers by steering an ample sum of Faith Based
Initiative dollars into their coffers. This got Bush a mild bump up in the
black vote in his 2004 presidential win in the must win battleground states of
Ohio and Florida. The increase in the black vote proved crucial in helping
provide him just enough of his razor thin margin in Ohio that beat Democratic
rival John Kerry.
The GOP's diversity tout couldn't last. It
bumped up hard against the political contradiction in the party's history and
philosophy. The GOP is a party that promotes unabashed free enterprise, limited
government, champions corporate and wealthy interests, and firmly opposes tough
gun control restrictions, abortion, and traditional marriage. It would not be
the political force it is in state and especially national politics, and would
not maintain its firm support base in the Deep South and the Heartland states
among white rural, suburban, conservative blue collar, and strongly male
voters, if it wavered in defending its core political positions. The few high
profile black Republicans from Rice to Clarence Thomas with the arguable
exception of Powell, adhere to and fervently espouse, the party's hard line
conservative's attack points.
There is absolutely no room to deviate from
them. The black Republicans are bankrolled, and feted by conservative think
tanks and money groups. They are paraded on conservative talk shows as the
black faces of the party. Former GOP Republican National Chairman Michael
Steele had a momentary inkling that simply having black faces spout the stock
conservative line would never attract more than a bare handful of blacks to the
GOP. On occasion he quipped that the GOP had to give blacks some reason to
embrace the GOP. But Steele even as he said that Steele was already well on his
way to becoming a casualty of the GOP's steady march backward to its extreme
right-wing stance on the issues. He was soon ousted.
With the departure of Steele, and the
spectacular surge of the Tea Party, there was little doubt that the GOP's 2012
convention would play hard to white conservatives, and that the delegates to
the convention would reflect their views. Romney's virtually lily white key
staffers, his selection of Paul Ryan as his VP running mate, and his carefully
stage managed appearances before mostly white audiences were further glaring
signs that the GOP convention would be a convention dominated by the right.
The 2012 GOP platform was lifted almost whole
from the Tea Party aligned FreedomWork's 12 point platform. Its main points are
repeal the Affordable Care Act, deep slashes in government spending (not
military spending), the downsize of federal employment, scrapping the
Department of Education, and the gut of federal regulations on environment
protection, and the lax checks on financial, and corporate abuse. The
convention platform which is designed to rouse the GOP's conservative legions
would wreak even more misery on the black poor, elderly, and students. This
further guarantees that the nearly 2,300 delegates and more than 2,000
alternatives to the 2012 GOP convention will attend one of the whitest if not
the whitest GOP convention in decades.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author
and political analyst. He is a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and a
weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The
Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America
Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK-Radio and the
Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on
Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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