CPAC Blames It On the 'Black Guy'

American Conservative Union communications
director Ian B. Walters speaking at CPAC

Well another year has come and gone for the annual gathering of conservative activists and politicians known as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Co-founded in 1973 by the American Conservative Union, CPAC basically serves as a kind of think-tank platform for a range of conservative issues.

It offers leading conservative thinkers and politicians an opportunity to sound out their policy positions and political views in front of a crowd that embraces a decidedly right-wingy view of America.

It's a multi-day conference that helps to shape the overall message of the Republican Party and influence the legislative agenda of GOP politicians all across America.

For Republican presidential hopefuls, the road to the White House runs through CPAC.

If some of the comments heard there last week are any indication, the Republican Party really doesn't seem too concerned about the broader public perception that it's an organization which is openly unwelcoming to people of color - or even remotely interested in expanding it's membership beyond it's overwhelmingly white voter base.

As Jeffrey Mays reported on Sunday in an article in the New York Times, Ian B. Walters (pictured above), the communications director for the American Conservative Union that hosts CPAC, raised eyebrows at a CPAC dinner on Friday evening while reflecting back on the disillusionment of the Republican Party in 2008 after President Obama's election victory when he observed:

"We elected Mike Steele to be the R.N.C. chair because he's a black guy. That was the wrong thing to do."

According to Mays a number of conservatives, including R.N.C. spokesman Michael Ahrens, quickly distanced themselves from Walters' comments.

Former RNC chair Michael Steele

Comments which can be seen as a not-so-subtle endorsement of the racism and xenophobia of Trump, and his tolerance of white supremacist views evidenced by senior White House advisor Stephen Miller.

The comment also seems to crudely parrot the basis of  Trump's political views - which is to engage in "other-ism" and essentially place blame for the country's problems at the feet of immigrants and non-white Americans.

Steele, the popular ex-Republican lieutenant governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007, was tapped to lead the R.N.C. after President Obama's 2008 election victory as Republicans tried to come to grips with a brutal election loss.

Bolstered by George W. Bush's unpopularity and anger over the Iraq War, Obama won the African-American vote 95% to Senator John McCain's 5%, the Hispanic vote 67% to 31%, the Asian vote 62% to 35% and the Jewish vote 78% to 21%.

The Republican Party was forced to face the uncomfortable political reality that it had to find a way to expand it's membership and appeal among non-white American voters.

In 2009, Michael Steele represented something of a rarity in an increasingly conservative GOP, a progressive Republican voice who was African-American - one could arguably call him a unicorn.

Pat Buchanan after winning the New Hampshire
primary in 1996

In 1993, he was one of the founding members of the Republican Leadership Council, a political action committee (PAC) that embraced a "fiscally conservative, socially inclusive" political agenda.

The other RLC co-founders included former New Jersey Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former Missouri Republican Senator John Danforth and former Massachusetts Republican Governor William Weld.

The RLC PAC was formed after the backlash from right-wing writer Pat Buchanan's divisive speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention in the wake of his failed bid for the presidency in which he claimed, in part: "There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America."  

I can still recall listening to that speech on TV and getting an uncomfortable chill when he exalted the R.N.C. crowd to "take back America's cities."

The RLC was an effort to strengthen the voices of moderate Republicans in the mold of former Congressman and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, and reject the rise of the extremist religious zealotry which has now taken root within the GOP.

Now I say all that, in part, because I think Ian B. Walter's comment that the R.N.C. selected Michael Steele as chair in 2009 "because he was a black guy" is a simplistic and incomplete summary of why he was tapped for the position.

It's also an overt attempt to pander to the overt tone of bigotry and dog-whistle racism which Trump has openly cultivated since announcing his candidacy. 

Now I might not personally agree with everything Michael Steele says in the political sense, but he's a pretty shrewd political operator who is not afraid to stand up for what he believes is right - including his criticism of Donald Trump, or his dust-ups with Rush Limbaugh back in 2009.

Michael Steele as R.N.C. chair during the 2011
Winter meeting in National Harbor, Maryland

As a conservative political commentator on MSNBC his comments and insight are always interesting and substantive.

Is it possible that his selection as R.N.C. chair in 1992 was, in part, influenced by a desire on the part of the Republican establishment to change the stiff "country club" perception of their party as an organization for old white Christian guys?

Sure it is, in fact selecting Steele as R.N.C. chair was a pretty savvy move on the part of Republicans in 2009.

When they knew they would run the risk of reinforcing the perception of the party as racist simply for attacking Obama politically as president.

But there's no question that Steele was more than qualified for the position based on his track record as a lawyer in the private sector, and for his extensive work both behind and in front of the scenes on behalf of the Republican Party.

This is a guy who earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins and his law degree from Georgetown.

He was the first African-American elected to statewide office in Maryland when he became lieutenant governor in 2003 and he made an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in 2006, eventually loosing to current Democratic Senator Ben Cardin.

So in my view, Steele is the kind of person that Republicans should embrace, rather than try and vilify as if he was some kind of mistake as Ian B. Walters suggested at the CPAC dinner on Friday night.

But given Trump's views on race, and the Republican Party's acceptance of the de facto head of their party being a philandering bigot, maybe this current iteration of the R.N.C. does see a man like Michael Steele as a mistake - rather than an asset who reflected positively on the GOP.

After all, the CPAC crowd enthusiastically cheered Trump's rambling speech on Friday, even though it clearly contained lies and half-truths that have been fact-checked and he read a story about a snake.

And later that evening at the CPAC dinner, ACU communications director Ian B. Walter looked back nine years ago to cast blame on "the black guy." 

So much for those talked-about but never seen Republican Party "outreach efforts".

Bad Seeds - The Withering Republican Leadership

Holocaust references? Mike Hucakbee's cool with that

What's even more remarkable than Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee comparing the Obama administration and the State Department signing a deal with Iran to taking "Israelis and marching them to the door of the oven." is the tepid reaction to the comment itself by leading Republicans.

Over the course of his political career Huckabee has said some truly stupid things that must be read to be believed, but his invoking images from the Holocaust to characterize a diplomatic treaty drags the already soiled perception of the Republican party even lower.

Was he was simply trying boost his sagging approval ratings by "out-Trumping" Donald Trump's dimwitted inflammatory comments?

Or was he intentionally looking for an opportunity to get some quick free press to boost his chances to be selected as one of the ten GOP candidates who make the cut for Fox News' upcoming Republican presidential debate?

Maybe he'd just tossed back a couple scotches before the interview and pulled a "Jimmy the Greek",
I don't know.

Ovens at Majdanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland

Regardless of his motivation, Huckabee's choice of words demonstrate a remarkable lack of historical understanding of the scope of the Holocaust in Europe during WWII; and the suffering endured by it's millions of victims and their families, friends, co-workers and countrymen.

His willingness to callously refer to something as horrific as the bodies of innocent people being incinerated in ovens on a mass scale simply to make the point that he disagrees with a foreign policy decision that involved diplomacy rather than war, belies an insensitivity that is all too characteristic of the tone of today's Republican party.

 To me, it's an affront to decency and an insult to Jews.

The tepid response from the Republican candidates themselves about Huckabee's comment also says a lot about the current incarnation of the GOP leadership; which is defined as much for it's open embrace of bigotry and intolerance as it is for it's undisguised misogyny, immigrant bashing, and rejection of science in favor of baseless rhetoric.

As Juliet Ilperin reported yesterday in an article in The Washington Post, during a press conference in Ethiopia on Monday, President Obama spoke thoughtfully and at length about Huckabee's comments, saying:

"The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are just part of a general pattern that would be considered ridiculous, if it wasn't so sad. We've had a sitting Senator call John Kerry Pontius Pilate. We've had a sitting Senator, who also happens to be running for president, suggest that I'm the leading state sponsor of terrorism. These are the leaders in the Republican Party."  

Leaders indeed.

RNC Dir. of Comm. Sean Spicer

As Josh Israel reported on ThinkProgress.org earlier this morning, Sean Spicer, (pictured left) the RNC's Chief Strategist & Communications Director told CNN he would neither condemn Huckabee's comments, nor characterize them as inappropriate; saying only that "they can speak for themselves."

Thanks for clearing that up for us Sean, in the wake of the silence from the Republican Party leadership after Donald Trump's recent racist comments about Mexicans we weren't sure about that.

Oh and speaking of the leading Republican presidential candidate, Trump shrugged off Huckabee's controversial comments in an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, saying: "I mean, I'm OK with it."

Which isn't all that surprising considering Trump also just announced in an interview on Monday that he'd like to see marginalized former VP candidate Sarah Palin appointed to a cabinet post if he gets elected, insisting, "She's really somebody who knows what's happening."

Except of course, that Africa is a continent, not a country, or which newspapers she reads.

I'm guessing The Donald never got a chance to watch the movie chronicling the 2008 presidential race 'Game Change' HBO.

While Rick "Opus Dei" Santorum also sprang to Huckabee's defense, Jeb Bush was actually the only top-tier candidate to buck the GOP and come out and say Huckabee's comments were "wrong", but it was more a gentle slap on the wrist than a scolding.

Dr. Ben "Obamacare is like slavery" Carson

Earlier this afternoon while I was riding the exercise bike at the gym during my lunch break, I watched CNN's Jake Tapper doing a live interview with Republican Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson.

When Tapper asked Dr. Carson about his thoughts on Huckabee's "oven" comment, Carson carefully ducked the question.

Instead he seemed to sympathize with the media backlash against Huckabee by admitting that he himself had been "misunderstood" when he compared the Affordable Care Act to the institution of slavery.

So what's it all mean? Right now the Republican Party is so outside the fence, it's hard to tell.

Do GOP rainmakers want another Bush in the White House?

The political cynic in me believes all this headline-grabbing right-wing buffoonery from these intellectual clowns is carefully and intentionally crafted to set up Jeb Bush as this reasonable-looking moderate front-runner when the smoke finally clears, all the suckers, hucksters and opportunists are cleared out from this field of seventeen candidates, and the race really gets down to business.

The political cynic in me thinks the GOP has intentionally taken the leashes off and let the dogs run wild so Jeb Bush, who's raised more cash than anyone, can eventually emerge as the "moderate" one who stood up to "the crazies" as Senator John McCain aptly described them.

But if all this offensive hate-speak is not a front, and people like Huckabee, Trump and their ilk really DO think the way their offensive media soundbites make them sound, then it's a clear indicator that the Republican Party is not a legitimate, issues-based political party anymore.

It's a paid-for husk that's been stripped of decency, compassion, reason and genuine American values. Thanks to its willingness to allow itself to be hijacked by a fringe extremist wing, the GOP has been reduced to a political party that is devoid of actual ideas, or forward-thinking policies.

As Huckabee's comments and the ho-hum response from the Republican leadership to them demonstrate, this is a political party that only knows how to deal in the currency of fear, ignorance, hysteria and hatred.

These days that's about all it's cultivating, and given the shifting demographics of America's diverse populace, that's not something you can take to Washington, plant in the White House garden and expect to see grow.

Huckabee and Trump make clear the kinds of seeds the Republican leadership has sewn; it's spawned a spoiled crop that's just going to wither on the vine.