September 27, 2006 6:21 AM

THIS is certainly going to improve the quality of political discourse

Why Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican

Black Republicans run racially tinged ad

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism. It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860’s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Man, how twisted and thoroughly f——d-up is this? The National Black Republican Association is with all due seriousness claiming that Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican. The fact that Dr. King isn’t alive to confirm or refute this allegation only makes this claim that much more distasteful and offensive (Yeah? Well, Gandhi was a Democrat!). It’s one thing to try to carry on the work of one of the icons of the Civil Rights movement. It’s quite another to claim that same icon as one of your own. This only serves as confirmation of the lengths that Republicans of any color will go to seize and maintain power. If you have to stoop to the depths of using historical “evidence” of what the Republican Party was over 100 years ago…well, you do what you’ve got to do, eh?

If you’re going to claim someone as one of your own, at least make it someone who is alive and can confirm or refute your claim. The National Black Republican Association just looks like a group of unscrupulous partisan political hacks. Yes, Dr. King was highly political, but his politics had more to do with civil and human rights than supporting partisan political causes. King was far more concerned with the content of a man’s character than which lever he pulled in the voting booth.

Of course, when you belong to an anachronism of a group like the National Black Republican Association, I suppose there’s a certain desperation to somehow remain relevant and attract attention. I mean, until now had any of y’all even heard of the National Black Republican Association? And doesn’t that seem like an exercise in self-loathing (can you say Log Cabin Republicans?). Since when is the GOP supportive of ANYTHING resembling minority issues? Unless the GOP underwent a personality transplant while I was sleeping, Republicans are, have been, and are likely to remain the party of rich, White, Christian males. Sure, Republicans give lip service to the idea of dviersity, even referring to the GOP as “the big tent party”…as long as the tent is on the veranda of a country club, and the minorities are the ones serving drinks and canapes.

The spot begins with one woman telling another, “Dr. King was a real man. You know he was a Republican.” Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center, said Thursday that King never endorsed candidates from either party.

“I think it’s highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there’s really no evidence,” Klein said.

Of course, a lack of facts and/or evidence has never stopped Republicans from making whatever unfounded claims they think appropriate. After all, it’s not about truth or evidence. It’s about political power.

A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said Thursday that King was nonpartisan.

In the ad, the woman goes on to say, “Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan.” Her companion replies, “The Klan? White hoods and sheets?”

The KKK, never a political party, was a racist group of white men that started in the South after the Civil War, when Republicans were almost unheard of in former Confederate states. The mainstream Democratic Party never endorsed the Klan nor claimed to have founded it.

Truth may be the first casualty of war, but it’s in Republican politics that truth takes the most consistent and brutal beating. The late Sen. Daniel Moynihan once said that while one is free to choose one’s own beliefs, one is NOT free to choose one’s own facts. He could have also added that neither is one free to make unfounded claims about deceased historical figures in order to boost their own miserable prospects.

Jeebus, just when I’d begun to think that Republicans couldn’t possibly sink any lower….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 27, 2006 6:21 AM.

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