The Party of Lincoln

Interesting column by Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune, addressing the GOP's relationship with black America.

I would guess what has caught Page's attention is the number of high profile black GOP candidates running for office this year, most notably in Rust Belt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. At least some leading blacks are refusing to be taken for granted by the Democrat party there, which has not offered solutions to persistent black poverty in those states.

Page gives a nod to the Republican Party of Lincoln, with its anti-slavery stance and tradition of championing free enterprise and individual initiative.

But I would differ with Page in characterizing Kemp as a moderate. He represented the conservative wing of the party, rather than the establishment country club crony capitalists when he ran for office a generation ago as a tax-cutting supply sider. Candidates for governor elected in the Republican primaries of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland this year ran on conservative principles. Unlike Illinois, most Republicans there know what they stand for.

Where Kemp fell down from conservative principles then was in advocating race quotas, rather than a color-blind society, and he's still stuck in that patronizing mindset today. Here's the American Spectator article Page refers to.

But where it really counts, it's not the Republican party that needs rescuing, it's black Americans suffering from the substandard education foisted on them by the teachers' unions, which has been robbing them of the American Dream.

This is the civil rights issue of our time, and it is Republicans, and black Republicans, not Democrats, who recognize it.