Steele's wink to whites
One can only imagine the scope and intensity of the uproar if a white guy had said what Michael Steele said to a reporter regarding the general election for the Sarbanes Senate Seat, and a possible matchup of Steele and Democrat Kweisi Mfume, both African-Americans.
"Voters have to ask who's going to better serve them," Steele told U.S. News & World Report's Dan Gilgoff. "[Someone] who represents all the people, or just one particular race?"
Great stuff. Just what we need: Steele signaling whites that Mfume, because of his skin (or that strange, ethnic-sounding name of his) can't be trusted to represent them. What year is this? What century?
Aren't Republicans and conservatives always the first to grouse about the injection of race into politics and debate? Aren't they -- and Steele -- the ones who have complained loudest and longest about this newspaper's 2002 editorial that dismissed Steele as a candidate for lieutenant governor, saying he had little to offer in qualification but the color of his skin?
Mfume's camp had no comment to make when The Sun contacted them about Steele's cynical wink. Smart move. Mfume has nothing to gain by engaging Steele on this level, and everything to lose -- along with the rest of us -- in a campaign that becomes about race instead of character or ideas.
Comments
As usual, Dan misses Steele's point.
Liberal black pols such as Mfume talk RACE out of both sides of their mouths--when they talk to whites, black DEMS tell their white audiences that "we are ALL in this together." Naive and idealistic and well-meaning whites want to believe this.
On the other hand, when black DEMS politicians talk to "the family" (I.e., blacks), they make it quite clear that their MAIN focus as elected officials is to do whatever they can to help the "family" (blacks).
This is, of course a blatantly tribal appeal to the black DEMS' black brothers. And most whites never hear these contradictory speches from black DEM pols.
Never forget, It's all tribal. Blood, then culture, trumps everything else.
Posted by: flyingcow | August 9, 2006 9:03 AM
Your talents are being wasted here. I think you should be blogging over at th dailykos.
Posted by: chesepioc | August 9, 2006 10:29 AM
Please. If some black democrat candidate would say something like what Steele did it would make exactly zero waves with you or anyone else at The Sun.
And while I personally like Mfume (I prefer him over Cardin) and think he probably really hated it was done, he was a top executive at the NAACP when they accused George Bush of everything aside from owning a working plantation complete with slaves in 2000.
He must have learned that race-baiting didn't work when his side did it then so that's probably why he's keeping his mouth shut now.
Posted by: SC | August 9, 2006 10:32 AM
Perhaps moderate Democrats, Independents, and African Americans would consider voting for Michael Steele if he didn't act like such a fool on racial issues. He dismissed criticism about Bob Ehrlich having attended a fundraiser at an all white country club simply by stating, "I don't play golf", and he didn't seem to care that his boss (as a congressman) once requested the IRS remove the NAACP's tax-exempt status. But he likes to use his own race as an issue whenever it suits him- such as the time when he referred to George W. Bush as his "homeboy" or how he talked to a group in PG County about how he was going to "bring 'da hood" with him to Capitol Hill when he's elected.
Besides having held two figurehead positions (Lt. Governor, Maryland GOP Chairman), what makes Steele qualified to be Senator other than, as the Sun editorial board said in '02, the color of his skin?
Posted by: MCG | August 9, 2006 1:17 PM