Month: April 2007

Former Segregationists for Obama

It’s a trend:

You can definitely be sure from my e-mail address I’m not an Obama staffer, but I have a similar story to that of your earlier e-mailer. My dad grew up in Macon, Georgia in an all-white school he describes consistently as having gone to hell thanks to integration.  He has never been personally racist to anyone of any background in his life, but he really thinks the world went to hell starting about 1960 and that civil rights went too far too fast. His dislike for the Sharptons and Jacksons of the world couldn’t be fiercer. The N-word is pretty much the standard noun many of his family members use to describe black people. His only vote for a Democrat in his lifetime was for Carter, out of Georgia patriotism.

I had the fun experience of watching Obama’s electrifying 2004 convention speech with him.  My dad, who hadn’t heard of him, just said "He’s good."  As in, "ok, I liked this guy, but he’s a Democrat, so he must be a huckster. But he’s a talented one."

Then, late last year, his updated view on Obama: "I think I could vote for him."  I could only turn around and smirk, once I’d picked my jaw up from the floor.

GOP Priorities

Scott Schools, mentioned in the Dish here and here, turns out to be almost a definition of a Bush-Rove Republican:

Schools is a GOP party guy (he’s given $11,000 since 2000), and was recently appointed on an interim basis to the San Francisco-area U.S. Attorneys Office. He came from South Carolina via Washington, D.C., instead of the usual route, where the president appoints attorneys who serve around the area of their appointment, after consulting with the state’s U.S. senators. Schools’ predecessor, Keven Ryan, was one of the eight U.S. Attorneys forced out in the recent scandal (though apparently more for poor managerial skills than for political reasons).

What seems pretty clear is that Schools knows what his priorities are. His prior gigs included working in the office of South Carolina U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond, Jr., where he handled public relations in the first federal case ever brought against a political protester for not adhering to "free speech zones" during a presidential visit. Thurmond, Jr.’s (who was appointed at the age of 28 as a White House favor to his father) office also made news a few years ago for prosecuting girls who sold their panties over the Internet.

This is your Justice Department. And these are their priorities. Sleep safe, America.

Another One

A reader writes:

If you’re looking for anecdotal evidence of Republican collapse among the young here’s some for you. I’m white, from Putnam county (just above Westchester county in New York), an entrepreneur (new business almost a year old happily profitable), from a middle class family, college educated, married with a baby on the way, and 26 years old. Wouldn’t you say that’s essentially the profile of an Eisenhower Republican. My family has always voted Republican, but me and every single one of my friends have never voted for a person with an R next to their name. 

It’s not because we believe the Democratic platform, those idiots could use a little education about incentives. We just believe in representative government as set up by Madison, and hope that the opposition party might offer that. Young voters who want small government, low taxation, and good infrastructure programs (think 50’s interstate highway system) vote Democratic because if all the Republicans are offering is God, torture, and a unitary executive, you might as well hope for democracy from the other party.

God, torture and an untrammeled executive: a good summary of what conservatism has become.