The insider political newsletter The Hotline has a new blog called Hotline On Call that features an excellent post asking how Senator John McCain will handle the tricky issue of race in the GOP primaries -- a timely question given his recent praise for Trent Lott and George Wallace, Jr. Near the end, the Hotline also brings up how the question of how the issue will be handled by Senator George Allen, linking to my post on his ugly racial history:
Five years after the bitter McCain-Bush primary, SC's Confederate flag is down and the percentage of minority voters is up. And McCain is heading to the state on MLK day.
This could be the ultimate test of the senator's straight-talking skill set.
After all, some McCain watchers on the left say he has a lot to answer for, including most notably a vote in Congress against there even being a national holiday honoring MLK.
While he has since expressed regret on the MLK vote, some activists say the rest of McCain's voting record on civil rights is not without blemish.... including votes against portions of the '94 Racial Justice Act. Of more concern to them: a connection to SC political consultant Richard Quinn, who once edited Southern Partisan, a magazine that detractors say glorifies the South's racially divided past. (The magazine is more soberly described as embracing Dixiecrat culture; it rarely ventures into history, although its advertisers do.)
Moreover, McCain's return to SC -- the date was chosen by the Spartanburg Co. GOP -- brings to light his earlier waffling on the Confederate flag during the '00 primary. McCain has since apologized and it will be interesting to see if he recommits himself the issue. He has also distanced himself from Quinn's writings.
McCain walks a fine line.
We realize we're being reductionist here, but a fundamental conundrum for any GOPer who claims fidelity to racial justice principles is...the same as it was ten years ago.
Is it possible to get enough white votes without doing the sorts of things -- speaking at Bob Jones University, addressing the Council of Conservative Citizens, waffling on the flag -- that profoundly alienate black folks?
Perhaps McCain's '08 campaign will bridge the gap, allowing Ken Mehlman's project of expanding the GOP's share of the black vote to mature. Also: is it fair to cast aspersions on McCain because he's friendly with a guy who once edited a magazine that some -- but not all -- black critics think is racist?
Given that the media elite is always looking for racial angles to political stories, and given the very real, quite un-finished debates in states like Georgia over voting rights and the flag -- can elections in the South legitimately not press on symbolic (or what seem to be symbolic) racial trigger points?
More questions: Will immigration debates re-align ethnic voting constituencies? Or align them all against the GOP? Can any Republican running nationally ever exceed 12 percent of the black electorate? A question we've always wanted to ask Mehlman: What did you think when Bush went to Bob Jones? A question for those helping Sen. George Allen: are y'all prepared for questions like these?
And the good news?
Posted by: Taylor | January 03, 2006 at 07:30 PM