Get Real, Huckabee

Arkansas Governor Huckabee spoke recently at the Strafford County Republican Picnic in New Hampshire, and gave a rambling account of why he is a Republican. He claims that his choice was motivated by a desire to join a party that had room for everyone. It sounded like a wonderful rationale, but how could it possibly be true?

Over the last forty years, with small but notable exception, the Republicans have been the clear party-of-choice for bigots, racists, supremacists and klansmen. At least until the second Bush became President, the national voices of hatred, intolerance, rage or bitterness were usually Republican. Turn on the radio in any city and you would find raging conservatives spewing rancorous venom on anyone who would listen.

Several years ago I heard one such hate-spewer declare that there were no liberal talk show hosts because the liberals didn’t have any good ideas! But he was wrong. The truth was, when a conservative said something incendiary in a public forum, he got angry letters from liberals. But when a liberal said something incendiary in a public forum, he got killed. Overly dramatic? Not when you remember Alan Berg, the original shock-jock and basis for the movie Talk Radio, who was gunned down outside his Denver station by a white supremacist. Consider all the other prominent people assassinated over the years. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and of course, Abraham Lincoln. All liberals.

Yes, violence stifles dissent, and the Republican Party has long been associated with violence. Want to get hate mail and death threats? Write a column opposing gun control and the NRA. And who does the NRA control? The Republican Party. Why do so many (mostly white) members of the NRA abhor any attempt to limit or regulate guns? Because they are increasingly terrified that their mostly-white world will someday be taken over by darker-skinned people, especially African Americans. Don’t believe it? Then explain why conservatives have supported laws against mixed-race marriages, affirmative action and immigration, and supported laws requiring poll taxes. Explain why Confederate Flags are still displayed everywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line. When southerners defend the flag as a symbol of the “lost southern way of life,” what could they possibly be referring to other than the loss of slavery? Of course, these are Red States.

Despite several prominent cabinet members of the Bush Administration, the core of the Republican Party is vastly white, and has a history of intolerance, exclusivity and anger. Pointing this out entails some risk, which is why it is seldom addressed directly. There are certainly scores of wonderful Republicans, but they need to get honest about the history and composition of their party. When Governor Huckabee says he wanted to join a party that had room for everyone, it sounds like the same hollow nonsense his party has been saying about a lot of things lately.