The fact that Republicans today are not racists is explained clearly in the article “The Myth of the Racist Republicans” by Gerard Alexander that is posted on the Claremont Institute’s website at:
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp
Democrats generate false charges of racism in the Republican Party in order to keep blacks from voting for Republicans by conjuring up such names as Trent Lott, Willie Horton, David Duke, Lee Atwater, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as racially explosive words such as “black voter suppression” and the Confederate flag. Democrats also make the bogus assertion that the Republican Party is “the party of the rich”. When one charge is refuted, Democrats move on to the next one. The truth does not matter.
Trent Lott - Democrats denounced Senator Trent Lott for his remarks about Senator Strom Thurmond. However, there was silence when Democrat Senator Christopher Dodd praised Senator Byrd, a former official in the Ku Klux Klan, as someone who would have been "a great senator for any moment.” Senator Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and, after he became a Republican, Thurmond defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats.
Willie Horton - When castigating Republicans about the Willie Horton ad, Democrats ignore the fact that it was former Vice President Al Gore who first brought up Willie Horton’s name against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis during the 1998 primary election because, after Dukakis released convicted murderer Willie Horton from prison on a weekend furlough, Horton raped a woman and stabbed her husband.
In the general election, former President George H. W. Bush followed the example of Al Gore and used the name of Willie Horton against Dukakis who was the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Today, Democrats condemn G.H.W. Bush about Willie Horton, but hypocritically give Gore a pass.
David Duke and Robert Byrd - It is also hypocritical and disingenuous for Democrats to point a finger at extremist David Duke who has not been embraced by the Republican Party, while remaining silent about the fact that former Klansman Senator Robert Byrd is still being embraced by the Democratic Party.
Byrd who was a fierce opponent of desegregating the military complained in one letter: “I would rather die a thousand times and see old glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen of the wilds”.
In the early 1970's, Byrd pushed to have the Senate's main office building named after a former "Dixiecrat”, Democrat Senator Richard Russell who was Byrd's mentor and leading opponent of ant-lynching legislation. In 2001 Byrd was forced to apologize for using the "N-word" on television. While an Illinois Senator, President Barack Obama wrote a letter of support for Byrd that helped that racist win re-election.
Lee Atwater - The quest by Democrats to continuously paint the Republican Party as a racist party knows no bound. Democrats are shamefully sullying the memory of Lee Atwater by falsely accusing him of using the “N-Word” in 1981, ten years before he died of a brain tumor on March 30, 1991 at age 40. Atwater was a tough political strategist who beat the Democrats in the political area, but he was not a racist.
Note that the charge that Atwater uttered a racist statement using the “N-word” was made by a liberal Professor Alexander P. Lamis, a native of South Carolina, who had worked as a research assistant at the liberal Brookings Institution before joining the Case Western Reserve University faculty in 1988.
Professor Lamis claimed that Artwater made a racist statement in 1981, 18 years before Lamis wrote his book in 1999 (which was written 8 years after Atwater died in 1991) about politics in the 1990s. The title of Lamis’ book is Southern Politics in the 1990s. If Atwater had made such an explosive, racist remark, why did Lamis not report that to the media in 1981 (or at any time during the 10 years before Atwater died) in order to destroy Atwater as a political strategist?
In Atwater’s obituary written by Michael Oreskes that was published in “The New York Times” the morning Atwater died, Oreskes made an effort to trash Atwater even before his body had cooled, using every negative thing ever written or said about Atwater. Yet, Oreskes never once mentioned any statement made by Atwater in 1981 where he used the “N-word” as claimed by Lamis. The mean-spirited obituary about Lee Atwater that was published in ”The New York Times” on March 30, 1991 can be found on the Internet at:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...erence/Times Topics/People/O/Oreskes, Michael
