“A Time To Kill” & The GOP?

Remember the 1996 movie “A Time to Kill”? Even better, remember the defense’s closing argument? When I think about some of the inflammatory and suspect remarks, behaviors, and associations of the past and current field of GOP candidates for the 2012 presidential race, I’m reminded of the defense’s closing argument in the movie.

Image from wikimedia.org

Assuming that you remember the defense’s closing argument, or that you’ve clicked on the link above to refresh your memory- or see it for the first time, I’m going to ask you to close your eyes for a moment (not literally like in the movie though because this is a blog post and you have to have your eyes open to read the rest of this post, [smile]). When we examine some of the most offensive, incendiary, and dividing rhetoric, actions, and associations of the final four of the GOP candidates for the 2012 presidential election, we find what some may view as disturbing facts.

We have a candidate in Rick Santorum stating, “I don't want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money”.  We have another candidate in Ron Paul who published a racially insensitive newsletter that bore his name that he recently attempted to distance himself from. Next, we have a candidate in Mitt Romney who’s a member of a religion, commonly dubbed as a cult, which banned people of African descent from priesthood or participating in temple ceremonies and viewed black skin as a curse from God (see my blog titled, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. vs. Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. for more details on this). Last, we have a candidate in Newt Gingrich who has a thirty-plus year history of playing race and class warfare politics and refuses to address President Obama as “President” (see my blog titled, I Just Can't Put My "Finger" On It (Jan Brewer) for more on this). Mr. Gingrich also commonly refers to America’s first black president as the food stamp president.

Image from ajc.com

Please, continue to keep your eyes closed……can you see them?.......can you hear them?......now, imagine these candidates being black……hold on, continue to keep your eyes closed……can you see them?......can you hear them?......now, imagine yourself being black……now, open your eyes……I mean really open your eyes people! You can make all the arguments you want to about how you don’t agree with these candidates on the issues I pointed out but how you agree with their political philosophies and so on and so forth. However, I’m willing to bet everything I own that nearly all black voters (to include black Republicans) have eliminated these candidates simply because of the issues I described above- and maybe you should too. You see, racism is not just some “issue”; it indicates cowardice and skewed morality. It’s not okay to say that you’ll vote for David Duke because you agree with his fiscal conservative policies while ignoring that fact that he is/was a card-carrying KKK member.

Image from twimg.com

I understand that eliminating all these GOP candidates totally wipes out the current field. Maybe the powers-that-be in the Republican Party should introduce more options while there’s still time. I believe the GOP has better options within its ranks. Imagine Herman Cain saying what Santorum said (replacing the word “black” with “white”); imagine him publishing a newsletter riddled with racial epithets against white people; imagine him belonging to the Nation of Islam; imagine him saying the nation’s first white president was nothing but a slave owner who loved impregnating his black female slaves. Any one of these issues would have promptly ended Cain’s career as a politician.

Let’s not even attempt to argue a non-winnable argument that racism or prejudice can’t or won’t factor into how one governs. In fact, such ignorance and fear will overwhelm how one governs. Wth?...

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