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March 17, 2006
Democrats lost in poverty, irony
It seems that some Democrat Party leaders in the great state of Maryland, still foaming at the mouth to bring shame upon the candidacy of a black Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, are aiming more outrageous charges at Michael Steele. This time, they are trying to wrap Hurricane Katrina around Steele's neck, by linking him to the Bush administration's hurricane response in an attempt to weaken his appeal to black voters. By now, you should know Michael Steele, the very accomplished lieutenant governor of the Old Line State. In that position, he has worked to help small and minority-owned business, and has led the way to reform Maryland's public education system. Now, Steele dares to appeal to the Maryland electorate as a candidate for the Senate, and has the nerve to do so as a Republican American of African descent. The absurdity of trying to link the Katrina response to Steele defies any sense of reason. I think anyone who can fog a mirror has already acknowledged that all levels of government were lacking in their response. Steele has done so publicly, and on more than one occasion. Certainly, if Democrats want to go after Steele for the perceived or real missteps on the part of the Republican administration, wouldn't it be fair to wrap Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and their feeble disaster management around Maryland's Democrat nominee? Come on, people, let's get serious. Irony abounds in this scenario. It is ironic indeed that these same people, whose policies have failed to get people like those displaced in New Orleans out of the cycle of poverty pre-Katrina, are now the very ones squawking when others don't rescue them from poverty post-Katrina. As I have said often, these poor people shouldn't have been in that level of poverty, given the amount of dollars our government has spent since the Johnson administration in anti-poverty programs. Friends, we need new models to fight poverty. Those who want to keep using the old, tired models of the past will assure those in the present and future a dire existence - especially for the poor. The Steele detractors were many of the same people who raised Cain about the Dubai Ports World agreement. There is irony in the fact that when New York's Democrat senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton raised questions about the much-maligned and now late but unlamented deal with an Arab company to manage our ports, it's all about security. You can have your opinion about the port deal, and I surely had my questions about it. But I couldn't help but believe that Democrats would have accused Michael Steele or any other Republican of being anti-Arab if they had fired first. One man most qualified to have an opinion on this matter sees the anti-Arab bias all over this scenario. As an American of Lebanese descent, California Congressman Darrell Issa stands uniquely qualified to observe that this could "reverberate in the Arab world ... Dubai was found guilty for (simply) being an Arab or Muslim nation..." Again, we didn't know all of the facts of the deal, but these people are so hungry to get to the right of Bush on security issues that they jumped into a pro-security chest-thumping frenzy before all of the facts had a chance to see the light of day. But let's return to the subject of Mr. Steele. Democrats have a black man of their own in the Democratic primary for the same seat, Kweisi Mfume, a man for whom I have the highest respect and esteem. We often disagreed on matters of policy when we served together in Congress, but I always found him to be a man of the utmost professionalism and consideration. Mfume is a good man. If Democrats don't nominate him, they have some "splaining" of their own to do. Democrats fear Michael Steele because he can appeal to more constituencies than just White Anglo Saxon Protestant Republicans. They have vowed to do or say anything they can to keep this man from being the fourth black U.S. senator in the last 100 years. Trying to tie Steele to the Katrina disaster is a reach beyond reality. As the great American philosopher Gomer Pyle often said: "Shame, shame, shame." Watts writes twice monthly for the Pahrump Valley Times. He is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. His e-mail address is JCWatts01@jcwatts.com |
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