Howard Dean lies again, which is to be expected since he is, after all, a Democrat
It was to be expected: the Democrats are trying to portray the Republican Party as the horrible party of racism.
From our friend Scott Martin:
- DNC Chairman Dean Calls GOP the ‘White’ Party
It was supposedly a slip, but Dean has made the case before in even more blunt terms. Here’s the audio.
If you look at folks of color, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the [laughs] Republican party.
I suppose Dean hasn’t heard of Condi Rice and Colin Powell, the two highest-ranking blacks in American history. But what always strikes me as odd about comments like these, especially from a white guy who used to govern a state with seven black residents, is that this is somehow supposed to be an insult.
DRJ, writing on Patterico’s Pontifications, noted the story, and added a link to Dr Dean calling the GOP a “white Christian party.”
THis is great political demagoguery for our friends on the left, and it is having some effect at rewriting history. A gentleman named Steve Newton, noting a comment on the Delaware Liberal which claimed that,
in the mid- to late-1950s, the Dems decided segregation and racial divisiveness were anathema to American principles. At which time, all the segregationists found a snug, comfy home in the GOP,
Which is, of course, why George Wallace ran for President as a Republican in 1972
Perhaps Mr Newton, who styles himself a libertarian, not a liberal, was attempting to use sarcasm and knew the truth, but I’d bet that a lot of DL readers would not have known that Mr Wallace ran as a Democrat in 1972, had not someone corrected the assertion.
The simple fact is that it has been the Democratic presidential nominating campaign which has been marked very heavily by voting-by-race. In the South Carolina Primary the differences were there for everyone to see: the black candidate, Barack Obama, received 80% of the votes of black men and 78% of the votes of black women, hugely dominating the black vote. The white female candidate, Hillary Clinton, won a plurality of the votes of white women, with the white man, John Edwards, coming in second with 36%; Mr Obama won 22% of the votes of white women. And the white male candidate, the then fading but still in it Mr Edwards, won the plurality of votes from white men, 45%, while white men gave far fewer of their votes to the white woman (28%) or the black man (27%).
Mr Edwards dropped out of the race soon thereafter, leaving Mrs Clinton as the sole remaining white candidate in the race. And the more her campaign and she stressed race (witness Geraldine Ferraro and Ed Rendell, followed by Mrs Clinton’s own line that “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans” supported her), by golly, the more primaries and more votes she won! Since the beginning of March, Mrs Clinton won the greater number of primaries and and votes, despite the fact it was no longer mathematically possible for her to win enough delegates to claim the nomination. The only big win for Mr Obama after that point was heavily black North Carolina; Mrs Clinton won the “whiter” states of Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, though by narrower margins.
Howard Dean might want to paint the GOP as the “white” party, and with the 90% loyalty blacks show to Democratic candidates, it’s an easy claim to make on the surface. But if you do something radical like actually look at the votes, you’ll see that it is the Democratic Party which is awash with racially-based voting patterns and the Democratic Party which gives its votes largely based on the race and sex of the candidates.
Americaneocon:
This is a really unreal story! Nice posting!
16 August 2008, 10:40 pmDana Pico:
Thanks, Dr D! In 2000, George Bush received 91% of the votes from Republicans, and upped that to 93% in 2004; the Democratic nominee received 89% both cycles.
It’s highly unlikely that John McCain will be able to improve on 93%, but if Barack Obama slips from the Democratic 89%, can we assume that it was because white Democrats didn’t vote for him because he is black?
17 August 2008, 8:06 am