GOP REACHING OUT TO BLACK VOTERS

On July 14 the Chairman of the Republican Party, Ken Mehlman made a half-assed apology to the NAACP for the GOP's vicious racist policies. He referred to the Republicans as the "party of Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass." Mehlman neglected to mention that in more recent times the GOP has been the party of people like Doug Hanks of Charlotte, North Carolina. Today Republican City Council candidate Hanks, a longtime admirer of North Carolina's race-baiting Senator Jesse Helms, dropped out of the race after the weekly Rhinoceros Times pointed out his 4,000-plus postings on StormFront.org, a KKK-GOP-Nazi website that wouldn't have made Republicans like Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass feel welcome. Oh, but it's home-sweet-home for today's brand of North Carolina Republicans.

A few weeks ago the GOP candidate referred to African-American citizens as "rabid beasts." Like most Republicans who get caught at this type of thing, he "was doing research." (I remember a Republican District Attorney getting caught one night at Jones Beach with a young boy's-- a very young boy's-- privates in his hands. He was doing research he said.) Hanks said "I needed information for the book and some other writings I was doing. I did what I thought I needed to do to establish myself as a credible white nationalist." I'm sure Ken Mehlman believes him but does it sound credible to you? Maybe you say? Well, consider this-- and maybe this was part of the same research project for all I know: this past January, amid a debate over whether a Confederate battle flag would be allowed to fly over a public cemetery, Hanks scaled a flagpole and reattached the flag. Before Hanks made up the researching-a-book nonsense he was using another favorite Southern GOP bigot ploy for his obsessive bigotted posts: "heritage not hatred." That's what southern Republicans use these days to try to excuse their contemptible racism, the kind Ken Mehlman tried to convince the NAACP was all in the past.

Superficially "moderate" Republicans-- the kind who don't wear white sheets and pillowcases except under extreme circumstances-- like John Aneralla, the chairman of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party, and Mayor Pat McCrory-- pressured Hanks to withdraw. By the way, like many Republicans from the Hanks end of the GOP, his hatred for African-Americans extends to others as well and many of his lovely comments on StormFront.org were aimed at Jews and gays (Mehlman falling into both categories). He also tried boosting his City Council primary campaign, knowing full well that the only people who go to websites like that are the backbone of the North Carolina GOP-- and, of course, people doing research for books.