Pandagon has a pithy pronouncement on the absurdity of the Alan Keyes campaign for Senate in Illinois:
It really says something about the racial consciousness of the two parties when the Democrats are running a clearly post-racial candidate who happens to be black and the Republicans, giving in to the worst of token politics, decide their best hope is to grab a black guy from across the country. Obama, thankfully, is about more than hue; Keyes' entrance into the race is about nothing but.
(I suppose it’s a mild defense of the Illinois GOP to observe they had no good options, and felt they had to get somebody with name recognition to make up for the campaign’s late start. But still, Alan Keyes?)
In “Blackwashing”, Joshua Holland reports about a black conservative group called Project 21 that was supposed to be profiled on C-SPAN recently.
But then a funny thing happened: the African-American spokesperson for Project 21 caught a flat on the way to the studio, and the group's director had to fill in. And he was white.
In other words, a single instance of car trouble seems to have wiped out the entire black presence in this “major” “black” organization. Holland goes on to discuss Ward "Segregation Need Not Be Racist" Connerly, Alan Keyes, and other black GOP sock puppets.
Along the same lines, Slate's Tim Noah offers “The GOP Minstrel Show: A white tycoon in blackface race-baits Teresa Heinz Kerry.” Admittedly, I have a teeny-tiny problem with THK calling herself African-American. But the disingenuousness of this corporate welfare queen Patrick Rooney (he needs a nickname, P-Dog or something) is stunning.
Despite the fact that all five African-American Republicans are certain to have front-row seats in New York in two weeks, don’t believe for a minute that the GOP is giving more than token attention to courting the black vote. The goal of making mischief for the Democrats is to depress the black vote. Watch out for much dirtier tactics aimed at black voters closer to Election Day.
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