Free Republic

@SethAMandelYesterday, Alana noted the latest fallout from Cory Booker's critique of the Obama administration on "Meet the Press" and the subsequent, utterly ridiculous "hostage" video he recorded after the Obama campaign reminded him that independent thinking is strongly discouraged in the Democratic Party. Booker's communications director, Anne Torres, resigned, citing “different views on how communications should be run.”It wasn't clear whether Torres objected more to Booker's defense of capitalism or the cringeworthy apology video–which would have been embarrassing for any communications shop to have on its record–or whether this was merely the last straw in a simmering dispute (possibly about...

Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama is officially leaving the party for the GOP, he announced Tuesday. "Wearing a Democratic label no longer matches what I know about my country and its possibilities,” Davis wrote on his website after lamenting that "this is not Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party". … Davis has been rumored as a possible GOP congressional candidate in Northern Virginia, and in the statement he doesn't rule out the possibility, although his long statement indicates if he runs it could be for either the House or the statehouse and would be in 2014 or afterwards. The one-time...

Former Alabama Democratic Rep. Artur Davis has turned in his Democratic Party card as he prepares to register for the GOP in Virginia. The switch was rumored for some time following his departure from Democratic politics in 2010. Davis left political circles after his unsuccessful run for governor in Alabama. He lost in the 2010 primaries, and generating hostility from some fellow Democrats who disliked his effort to avoid identity politics. The winning Democrat was trounced by the Republican candidate in the general election. “If I were to run [for office], it would be as a Republican … [because] wearing...

Sooner or later, a black Republican woman was bound to run for Congress. It’s just that nobody expected her to hail from Utah. Mia Love won the GOP nomination for the 4th Congressional District race Saturday at the Utah Republican Convention, scoring a major upset after wowing the crowd with a roof-raising speech at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy. The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Mrs. Love took 70.4 percent of the delegate vote, well in excess of the 60 percent required to avoid a primary runoff under Utah’s unique rules. She defeated former state legislator Carl Wimmer, who...

If elected in November, Love would be the first black Republican woman in Congress and Utah's first black representative. She said she would join the Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C., should she win. "Yes, yes. I would join the Congressional Black Caucus and try to take that thing apart from the inside out," she said.

Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois September 15, 1858 MR. DOUGLAS' SPEECH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I appear before you today in pursuance of a previous notice, and have made arrangements with Mr. Lincoln to divide time, and discuss with him the leading political topics that now agitate the country. Prior to 1854 this country was divided into two great political parties known as Whig and Democratic. These parties differed from each other on certain questions which were then deemed to be important to the best interests of the Republic. Whig and Democrats differed about a bank, the...

CEDAR RAPIDS — Although it was difficult to turn on the television or pick up a newspaper in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential contest without reading a story about how a woman or a black man was going to fare in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, Herman Cain says that particular “novelty” has passed. “I think President Barack Obama does get some credit for being the first African American running for president,” Cain told The Iowa Independent Tuesday night at a Linn County GOP chili cook-off. “It’s not talked about as much this time because the novelty of happening to be...

E.W. Jackson's Campaign Kick-Off! Dear Friend, Americans are calling for a new era of leadership, and two weeks ago I announced my intention to answer that call by stepping forward to serve Virginia as its next United States Senator. The history of my family in Virginia dates back to around 1778, the period of the Revolutionary War. Only in American can an heir of former slaves become a candidate for the United States Senate. All of our ancestors suffered to give us this freedom we enjoy, and now that freedom is threatened by oppressive debt, confiscatory taxation and job killing...

San Francisco's irrepressible former mayor, Willie Brown, was walking along one of the city's streets when he happened to run into another former city official that he knew, James McCray. McCray's greeting to him was "You're 10." "What are you talking about?" Willie Brown asked. McCray replied: "I just walked from Civic Center to Third Street and you're only the 10th black person I've seen." That is hardly surprising. The black population of San Francisco is less than half of what it was in 1970, and it fell another 19 percent in the past decade. A few years ago,...

When Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States, even those who opposed his liberal policies secretly had a fleeting moment of patriotic pride. America had elected our first African-American president. Finally, our nation had overcome the injustices of the past and "the dawn of a new day" had arrived where most Americans were no longer judging or being judged based on skin color. Regrettably, the feeling of national dignity was short lived. As it turned out, Barack Obama's goal was to get "others to think [more] highly" of Barack Obama than the nation whose citizens he...

Herman Cain's presidential rumblings haven't garnered much national attention, but that isn't because he lacks popularity among grassroots conservatives or because he's shunned visits to early-voting states. The conservative talk-radio host is a bonafide Tea Party rock star who's a regular at their events and serves as a commentator on Fox News. By his count, Cain has visited Iowa six times in the past year and has supporters making calls to key activists in the state. He's also made three trips to New Hampshire, one to South Carolina, four to Texas and two to Florida. In an interview, the one-time...

The exodus of white Democrats to the GOP in southern state legislatures this year is the last chapter of a very old story about realignment, one that -- in this homogenous media age -- has finally come to the most local levels of politics. This, in Georgia, is something different -- and striking to insider because one of the switchers, Ashley Bell, is a former president of the College Democrats seen not that long ago as a Democratic rising star: Two African-American Democrats on Thursday announced that they were joining the Republican Party. Hall County Commissioner Ashley Bell and former...

Two African-American Democrats on Thursday announced that they were joining the Republican Party. Hall County Commissioner Ashley Bell and former state executive committee member Andre Walker said the Democratic Party had grown too liberal and they are finding a new home with the Republicans.

Black Republican: Black Caucus preaches victimization and dependency By Gautham Nagesh - 11/20/10 05:23 PM ET Congressman-elect Allen West (R-Fla.), who said he plans to become the only black Republican in the Congressional Black Caucus, accused the organization of failing the black community by promoting dependence on government welfare programs. "The Congressional Black Caucus cannot continue to be a monolithic voice that promotes these liberal social welfare policies and programs that are failing in the Black community, that are preaching victimization and dependency, that's not the way that we should go," West said on Fox News Friday. "And those are...

With South Carolina's victory of the first 'Deep South' black Republican to Congress since Reconstruction, one conservative thinks it's evident that the tea party is not racist. Ron Miller, a conservative author, columnist, veteran and tea party member, says Tim Scott's election to Congress is "an impressive victory." "I think it's a great testimony to Americans' ability to evaluate people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin..." ----snip. In winning the election, Scott beat out....the son of late Senator Strom Thurmond and the son of former South Carolina Governor Carroll Campbell. ----snip"...they've demonstrated their...

The Republican wave produced groundbreaking results for minority candidates, from Latina and Indian-American governors to a pair of black congressmen from the Deep South. In New Mexico, Susana Martinez was elected as the nation's first female Hispanic governor. Nikki Haley, whose parents were born in India, will be the first woman governor in South Carolina, and Brian Sandoval became Nevada's first Hispanic governor. Insurance company owner Tim Scott will be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction, after easily winning in his conservative district. Scott, a 45-year-old state representative, earned a primary victory over the son of...

There is one African-American in the current Senate: Illinois Sen. Roland Burris, who was appointed to fill out the rest of Barack Obama's term after he was elected president... All three African-American candidates are projected to lose their races: Florida's Kendrick Meek to Marco Rubio, Georgia's Michael Thurmond to Johnny Isakson and South Carolina's Alvin Greene to Jim DeMint. (All three are Democrats.)... African-Americans are better represented in the House, where there are currently 41 black members.

After the 2006 midterm elections, many in the chattering class declared the GOP had been reduced to a “regional party” – white, male, and Southern. Since President Obama’s election in 2008, the Leftist mainstream media has worked diligently to paint much of the opposition to his policies as the bigoted and deranged spasms of a marginalized, racist conservative base. The tea party movement represented “racism, straight up” according to political philosopher Janeane Garofalo. Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Eugene Robinson, and Bob Herbert practically took turns writing weekly columns slandering conservatives using flagrant race baiting, including an embarrassing election-day screed from...

Republican Allen West's win over incumbent U.S. Rep. Ron Klein by 7,000 votes in Broward County assured him of the win, Palm Beach County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Siegel said Tuesday night....frpa

Two black Republican victories tonight mark the first time African-Americans will represent the GOP in Congress in seven years. Retired Lt. Colonel Allen West's win in Florida's 22nd District and South Carolina State Rep. Tim Scott's victory in that state's 1st Congressional District is also the first time two black GOP members will serve in Congress since 1996. Scott defeated Democrat Ben Frasier in an open contest to replace retiring Republican Rep. Henry Brown to the first black GOP in Congress since former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts retired in 2003. West defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Klein shortly after Scott's...

The Obama presidency has not led to a post-racial America, says Toby Harnden, but black Republicans in Congress could help break down barriers . Campaigning a few miles from Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861, Tim Scott described last week how he was born into poverty and a broken home, much like Barack Obama. But the conclusions that Scott, 45, drew were very different from those of Obama. When he was 15, a man who ran a Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurant taught him "that there was a way to think my way out...

As CBN News has reported, a record number of African-American Republicans are running for Congress this year. One activist who's encouraging more black voters to give Republicans a chance is Ron Miller. Miller is an Air Force veteran and executive director of Regular Folks United, an organization working to advance America's founding principles. He is also the author of Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom's Porch. The book delves into Miller's journey into identifying himself as a conservative. In some ways, it's a history lesson as to why he says Democrats may not always have the best intentions for Black Americans....

Overall, the GOP has fielded more than 30 African-American candidates for federal office, including Ryan Frazier in Colorado's Seventh Congressional District and Vernon Parker in Arizona's Third Congressional District. And as the economy loses steam, and President Obama's poll numbers sag, the ultimate humiliation in this summer of Democratic discontent is to find Republicans trumpeting 2010 as "The Year of the Black Republicans." A trend with historic rootsThis trend defies modern identity politics. In the 2008 election, 95 percent of black voters chose Obama. Yet the attraction between blacks and the Republican Party is not so strange as it seems....

On this day in 1863, Frederick Douglass (R-MD) met with President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) for the first time. Senator Samuel Pomeroy (R-KS) escorted Douglass to the War Department building. On arrival, Douglass urged Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to allow equal pay for African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army. Though sympathetic, Stanton said that would require congressional approval, which he supported. Next, Douglass was introduced to the president at the White House. Lincoln stood and shook his hand "just as you have seen one gentleman receive another," Douglass later recounted. "I at once felt myself in the present of an...

Conservative Black Republican Congressional Candidate Thrown Out Of Cystic Fibrosis Fundraiser Because Big Donor Dems Object FR Exclusive You would think it couldn’t happen in America but it has. Retired Army Lt. Colonel Allen West is a conservative Black Republican. He was to be honored at an upcoming Cystic Fibrosis Fundraising Dinner in Florida, but the invitation was withdrawn because of pressure from liberal Dems who also support the Foundation. Allen is running, (and running well) for the Congressional seat now held by far-left Democrat Ron Klein. The district, Florida 22, covers the east coast of Florida from Fort Lauderdale...

President Reagan's remarks at a National Black Republican Council Dinner on September 15, 1982. Click here for his GREAT speech

Voters in South Carolina nominated a black Republican lawmaker for an open congressional seat Tuesday, rejecting a legendary political name and potentially changing the face of the national party. State Rep. Tim Scott defeated Paul Thurmond, an attorney who is son of the one-time segregationist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. Scott, who won the runoff with 69 percent of the vote, is now poised to become the nation's first black GOP congressman since 2003. Scott, 44, owns an insurance business and became the first black Republican in the South Carolina Legislature in more than a century when elected two years ago....

Republican Tim Scott earned a landslide victory against challenger Paul Thurmond in the Republican runoff in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. The Associated Press called the race for Scott with the candidate leading Thurmond 74 percent to 26 percent. There was no question that Scott was the candidate of the party's D.C. establishment in South Carolina's 1st congressional district. It's a label that has essentially been the kiss of death for other GOP primary candidates this election cycle. But in the open seat primary to replace retiring Rep. Henry Brown (R) the party appeared thrilled to coalesce behind Scott, the...

MSNBC HOST: Lt. Col., our time is limited, but my last question to you. The Tea Party has raised concerns that it may have, I guess, racism build in it. We have seen some racist signs at past events. People have said that is not apart of the Tea Party movement, but are African-American candidates aligning themselves with the Tea Party? LT. COL. ALLEN WEST (RET.): Well, I don't think they're so much aligning themselves with the Tea Party. The principles and values I espouse: limited government, lower taxes, individual responsibility, accountability, liberty and honoring the traditions of our Constitutional...

Most Black Republicans Since Reconstruction Run for CongressBy Max Fisher on May 05, 2010 1:28pm African-American voters and the modern GOP have a complicated relationship. There hasn't been a black Republican in Congress since 2003. After President Obama won 95% of the black vote in the 2008 election, the Republican National Committee, partly in a bid to gain some African-American support, appointed black Republican Michael Steele as RNC head. Steele's tenure has been rocky, but public support for Obama has also dropped, as public frustration with the economy rises. So it's in this climate of complex racial politics that a...

Listen to the surprise in Luke Russert's voice as he reports that many African-American Republican candidates for congress are seeking support from the Tea Party. After all, says Luke, the Tea Party is a group that "a lot of folks have claimed to be racist against African-Americans." Russert expressed his amazement on MSNBC this morning, discussing a New York Times article that reports that as many as 32 black Republicans are running for Congress. View video here.

Among the many reverberations of President Obama’s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials. The House has not had a black Republican since 2003, when J. C. Watts of Oklahoma left after eight years. But now black Republicans are running across the country — from a largely white swath of beach communities in Florida to the suburbs of Phoenix, where an African-American candidate has raised more money than all but two of his nine (white) Republican competitors in...

The Republican Party has not given African Americans a good reason to vote for the party, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said Tuesday night. "You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," Steele said at DePaul University, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Steele, the first African-American chairman for the RNC, said the GOP has lost its historical link to African Americans. "This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass," he said. "The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP,...

Steele: No reason for black GOP base By: Andy Barr April 21, 2010 05:43 PM EDT Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told a group of students that African-Americans “don’t have a reason” to vote for Republicans. Steele was asked Tuesday night during a speech to roughly 200 students at DePaul University why African-Americans should vote for GOP candidates. “You really don’t have a reason, to be honest,” Steele responded, as was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. “We haven’t done a very good job of giving you one.” Steele has made similar comments in the past, saying during an...

Don, Paul, Jacqueline, Pat, Mike, Henry, Acquanetta. Her name stands out, true, but Acquanetta Warren is even more of an oddity than her four-syllable handle lets on: She's a black Republican woman, and she's a serious candidate for the 63rd Assembly District. "I am black, and I am a woman, and I am a Republican," said Warren, the mayor pro tem of Fontana and deputy director of public works in Upland. "I'm going to win this." Political observers in Sacramento say Warren is a serious candidate. She's been endorsed by three Assembly members - including Paul Cook, R-Yucaipa - and...

The praise for conservative icon Ann Coulter and scorn for “Barack Hussein Obama’s” socialist agenda was plentiful at a Republican candidate forum in Washington, D.C. Thursday, and it certainly sounded like any standard GOP event. But it sure as heck didn’t look like one. That’s because the 2nd annual Frederick Douglass Foundation Leadership Summit, which kicked off on Thursday and runs through Saturday, is a gathering for black Republican congressional candidates. The schedule includes a reception at the GOP’s Capitol Hill Club and an audience with Michael Steele, who last year became the first black chairman of the Republican National...

This year's campaign for Congress looks to be the liveliest since 1994's "Contract with America" explosion. And, unless she has a last-minute change of heart and mind, Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, is announcing this month her candidacy to represent a poor, heavily Democratic, majority-black congressional district just east and south of Los Angeles. Parker, born in 1956, is a Republican who hasn't held political office before, but we joked last month that she had a ready reply if attacked on grounds of inexperience: You're wrong. I've stolen. I've lied. I know how to...

Robert Allen Mansfield, a sergeant in the National Guard with service in Iraq, has announced he is dropping out of the May 18 Republican primary election to run for governor as an independent. The state Republican committee voted overwhelmingly, last month, to endorse Attorney General Tom Corbett for the spot. Still in the primary race is state Rep. Sam Rohrer (R-128) Mansfield is an African-American from Philadelphia, born in 1971, whose heroine addicted mother put him up for adoption. He spent two years in foster care before being adopted by the Mansfield family.

Steny Hoyer has been in Congress since 1981 and has been Nancy Pelosi’s sidekick in the Democrat House leadership since 2002. Professional politicians like Hoyer lose touch with the people and serve a different cause: themselves. They take your money and give it to bankers. They expand government. They want to run the healthcare system when they can’t keep the bridges and roads safe. Charles Lollar can change that but he needs your help. As a father, businessman, and Major in the U.S. Marine Corps (Reserves), Charles knows what its like in the real world. Support Charles and stop Steny’s...

Allen West - candidate for US House FL 22. Expect some fireworks. I love listening to this guy speak. He is completely fearless when it comes to hammering Obama and the Dems. Please, tune in.

Princella Smith, 26, will announce on Saturday that she is running for Congress in Arkansas’s 1st District. Some would say she is too young. Others might point to other potential hurdles: She’s running in eastern Arkansas, a district that hasn’t elected a Republican since 1872 in a Southern state that has never elected a black person to a congressional or state-wide office. “I think I’m the person to do this,” Smith said. “I’m going to tell people to come on board with me, listen to these ideas, and that we can get people excited again about the Republican Party.”

Jones joins race in 8thBy: GARY WECKSELBLATT The Intelligencer February 14, 2010 03:34 AM Calling it "a historical moment," a black man from rural Arkansas raised as a sharecropper officially entered the 8th District congressional race for the Republican nomination Saturday. "This is Black History month," James Jones told a group of family and friends. "What better time to stand in front of you?" Describing himself as a "Tea Party guy," Jones, who fought in two wars with the Navy and also served in the Middle East, spoke out against government spending, deceitful politicians and the "killing" of the U.S....

Black Conservative Republican, Corrogan Vaughn has launched his candidacy for US Senate against Barbara Mikulski. He is a strong supporter of the tea party movement, and is receiving support from black Christian Democrats, a large demographic in Maryland. His website is found at Vaughn4america.com. Youth volunteers are bringing a lot of energy in the campaign and have set up a website at youth4vaughn.com. Candidate profile: http://www.examiner.com/x-9345-Baltimore-County-Republican-Examiner~y2010m1d14-Candidate-profile--Corrogan-Vaughn-for-US-Senate

GOP Candidate: ‘I Am Not Just Some Articulate, Clean, Well Spoken Negro’ By David Weigel 1/11/10 9:18 AM I’ve spotlighted retired Lt. Col. Allen West as one of the GOP’s most credible African-American candidates for Congress this year–he lost a 2008 bid in his Florida district by 10 points, but is getting full support from the National Republican Congressional Committee this time. West’s response to the Harry Reid flap is the angriest one I’ve seen, a lengthy bill of complaints against Democrats as the party of “slavery, secession, segregation, and now socialism,” which “birthed” the Ku Klux Klan, and which...

Today, Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats. Examples of how egregiously Democrats act to keep blacks in poverty are numerous. -snip- Democrats have been running our inner-cities for the past 30 to 40 years, and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. More than $7 trillion dollars have been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty with little, if any, impact on poverty. Diabolically, every election cycle, Democrats blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions in the inner-cities, then incite blacks to cast a protest...

Allen West, a retired Army colonel who is running for the second time against Democratic Rep. Ron Klein in Florida's 22nd congressional district, West, is one of a small but determined group of black Republicans running for seats in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives in 2010. When former President Jimmy Carter said racism was an underlying factor in attacks on President Obama, it's safe to say he had no intention of boosting Allen West's campaign for Congress in Florida's Broward County. But according to West, a retired Army colonel who is running for the second time against Democratic...

Frances Rice, founder of the National Black Republican Association found a video that once again exposes the fraud and hypocrisy of the liberal mainstream Manhattan Mob media. During the 2008 Democratic National convention Carter was a commentator. When asked about Obama he referred to him as this "black boy." Yet, there was no chorus of righteous indignation as there was when Ross Perot referred to an audience of African-Americans as "you people." Rice writes on her blog http://blackrepublican.blogspot.com/ : " Carter’s racial slur earned him not one word of condemnation. If a Republican politician had called Obama a “black boy”,...

Vitiligo is a skin disorder that gained notoriety for being the cause of Micheal Jackson’s loss of skin color. I think I have discovered a condition that a lot of Black Republicans/Conservatives seem to have, Mental Vitiligo(M.V.).

I know it's over nine months after the election, but I'm still curious: Does anyone have any statistics showing what percentage of black REPUBLICANS voted for Obama? In the absence of statistics, does anyone want to take a guess?

(Received From Email) IS OBAMA A RACIST? By Frances Rice How do we decide who is a racist? The dictionary tells us a racist harbors feelings of antagonism and superiority based on biological differences, such as skin color. So, what demonstrates that President Barack Obama harbors such feelings toward white people? Glimpses of Obama’s mindset can be obtained from reading his two books, “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams from My Father” where Obama describes his animosity toward white people. In “Dreams from My Father” Obama wrote: "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity...