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| Bill McCulloch Source: Politico.com |
The late Lee Atwater, former Republican National Committee chair,
apologized 30 years ago for the party’s past use of the race card.
Whether an apology was warranted -- or framed properly -- is
for another debate. Atwater offered a mea culpa -- and still blacks vote 95
percent for Democrats.
Can we talk about jobs, education and job-destroying
regulations, as well as our border insecurity that hurts domestic employment,
especially for unskilled workers?
No, we can’t -- because these issues take a back seat in
favor of the Democrat Party’s fight for “social justice” and for the battle
against “income inequality.”
The GOP has been so successful maligned, discredited and
condemned that many GOP haters, no matter their race, won’t be satisfied until
they exhume Atwater’s body, perform an autopsy and try to isolate his racist
DNA.
Has Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., or Virginia Gov. Terry
McAuliffe, current and past DNC chairs, respectively, ever said, “We’re sorry that
Democrats founded the KKK, once known as the ‘terror wing of the Democratic Party’”?
No.
Have they apologized for their party's post-Civil War
opposition -- lasting nearly 100 years -- to civil rights legislation,
including their near-unanimous opposition to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
to the Constitution?
No.
The NAACP posthumously gave Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., an
award for his leadership role in securing the passage of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964. The nation’s then-largest black-owned newspaper, the Chicago Defender,
saluted Dirksen’s “generalship” in securing the necessary votes. He received
letters of thanks from Roy Wilkins, the longtime leader of the NAACP, and from
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A forgotten Republican civil rights champion is Rep. Bill
McCulloch, R-Ohio, then-chair of the House Judiciary Committee. When Jackie
Kennedy, in 1971, learned of McCullough’s retirement, she wrote a letter
praising this lawmaker whose district, by the way, had less than 3 percent
black voters.
Jackie wrote: “I know that you, more than anyone, were
responsible for the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. You made a personal
commitment to President Kennedy in October 1963, against all the interests of
your district. When he was gone, your personal integrity and character were
such that you held to that commitment despite enormous pressure and political
temptations not to do so. There were so many opportunities to sabotage the bill,
without appearing to do so, but you never took them. On the contrary, you
brought everyone else along with you. …
“And as for my dear Jack, it is a precious thought to me
that in the last month of his life, when he had so many problems that seemed
insoluble, he had the shining gift of your nobility, to give him the hope and
faith he needed to carry on.”
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