1/02/00 4:30 p.m.
Ashcroft and the Race Card
Fearmongering from the Left.

By Jonah Goldberg, NRO Editor-----------------------JonahEMail@aol.com

sn’t it odd that amidst an era of self-evidently unprecedented peace, prosperity, and racial advancement the racial rhetoric in this country has become totally unhinged from reality? During the Florida folderol, for example, Jesse Jackson said things that should have had him cashiered from the ranks of respectable public service. He accused Bush of using “Nazi tactics,” he equated the Supreme Court’s anti-recount with the Dred Scott case, which upheld slavery. He said Florida governor Jeb Bush had “targeted” “Holocaust survivors” and the “grandchildren of slaves” for “disenfranchisement.” He swore he’d lead the fight to “delegitimize Bush, discredit him, do whatever it takes, but never accept him.”

Of course, the volume button on Jackson’s megaphone has been stuck on “Maximum” for years. The problem is he’s not alone. The Democratic party, with the full-throated cooperation of various civil-rights “leaders” and the tacit approval of the media has spent the last few years playing on the fears of African-Americans. The reason for this is obvious. The Democratic party needs unprecedented levels of black turnout in order to win or even stay competitive (Bush won Florida’s white vote by around 55 percent to 41 percent). Meanwhile civil-rights groups — too liberal to go elsewhere — see that the Democratic party can’t afford to say no to them.

This dysfunctional relationship has been manifesting itself for years. In the last few elections the Democrats have gone to great lengths to turn every election, every public-policy issue into an acute racial grievance. Consider, for example, a 1998 Democratic radio ad which declared “When you don't vote, you let another church explode. . . . you allow another cross to burn. . . . you let another assault wound a brother or sister . . . Vote smart. Vote Democratic for Congress and the U.S. Senate.” In 2000, the Democratic party farmed out such demagoguery to the NAACP, which spent millions of dollars on (Democratic) voter turnout efforts. One of their most infamous was an ad suggesting George W. Bush doesn’t object to racially motivated murder. Al Gore was perfectly happy for the assistance, especially considering his own long track record of demagoguery on race. Aware that he couldn’t win without an angry and resentful black electorate, Gore long ago suggested all opponents of racial preferences could find common cause with racially motivated murders and thugs.

Indeed, for a generation, Republicans have been accused of “playing the race card.” George Bush allegedly exploited white anxiety with Willie Horton ads (though Bush actually never ran any ads showing Horton). Richard Nixon talked about the “silent majority” and adopted a “Southern strategy” which fed on the white backlash to desegregation. Ronald Reagan talked about “welfare queens.”

While I would quibble with many of the accusations leveled against Republicans, the fact is that burden of proof lay with the GOP to defend themselves against the charge of racial gamesmanship. The burden of proof has shifted. Where once the concern was that conservatives unfairly used race as a subtle wedge issue, it is now the Democrats under Bill Clinton who use the charge of racism as an outright cudgel.

Consider the looming confirmation battle of Missouri senator John Ashcroft to be George W. Bush’s attorney general. Within days of his nomination, the usual liberal crowd nearly tore their legs out of their sockets with their knee-jerk reactions. Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said it is “outrageous” that Bush would nominate someone who “received a grade of 'F' on each of the last three NAACP report cards because of his anti-progressive voting record.” Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way said Ashcroft is an “astonishingly bad nomination.”

Virtually all of this is based on the fact that Ashcroft led the effort to block the appointment of Missouri supreme court justice Ronnie White to a federal district court seat. White, who is black, was the first judicial nominee since Robert Bork in 1987 to be rejected by a senate floor vote.

Under Senate rules, senators are given wide latitude to block the nominations of judges from their home state. Ashcroft, who was preparing for a brutal election against the late Missouri governor Mel Carnahan, chose to block White’s nomination. He argued that White was too liberal, especially on the death penalty. White was more likely to vote to overturn death sentences than any of his fellow sitting justices. He notoriously — and solely — opposed the death penalty for James R. Johnson. In 1991, Johnson killed a sheriff, two deputies, and an officer’s wife, who died while her family watched in the living room.

The immediate response from the Democrats was that Ashcroft’s only motivation was racism. Sen. Patrick Leahy fretted, “I hope that the United States Senate has now not reverted to a time in its history when there was a color test on nominations.” But it was President Clinton really stirred the pot. By rejecting the “first African-American judge to serve on the Missouri state supreme court,” Clinton said, “the Republican-controlled Senate is adding credence to the perception that they treat minority . . . nominees unfairly and unequally.” Members of the Black Congressional Caucus and their allies in the civil-rights community were less circumspect, flatly arguing that Ashcroft was a racist. That argument has been revived now that Bush has nominated Ashcroft to be attorney general.

Ashcroft’s decision to block White surely had to do with state politics in what promised — and turned out to be — a very tough race. But why should noncompliance with a Democratic agenda be equated with racism? Wouldn’t the fact that White was the first judge of any color to be rejected since Robert Bork in 1987 suggest that most minorities don’t get rejected by a supposedly racist Senate? Indeed, Sen. Ashcroft voted for 90 percent of the dozens of black judicial nominees to be nominated on his watch. As Missouri governor, Ashcroft signed the law making Martin Luther King Day a holiday. Also, he appointed the first African-American for the state court of appeals in Kansas City and selected numerous other blacks for judgeships.

Of course, none of this really matters. For the last few years, the Democratic party has needed to squeeze as many votes as it can out of the African-American community. If that required calling opponents racists and creating threats that don’t exist, so be it. Who cares if reputations, civility, and the credibility of once revered civil-rights groups are destroyed in the process.