I am an African American. For a number of reasons, I will not be voting for Barack Obama this year. I will undoubtedly be part of a small percentage of black voters who will not be supporting Obama. And because of this, many people, both black and white, have accused most black voters of "voting black."

I've spent a lot of time defending white voters who aren't supporting Obama against the charge that for most of them, race is the factor that motivates them to oppose Obama. And now I'm going to spend some time defending black voters against the charge of reverse-racism. I think human beings in general deserve more credit and that we need to examine other factors before insulting large groups of people. I think we need to look beyond the easy and obvious answers that require no analytical thinking - that blacks are supporting Obama because he's a black candidate and many whites are opposing him because he's a black candidate.

According to the estimates of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, every Democratic Presidential Candidate since Lyndon Johnson has achieved at least 85% of the African American vote. In fact, every succeeding elected Republican Administration has averaged a lower level of support from black voters as the one before it. President George W. Bush (9.5%) averaged worse over his two elections than his father, President George H.W. Bush (10%) did, who did worse than Reagan (10.5%) did, who did worse than Nixon (14%) did. If Obama were to somehow attain more than 90% of the black vote this year, it would be consistent with the voting patterns of the past 44 years.

The share of the black vote earned by every Democratic Presidential Nominee since 1960. Prior to 1964, the Republicans were at least somewhat competitive with the black vote (1956, they earned nearly 40% of it). But since 1964, every Democratic Presidential Nominee has earned at least 85% of the black vote. And all of them except for Barack Obama have been white.

Former Presidential Candidate and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee warned his party to be careful in how they campaigned against Barack Obama last June. He warned his fellow Republicans that any attempt to undermine Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama by "demonizing" him would backfire. Huckabee's words:

"The Republicans will make a fundamental, if not fatal mistake, if they seek to win the election by demonizing Barrack Obama ...  Don't underestimate the extraordinary, substantive moment that Barack Obama's nomination represents in our country"

Huckabee caught a whole lot of flack by some Republican pundits and voters for making this statement. These people thought for some reason that they knew more about winning elections than the conservative guy who figured out how to win four statewide elections in Clinton's home state and to win half the black vote along the way. A lot of others simply ignored his good advice. One day, they are likely to realize how good this advice was and how bad an idea it was to ignore it.

It's not a new thing in a Presidential Campaign for a candidate's character to be attacked - both in honest and in dishonest ways. Former major party candidates Williams Jennings Bryan and Barry Goldwater were essentially accused by their competitors of being mentally unstable. When the late former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson ran for office in the 1950's, supporters of his opponent floated rumors that he was a homosexual. President George W. Bush, whose grandfather was briefly the chairman of a branch of the United Negro College Fund, was painted as someone who supported hate crimes. If you want the top job and are close to getting it, a lot of people will say a lot of bad things about you no matter who you are.

But a lot of people get really turned off when a campaign begins to spend nearly as much time attacking its opponent's character as they do promoting their own candidate's character or issues. Especially when they plainly admit that's what they're doing. And last week, for some reason, the McCain campaign told the press that they believed that their best shot of winning now is to essentially ignore the advice that Huckabee gave his party in the summer. Some campaign staff told reporters that they felt the only way they could win is to spend a lot of time talking about Obama's character. The campaign has reportedly shifted nearly 100% of its national ad spending into attack ads. In the past week, the campaign has called Obama "reckless," accused him of "palling around with terrorists," and seem to have been responding to a degree to requests from some supporters that they should "take the gloves off." They've begun to do the exact opposite of what Huckabee suggested, which is to confront Obama on the issues.

And with the historical significance of this election, it's apparently possible for this approach to backfire in multiple and unexpected ways. The McCain campaign had to deal with negative press earlier this week when somebody in the crowd of a campaign rally in Florida responded to a statement made about Obama and Ayers by shouting out "Kill him!" - although it was not clear whether the person was referring to Obama or Ayers. Also, from looking over the Real Clear Politics poll averages along with campaign news, it appears that being overly aggressive in trying to attack Obama's character has not helped the McCain campaign at all. In other words, what Huckabee said seems true.

Some in the press have begun to make accusations that the campaign's usage of the Ayers issue is racist - a charge that I do not agree with at all (if John Kerry had known Ayers, it certainly would have been brought up as an issue against him in 2004). However, the current environment - the fact that the Republican Party as a whole has generally not tried to court black voters for most of the last four decades, combined with the fact that the party has a lot less ethnic diversity than the Democrats do, combined with the fact that McCain is running against the first African American major party nominee - means that it will be easier for passionate attacks against Obama to be interpreted as racism than it would if the party were more diverse. In fact, try this at home: from now until the election, watch the televised campaign events and count the number of black people you see standing in the background behind the candidates. If in the next month you manage to count ten, write me - you may be eligible for a prize. The Republican Party's unwillingness to commit to reach out to voters of all races has made full-time character attacks even more counterproductive than they are normally. Which, again, is what Huckabee implied.

I disagree with a number of Obama's positions and as I've said before, will not vote for him because of them. But I don't dislike him. And you don't have to almost loathe someone in order to not vote for them. I pray for both Obama and McCain. And like many Independents, I am incredibly turned off by negative campaigning. The red meat that fires up both the Democratic and Republican base is something that the unaffiliated voters who will decide this election will be likely to spit out. 

If McCain wants his standing in the polls to improve, he needs to immediately stop listening to the conservative radio pundits (the same guys who viciously attacked McCain earlier this year; yeah - those radio pundits) and some of his other former tormentors-turned-allies. He frankly needs to quit listening to a lot of the people who seem to have been giving him advice. He needs to no longer devote so much of his time and resources trying to get people to personally dislike Barack Obama and invest them in trying to get people to like his own ideas more than those of Obama's. He really needs to listen to the good advice of somebody who actually knows how to win an election and who knows how to be conservative without being mad about it.

A letter to Senator Barack Obama

Dear Senator Obama,

I am impressed with how you have been able to rise from being relatively unknown four years ago to become a major party Presidential nominee. As an African American, I am proud of your accomplishment and pleased to see the day come in which a black man can contend for the Presidency and in which most Americans are willing to vote for someone who does not look like them. I am praying for you just as I also am praying for Senator McCain and for our leaders in general. I strongly disagree with a number of your policies but I do like you personally. And because I like you, I want to tell you a few things that you really need to hear.

Let me start by explaining why I will not vote for you. 

While I disagree with you on a number of issues, there is one issue that I disagree with you above all others. Senator, in every year since the late 1970's, at least one million unborn babies a year have been aborted in the United States. The overwhelming majority - more than 90% - were aborted for reasons other than rape, incest, or issues involving the life or health of either mother or baby. It has long been acceptable in this country to terminate the developing lives of unborn babies at almost any stage of development for any reason. And you have not only steadfastly supported abortion in general but also voted against banning partial birth abortion - a procedure that occurs at a point in time after the unborn baby can in most cases live outside the womb, can smile and can recognize her mother's voice. In fact, you have defended the practice of abortion under essentially all scenarios. Your positions seem to reflect your answer to the question that you were asked at the Saddleback forum in August about when life began. You stated that to answer that question with specificity is above your "pay grade."

You are already a very educated man, but perhaps you've never known the following facts. Senator, the human heart begins beating 21 days after conception - only a week after most women can discover that they're pregnant. By six weeks after conception, some brain activity is detectible and the lungs have started to develop. By the eighth week, every major organ that an adult will ever have has begun forming and is in place in a tiny little body that with every passing week begins to more closely resemble how he/she will look at birth - an event that will take place in less than seven months. All of these prenatal developmental activities occur on a fixed time schedule at some number of days after conception. After conception, if a baby is not aborted or miscarried, these things will generally happen like clockwork. Without conception, none of them will happen at all.

Senator, you have given your campaign a clever tagline - "change" - something so simplistically clever than several of your opponents have tried to copy it. But did you know that God is the one who first suggested the word "change?"

I'm sure you have probably heard the word "repent" a lot before in church. But do you know what the origin of the word means? It means literally "to change your mind." And although you've talked a lot about how this country needs change, I feel obliged to tell you that you yourself also need change. You need to change your mind about this issue.

In fact, I believe that your steadfast and constant support of abortion is a contradiction of everything that you claim to be and everything that you claim to represent. I'll explain why.

You are obviously an intelligent man and have also pledged to both be respectful to people who see things differently than you as well as to incorporate dissenting points of view in your decision making. You have frequently criticized President Bush, claiming that he failed to consider viewpoints that contradicted his own when making decisions. But when it comes to the issue of abortion, I need to ask whether or not you've ever considered alternative viewpoints? Have you ever studied the human development process or the statistics on abortion? Ever talked to a former abortionist or any of the masses of women who are horrified that they once believed the things they were taught about it? Senator, do you investigate and make your decisions based on a wide range of evidence or do you simply believe your "gut" or what those closest to you tell you? You present yourself as a cerebral and considerate man. But have you thought and considered the evidence about the many tiny beating human hearts whose fate will be determined largely by whoever is next elevated to the Presidential pay grade?

You are an African American man and you have a wide level of support from the black community. But do you have any idea how heavily abortion has devastated the black community? Are you aware that the abortion statistics among African Americans are so high that one out of three black pregnancies ends in abortion? That one unborn black baby is aborted for every two black babies that are allowed to be born? That more black babies were aborted in 2004 than the total number of already-born black people who died for all causes of death put together that year? But you support the policy of allowing abortion for all reasons and at all times and have been endorsed by Planned Parenthood, an organization which is believed by many to place a higher concentration of abortion clinics in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. If you are elected President, should I feel better that the Chief Executive who supports the policy that is wiping out a significant portion of our race is also black? Actually, that thought makes me feel even worse.

You are an Attorney and were a Constitutional Law Professor. But you continue to express support for what both conservative and liberal legal minds regard as one of the worst opinions ever rendered by the High Court. Bob Woodward reported two decades ago after reviewing notes from the Justices involved in the case that even those same justices called key parts of that ruling "arbitrary" and "legislative." Some of them even mocked the presentation of the ruling, calling the written opinion itself "an abortion." The other abortion case decided the same day as Roe, Doe v. Bolten, involves a plaintiff who claimed that her name was forged on the Supreme Court position and that she never supported legalized abortion in the first place. The two women who were the plaintiffs in both of these landmark Supreme Court cases have both lobbied, unsuccessfully, to have the High Court overturn the cases that bear their pseudonyms. But you have staunchly supported Roe in spite of the legal flaws that scholars on both sides of the debate see as blatant.

You identify yourself as a Christian and have referenced Scripture in making some of your public speeches. But I wonder if in your many years in church you've ever flipped a few books back and read Jeremiah 1:5, which reads "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." Or gone back a bit more and seen in Psalm 139 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb" and "your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Since you are the one who has highlighted your Christian faith and referenced Scripture in explaining your take on some issues, I have to ask what do you think about those passages? Do you feel that it's okay to pay close attention only to the parts that talk about alleviating poverty and suffering and to ignore the parts that strongly suggest that life begins before birth?

Let me appeal to you in a more personal manner. Senator, have you ever considered your own life story when thinking about the issue of abortion? How your beautiful late mother found out she was pregnant with you around the time of her eighteenth birthday and had to deal with two sets of unaccepting parents who might have preferred that you - and all the inconveniences and complications your birth brought - could be made to just "go away?" Have you ever thought that if the Roe ruling had been handed down a bit earlier and if abortion were as easily available and encouraged as it is now that you might not be here? Have you ever thought of how many other baby Baracks - unborn babies whose mothers faced situations no more trying than your mother faced with you - never were allowed to be born?

Think about how many people have felt inspired by your story. How many other children in your exact situation could have touched people if they had not been killed en utero because their mothers thought that they had a right to make "a choice" to do so. How many would-be community organizers never got a chance to be be born so that they could work with hurting people? How many would-be lawyers never got a chance to be born so that they could one day pass the bar exam and one day add their unique perspective to the political scene? And think of the ripple effect of abortion. Because if your mother had "chosen" to abort you, your beautiful little children would have never been born either. Have you ever thought how many similarly adorable children who are full of hope and promise never came to be because their parents were never given an opportunity to be born - because their would-be grandparents made a "choice" to terminate their already-beating hearts prior to birth?

This, Senator, is why you need to change. Because, in this one area especially, the things that you say you care about don't line up with the things you appear to believe or the things that you do. And so, sir, I urge you to utilize your campaign slogan and apply it to yourself and your policy. To take a long look at yourself, the things you believe, the things you've said and the way you've voted. And then truly, from the heart, change.

I am not suggesting that you change the way politicians "change" - in blatantly insincere attempts to modify outward behavior without altering inward beliefs. I'm urging you to make a real change. Fundamental change. A change in what you believe in.

And if you do one day really change and establish a track record of thinking differently over a period of time, you might be pleasantly surprised at the warmer reaction you get even from many white rural voters who have resisted you. There are a lot of people in this country who currently oppose you but who at first really wanted to like you. But they, like I, cannot support someone who supports a policy that allows for the lives of the most vulnerable among us to be taken away. We all are praying, politics aside, that one day you will change.

Suggested cover for Simpson's next book	October 3, 1995 - Simpson gets the reprieve of a lifetime when he escapes the penalty of the crime we now all know he committed - double murder.	October 3, 2008 - After living thirteen years as a free man, Simpson is finally convicted of robbing two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in Las Vegas	What types of things go on inside of that guy's head???

Let's all remember what we were doing on October 3rd, 1995, when Orenthal James Simpson was found not guilty of all charges for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Suppose that after hearing that verdict and seeing a man whom nearly everyone eventually would come to believe was guilty escape justice and being given an extraordinary chance at a new life, someone whispered some predictions in your ear. They told you that one day he'd try to write a book laying out the details of his own crime ("If I did it ..."). And that exactly thirteen years later, he'd find himself guilty and facing life imprisonment for a separate crime? I wouldn't believe it.

The original case against OJ failed for a number of reasons, including having the best team of attorneys a rich guy could buy, being famous, and having a key piece of evidence (the gloves) flop in a dramatic fashion. He also benefited from having the lead detective in the case who testified for the state perjure himself in the course of the trial - something that I'm sure every defense attorney would pray for if they could even imagine it possibly happening. He was extremely lucky to have escaped justice. His victims never had the opportunity to experience the past thirteen years living in freedom as he has.

But what do you call a person who gets the chance of a lifetime to have a new start - something not many people get - and to put yourself in a position in which you go back to prison for the rest of your life for a different case? I'll let you all pick the most appropriate word for that.

So, since OJ likes to write, I'm going to suggest a title for the next book he writes, undoubtedly from his prison cell: If I were a Psychopath

I will never ever vote for anyone who supports legal abortion - especially not those who supports it for any reason. This means that I will never vote for Barack Obama, who has the worst abortion record I have ever seen in a politician. Some would call me a single issue voter. I don't believe that I am at all, but I do have prerequisites that a candidate must meet. We all do (for example, would you vote for a candidate who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan? I wouldn't. That doesn't mean that that's the only issue I care about either). If a candidate does not have the good judgment to protect all life - especially the most vulnerable among us, they will never get my vote no matter what.

Here is a fact you may not have heard yet from the full-time media pundits. The Election of 2008 will be the first in U.S. History in which neither the first-place or second-place candidate has ever held any executive position at any level of government.

This will be the first time ever in our nation's history in which neither of the top two candidates was either a sitting or former President or Vice President, a state Governor, a Mayor, a General or Admiral in the U.S. Military, a U.S. Cabinet official or a state Cabinet official. The candidates have varying degrees of experience and accomplishments - with McCain having the clear advantage in total experience as an elected official. But the simple, brutal truth is that neither major party candidate has any experience whatsoever running any level of government as an Executive. This has never happened before.

In fact, in only 27% of the 55 elections we've had so far has even one of the two leading candidates never held an executive position in Government.

As a matter of fact, Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin is the only member of either ticket that has even one day's experience as an executive at any level of government.

Only twice before in U.S. History has a U.S. Senator come directly from the Senate to the White House - Warren Harding in 1920 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. But even in these two situations, Harding had been a Lieutenant Governor in Ohio. And Kennedy had been a U.S. Congressman for six years and a U.S. Senator for eight years.

I respect the life stories and accomplishments of our Presidential candidates. Senator McCain has serves his country in the armed forces with distinction and honor and has been a member of the Senate for a long period of time. Obama is in his first term as a U.S. Senator and served as a state Representative for eight years. But any way you spin it, whoever you are and no matter which side you are on, you have to be stunned by the fact that at this moment in America's history, the next President of the United States will be somebody who has never been the top guy in any organization in Government before. Or a business for that matter. Ever.

I was going to try to find a creative way to end this article, but I find I have nothing left to say.

Part Two: Freedom Summer

If you've ever wondered why it is that most blacks vote for Democrats even though the Democratic Party was the party of slavery and the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, the answer to this question lies in the three Presidential Elections of the 1960's. African American voters overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, for the first six decades after the end of the Civil War. This started to change during the long Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, who managed to be popular with both blacks and southern whites. But, until the 1960's, the Republican Party earned a competitive share of the black vote. In fact, if the GOP was able to get even the 32% that Nixon got in 1960, the Democratic Party would probably have no chance at all of winning the Presidency. But in the elections of 1960, 1964 and 1968, something changed that caused generations of voters of all races to view the party in a very unflattering light. This problem needs to be fixed. But to fix it, you need to first understand it.

1960

The U.S. Presidential Election of 1960 was one of the closest ever held. That election, like the 1960's in general, marked the beginning of a turning point in American history. And in the aftermath of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Little Rock Nine, and the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the issue of civil rights was gradually coming to the forefront of the nation's attention. One of the candidates for President had amassed a significant amount of support from African American voters, including some of the most famous black celebrities. That candidate happened to be the Republican, Vice President Richard Nixon.

Baseball legend Jackie Robinson had originally been a supporter of the failed Presidential campaign of Democratic Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey. But after Kennedy won the West Virginia primary and Humphrey dropped his bid, Robinson decided that Nixon had a better civil rights record than Kennedy. And he publicly endorsed him and then campaigned full time for Nixon as an unpaid volunteer. He even suffered for Nixon - he was forced out of his position as a columnist for a liberal newspaper that didn't appreciate him supporting the Vice President. He felt that the Nixon the Republican was more sincerely committed to civil rights than Kennedy the Democrat.

Nixon had another prominent black supporter in the Reverend Martin Luther King Senior, otherwise known as "Daddy King," the father of the famous civil rights leader. King's father was himself widely known and had been the Pastor the Ebenezer Baptist Church for four decades. Daddy King had been a lifelong Republican and had publicly endorsed Vice President Nixon in the 1960 election.

And then on October 19th, less than three weeks before the election, Martin Luther King Junior was urged to participate in a nonviolent sit-in that was led by a student group at Rich's Department Store in Atlanta. Their goal was to integrate the city's lunch counters. King and the students were arrested. Eventually, the charges were dropped against the participants and they were all free to go - except for King. It was determined that King had violated his probation - he had been "convicted" in May for a traffic "violation"; he had been caught driving in Georgia with an Alabama driver's license. His attorney entered a guilty plea on his behalf without his full knowledge and King was considered to be on probation at the time of the sit-in arrest. King was sentenced to six months of hard labor in a chain gang at a maximum security prison.

After sentencing, King was taken out of his jail cell in the middle of the night by guards, had chains fastened on to him down to his legs, loaded into a car and taken on a long ride. King thought that he was going to be killed. His attorney was informed the next morning that King had been transferred to the Reidsville State Prison -  an exceptionally dangerous place that left his family in fear for his life. His wife Coretta was in the late stages of pregnancy with their third child at the time.

After this happened, Senator Kennedy reached out to Coretta King and expressed sympathy for the situation and offered his assistance. His brother Bobby Kennedy called the Governor of Georgia and worked out a deal that led to King's release from prison - a secret deal that allegedly included a promise that Kennedy would not send Federal troops into Georgia the same way that Eisenhower had sent some into Arkansas. Senator Kennedy intended for his intervention to be kept secret as he feared a negative backlash in the south. But when news leaked out, it tremendously helped Kennedy's standing with black voters. Vice President Nixon also feared a negative reaction that might come with him getting involved in the King situation. But unlike Kennedy, his fear convinced him to do nothing, despite being urged to intervene by some of his staffers. Even though he had personally known Martin Luther King Junior for years.

Once the news leaked, the Kennedy campaign publicized it in the black community, using it as an opportunity to bash their opponent as "No Comment Nixon." But with or without the obvious political opportunities given to the Democrats, the impact of this incident on many black voters was very real. King's father switched his endorsement from Nixon to Kennedy and pledged to help deliver black voters to Kennedy. Daddy King was quoted as saying "It took courage to call my daughter-in-law at a time like this ... I've got all my votes and I've got a suitcase, and I'm going to take them up there and dump them in his lap."

Nixon lost the election of 1960 by one of the narrowest margins in U.S. History. Out of 68 million votes cast, Kennedy won the popular vote by less than 113,000 votes. The late shift in the allegiance of black voters, who voted two to one for Kennedy, could have possibly made the difference in the election. The day after the election, the head of the Republican National Committee stated that Nixon lost because the GOP "lost the Negro vote by a larger percentage" than they had in prior elections. President Eisenhower later complained that Nixon lost the election because of a "couple of phone calls."

King wrote the following about the incident and its impact on the 1960 election in his autobiography:

I always felt that Nixon lost a real opportunity to express support of something much larger than an individual, because this expressed support for the movement for civil rights. It indicated the direction that this man would take, if he became president.

And I had known Nixon longer. He had been supposedly close to me, and he would call me frequently about things, seeking my advice. And yet, when this moment came, it was like he had never heard of me. So this is why I really considered him a moral coward and one who was really unwilling to take a courageous step and take a risk. And I am convinced that he lost the election because of that. Many Negroes were still on the fence, still undecided, and they were leaning toward Nixon.

My father had endorsed Nixon until that call. He knew about my relations with Nixon, and I think he felt that Nixon would do a good job on the civil rights question ... After that call, he changed, and he made a very strong statement.

But even though Nixon's fear of displeasing segregationists may have cost him the Presidency, he still managed to win 32 percent of the black vote. But the perception of the Republican Party by black voters was to get much worse. From the Election of 1960 until today, no Republican Presidential candidate has earned even half the share that Nixon got.

A draft of a letter that Vice President and Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon sent to his famous supporter, Jackie Robinson, days before the 1960 election. Nixon apparently felt the need to explain why he did not intervene when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been imprisoned.

1964

The Kennedy administration had made progress in the area of civil rights. But Kennedy himself constantly tried to simultaneously appease both the southern segregationists who were a prominent force within the Democratic Party and black civil rights leaders, who were increasingly shifting to the Democratic side. But he was slowly winning the hearts of black voters. Martin Luther King Junior wrote that had Kennedy lived, he probably would have endorsed him in the 1964 election.

But after Kennedy's tragic assassination in November of 1963, America suddenly had a new President. And Lyndon Johnson quickly became a close friend and ally of civil rights leaders and used his extensive legislative experience and the power of the Presidency to push the Civil Rights legislation toward becoming law. As President, he pressured reluctant lawmakers by advocating for the law directly to the American people. He became the face of what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Others would become perceived as the faces of resistance to the Civil Rights movement. On January 3rd, 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater announced his bid for the Presidency. And while Kennedy originally had made his position on the civil rights struggle ambiguous, Goldwater made his clear. He was opposed to the new Civil Rights legislation and was a supporter of "state's rights" to have their own laws regarding segregation and voting.

Barry Goldwater was not a racist. He had earlier supported Civil Rights legislation. He had supported the integration of the Arizona National Guard and had desegregated his own family business, But even as America was in a state in which the struggle against segregation and for voting rights was leading to murder and other bloody violence in what would become perhaps the most deadly year in the Civil Rights Era, Goldwater saw Federal efforts to secure those rights as attempts to "legislate morality." He did not believe the Federal Government had a right to stop businesses from refusing to serve customers or hire employees on the basis of race. This endeared him to many Dixiecrats and southern segregationists but alienated many others against him and against the Republican Party.

In early June, 1964, a bipartisan group managed to cut off a filibuster against the Civil Rights legislation by Democratic Senator Robert K. Byrd. The full Senate voted to approve the bill, 73-27. A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans opposed the bill. But every southern Republican in both the Senate or the House voted against the legislation. And Goldwater was one of only five Republican Senators outside of the southern states to vote against it.

At the same time, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was leading a new initiative called the Mississippi Summer Project. Their goal was to help register blacks to vote in Mississippi. A large number of white voters, including many of the Jewish faith, worked bravely along with black students to help with the voter drive. The movement was met with an extraordinary level of violence. Some volunteers were killed and some were critically injured. Dozens were beaten. Thousands of people were arrested. Dozens of black church congregations and homes were burned and bombed.

Just one week after the initiative started, student workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman disappeared shortly after visiting a black congregation Neshoba County that had been burned down days before. They realized that their license plate information had been given to the local Ku Klux Klan. They called others in their organization and told them where they would be headed so that they would know to worry if they didn't show up. Their fellow civil rights workers tried frantically to locate them but they never saw or spoke with them again. Their disappearance earned widespread national attention. President Johnson forced J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to launch a federal investigation to solve the mystery. Two months later, it was discovered that after being arrested by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the three were released to a Klan murder squad, who tortured, shot and buried their bodies in an earthen dam.

On July 2nd, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. After signing the law, the President, who was a lifelong southerner reportedly commented that his party had "lost the south for a generation."

And in the midst of all this drama, the Republicans held their National Convention in mid-July. In an environment filled with tension and party division, Senator Goldwater, against the wishes of many in his own party, became the Republican Party nominee for President. The eyes of much of the nation and most of the world were disgusted by the exploding violence over the issue of civil rights and the resistance of some to embrace it. And now the man who was part of a distinct minority in Congress and an even smaller number within his own party that opposed the legislation in favor of "state's rights," was the new face of the Grand Old party.

On July 16th, the last day of the convention, the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior, who would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a month before the election, released a statement saying that although Goldwater himself was not a racist, his nomination would aide racists. He urged black and white voters alike to vote against Goldwater. He wrote later in his autobiography:

“While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.”

For many reasons, including a concentrated effort by the Johnson campaign to paint Goldwater as a dangerous lunatic, the Republican Party in 1964 suffered one of the worst electoral defeats in American history. Goldwater won his home state of Arizona and five of the former Confederate states; Johnson won 44 states and the District of Columbia. But his unpopularity was most obvious among black Americans. He got only 6% of the black vote - less than one fifth of what Richard Nixon had gotten just four years earlier. From this point until today, black voters have voted at least seven to one against every single Republican Party candidate for President.

 1968 and beyond

Richard Nixon returned to national politics in 1968 and again sought the Presidency.  One of his strategists, Kevin Phillips, created a new approach that he claimed would help the GOP dominate elections from the late sixties until the turn of the 21st century. The approach was dubbed the "southern strategy." In a 1970 New York Times interview, Phillips stated the following:

"All the talk about Republicans making inroads into the Negro vote is persiflage. Even 'Jake the Snake' [Senator Jacob K. Javits] only gets 20 percent. From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that ... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

Nixon had decent accomplishments throughout his career in the area of civil rights. But while in the 1960 election, the Republican Party was interested in seeking the votes of black voters and even in 1964, most Republicans in Congress supported the Civil Rights legislation even though their nominee did not, by 1968, there were some in party leadership efforts who made a conscious effort to specifically not seek out black support. Phillips' strategy sought to exploit the racial tensions of the day to turn out a segment of white southern voters toward the Republican Party. Nixon ended up finally winning the Presidency that he had sought - barely. But it is interesting to observe that the same man was the Republican Party candidate in two elections just eight years apart. In 1960, he got 32% of black voters and almost certainly would have won this segment of voters and perhaps the election had it not been for the King incident. But by 1968, Nixon the Republican's popularity among black voters was less than half of what it had been eight years before. And no Republican Presidential Candidate has done any better in the forty years since. Every candidate has inherited the baggage of being associated with a party brand that now has an extremely negative association with many minority voters.

Nixon's famous black supporters from 1960 had also turned away. Jackie Robinson went on to endorse Nixon's opponent, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, in the 1968 elections. Daddy King, the once lifelong Republican, delivered the invocations at the 1976 and 1980 Democratic National Conventions.

It doesn't have to be this way - with the Republican Party losing entire ethnic groups. The southern strategy nearly worked for approximately the time period that Phillips thought it would. But it won't continue to work going forward. In fact, with America becoming more diverse than ever before, the Republican Party will not be able to survive if it continues to lose every single ethnic minority group in the country by significant margins. The GOP lost in 2006 and the party's perception by voters as an ethnically monolithic group will be partly to blame should it lose the White House in 2008.

But the three elections of the 1960's were the point in time during which many black voters developed intensely negative feelings about the Party of Lincoln. During one of the most fragile and virulent moments in history, when blacks in America were at a point of extreme vulnerability, many feel that the Grand Old Party deserted them. And this feeling of antagonism has lasted for forty eight years and passed through at least two whole generations. The majority of two generations of African Americans have grown up from childhood believing that the Republican Party is against them and full of people who don't like them. This is the root cause of the fact that although blacks and whites are much more similar in terms of political ideology than most people realize, most blacks automatically vote for Democrats and will not consider voting for Republicans.

But things can change. The Democrats were the party of slavery and Jim Crow. Many Democrats opposed Civil Rights laws and desegregation policies in the 50's and 60's. But some high profile Democratic leaders risked irking their base and reached out to black voters at a critical hour in American history and as a partial result of this, nine out of ten black voters supported the Democratic Party in the past two elections. Things can change, but they don't change on their own.

It is long past time for the Republican Party to confront this part of its past, to admit it and completely forsake it, and to develop and aggressively work a new strategy that will bring all Americans together to fight for conservative principles. But before this can be done, the party leaders and members need to understand the real underlying reason why blacks have rejected the party for nearly five decades (which is pretty much the opposite of the reasons you'll hear from your average conservative media pundit), acknowledge mistakes, and care enough to take action to change things. Once that happens, the problem can be fixed and the GOP will be able to escape the image of a party that does not seek ethnic diversity. In the next part of this series, I will make some suggestions for things that the party can do to reach black voters.

On January 1st, 2001, the first day of the Twenty First Century, our national debt stood at $5,662,216,013,697.37 - $5.6 trillion dollars. As of this past Monday, September 22nd, our national debt had risen to $9,785,866,165,910.40 - or $9.7 trillion dollars. In the nearly seven years and nine months of this century, the amount of money that we owe as a nation has risen by four trillion dollars - or 73% - not far from being double what it was at the beginning of this time period.

This is enough money to pay for the $700 billion dollar bailout being proposed by the Administration - nearly six times. It's exactly the same amount of money we would owe if we had done a massive $700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street every 478 days. We've gone $700 billion deeper into debt every fifteen and a half months.

Think of it another way. Imagine that this was a credit card - except that it's the kind in which the debt follows your family line down the generations. Your kids, grandkids and great-grandkids will still have to make payments after you die - and the payments will be much larger. If you divided the national debt in 2001 by the population in 2001, every living American of all ages owed a balance of $19,859.62. Today, every living American adult and child personally owes a balance of $32,444.23. And all of this is before we spend any money bailing out Wall Street and the financial sector. If we end up spending $700 billion, our personal American Credit Card balance will rise to $34,765.02.

And if this isn't depressing enough, the problem isn't just that we owe a lot of money. In addition to the fact that we already owe nearly $10 trillion dollars - or 3.6 times the amount of income our government receives every year, our Federal Government will also spend $407 billion dollars more than it takes in this year. Before the bailout. Last year, we spent $410 billion dollars more than we made. As a matter of fact, during this time period, we've spent an average of $262 billion more than we've taken in. Which simply means that at the current rate, not only will we never get out of debt - we will continue at the current pace to accumulate debt until ... Well, until our credit is maxed out.

Some of our leaders have been digging us further into the hole by spending as if they were playing with Monopoly money - borrowing more and more in order to do so. In Fiscal Year 2008, our leaders authorized $16 billion dollars in earmark spending.  Despite whatever these funds were used for or how important its sponsors claim it is, the fact remains that this is money we are literally borrowing in order to pay for.

And speaking of them, a note to both of our Presidential Candidates and all members of Congress: I've heard all of you talking about almost every topic under the sun. But I have not yet heard many people talk much about how to deal with this $10 trillion dollar elephant in the room that is about to step on all of us. This isn't going to go away on its own. This is a threat to the stability and security of our country. It's only going to get worse until someone steps up and boldly and aggressively deals with it.

And if nothing else motivates our national politicians, you folks should think of it this way. The day may soon come when we can no longer afford to pay your pensions.

I can't help but wonder where the Club For Growth, the group that claimed it was on a mission to protect taxpayers - by constantly attacking politicians like Mike Huckabee, who had no role in any of this and ran a fiscally sound state government for a decade. Where are those guys? I'm a taxpayer and I badly need a higher level of protection going forward. But, by the way guys, I do thank very much for your faithful service in protecting me so far. My kids and grandkids thank you as well.

Here are the latest set of rules for how your choice of Presidential Candidate determines whether or not you are a scumbag. Pay close attention. If you're white and aren't going to vote for Barack Obama, people think you're a racist. If you're not a Mormon but didn't think Mitt Romney was the answer to world hunger, you're clearly a religious bigot. If you didn't support Hillary, you are a sexist pig. If you didn't dig Mike Huckabee, you may not be the anti-Christ but you're clearly cheering him on. On the other hand, if you're black but are voting for Obama and not McCain then you obviously dislike white people (did you go to Wright's church too?)  It's all an open and shut case, people! And if you belong to the same group as any of the above and yet won't support them, then you're a sell-out. Shame on everybody! I would explain the rest of the rules, but I feel unclean just talking to you.

A lot of people, including some in the news media, assume that for the majority of voters who aren't supporting Barack Obama, his race is a reason that they don't like him. They think this although many of these voters tend to be conservatives who wouldn't support any liberal candidate - period. Even though a number of these voters threatened to not vote for McCain if white guys Tom Ridge, Mitt Romney or Joe Lieberman got a spot on the Republican ticket. Even though most of these voters vigorously opposed the campaign of yet another white guy who was slightly less liberal than Obama four years ago. And even though a few of them formed the core of the support of another black guy running for President - Alan Keyes.

If we didn't learn anything else from the primaries this year, we learned that a lot of Americans are fine with the prospect of voting for a black candidate. Barack Obama easily won a number of primary states that had never voted for a black candidate before. He won states in which many residents may have never personally met a black person before. There are ten U.S. states in which non-Hispanic African Americans make up less than one percent of the population. Of those states, Barack Obama during the primaries won seven of them - by an average of 19.6 percentage points over Hillary Clinton. The three states in this group that Obama lost - South Dakota, New Mexico and New Hampshire - he lost by an average of only 4.7 percentage points. The black population of Prince George's County Maryland is more than twenty times the black population of the entire state of Utah. But yet Obama won Utah over Hillary Clinton by 18 points. It's not fair to simply discard the evidence that shows that many Americans are willing to support a black candidate for President.

Let's pretend for a moment that Obama had white skin but had all the same positions and background. He still would have a 100% rating from NARAL and a 0% rating from the National Life to Right Committee and would still have a history of supporting abortion under essentially all scenarios. He would still have an 89% approval rating from an organization that promotes same-sex marriage. He still would have an 8% approval rating from an organization that seeks to secure our nation's borders. Do you think that the white Obama would get the support of a huge percentage of the voters who oppose the black Obama? If so, you might want to ask John Kerry for his opinion of how white liberals get treated by conservative voters.

Of course, the Republican Party leadership hasn't make it any easier for those who oppose Obama because of his ideas to avoid being misunderstood as rejecting him for other reasons. If four decades of a severely strained relationship and general apathy toward black voters wasn't enough, three years ago, half of the Senate Republicans refused to participate in a voice vote for a measure condemning America's history of lynchings. The next year, a number of Republican House members publicly resisted the renewal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The year after that, the top four Republican Presidential Candidates declined to participate in a Presidential debate for minority voters. And this year, the Republican National Convention had the lowest level of black participation since Barry Goldwater was the GOP nominee in 1964. Don't you think that the convention speeches attacking Obama's campaign might have been perceived differently by some if the cameras showed a diverse crowd unified in that opposition - instead of a group that consisted of only 36 blacks out of at least two thousand delegates? Which leads to another point. Just as it's unfair and simplistic to accuse white people who don't vote for Obama of racism, it's also unfair and simplistic to accuse black people who vote for Obama of just simply voting on the basis of race. Black voters don't necessarily support black candidates - and if you want to confirm that, just ask Alan Keyes. If he's busy, ask Al Sharpton or Carol Mosely Braun. It's more accurate to say that most blacks don't support the Republican Party (and if you want to understand the true reasons for much of that, you might want to read here). And even if every last black person in America voted for "the black guy" this year, that would only be an 11% higher share than the two white guys running on the Democratic side got in each of the past two elections.

And of course, the rare but occasional idiot that does things like create the "Got Ammo" tee shirt (with a Democratic Donkey in the crosshairs of a rifle) or the "Obama Is My Slave" tee shirt don't help those who oppose Obama for reasons having nothing to do with his race. And when a southern Republican Congressman who has a full understanding of southern history and culture, opposed renewing the Civil Rights legislation and fought off efforts to resolve unsolved civil rights murders calls both Obama and his wife "uppity," it just makes a lot of people unnecessarily suspicious of everyone who passionately opposes Obama, regardless of their reasons for doing so.

And on that note, let's face another reality. Just as it is inaccurate to suggest that most people are going to decide their vote based on race, it is inaccurate to suggest that there aren't many people who will. I don't think these people are in the majority and I don't even think there are that many of them in terms of overall percentage. But there are people who would never vote for any black person for President. There are also some people who would never vote for a white person over a black person (unless the black person is a Republican). And to chain back in Romney and Hillary, there are people who would never vote for anyone of the Mormon faith and people of both genders who would never vote for a woman and visa versa. It is a factor in some people's minds, whether they'd publicly admit it or not.

But from everything I've observed, most people who are voting for or against someone are doing it for reasons unrelated to their race, religion or gender. And most voters who have been passionately opposed to Obama, Romney, and Hillary, for example, opposed them for a reason that's harder to scientifically analyze but a lot less troubling. They don't trust that these candidates who happen to be from another ethnic/religious/gender group share their values. And by values, I'm not re-using some stupid codeword for ethnic culture. I mean values like "should this unborn baby be allowed to be killed," "should the definition of marriage be changed by the government," or "does this person who is part of an unofficial dynasty really understand me or care about my issues?" For many people, that, along with old-fashioned party loyalty, explains almost all of the reasons why they plan to vote a certain way.

And about the question that's on the title of this entry, I want to say that my voting against John Kerry had nothing to do with him being Catholic. Huh? Am I voting for Joe Biden? Well, no, but I don't care for his position on abor .. What? What do I have against Catholics? Absolutely nothing. Hey, I always thought pretty highly of Rick Santorum. You believe me, right? Wait, guys!

I just checked the National Debt and was shocked to see that it has risen to $9.6 trillion dollars. I wrote about it a couple of months ago and it was only $9.4 trillion bucks. It's risen incredibly and I don't see anyone talking about it. Maybe I'm overreacting - what's $200 billion between friends?

Just to put some context to it, let's look at the increase of the national debt over time. We won't even go back to earlier in the decade, when the national debt was almost half the amount that it is now. We'll just go back to January 15th - eight months ago. We owed less than $9.2 trillion bucks then. We owe almost $9.7 trillion bucks now. That's $489 billion bucks in just eight months!! That's enough to give every American $1,630 bucks (hey - we pretty much almost did that, didn't we?) That's a 5.32% increase - just this year - just in the past eight months.

It's a shame that nobody is really talking about this issue, especially after we've seen giant financial institutions go broke. America needs to become fiscally solvent again. Politicians - want to impress me? Don't waste your time trying to give me a good speech. Get out your spreadsheet and come up with a plan to balance the budget and pay down the national debt, while we still can.

Seven years ago and an hour ago today, terrorists killed thousands of innocent Americans in the attacks of September 11th, 2001. I simply want to let the family members of those who perished know that their loved ones are not forgotten, and to let the members of our Armed Forces and their families know that we are grateful for everything you do for this country. We are praying for all of you.

And I want to let the terrorists know that we will never, ever run from you. We will never, ever allow you to intimidate us. We will never allow you to change the way that we live our lives, the God that many of us believe in, to abandon our friends in the world, whether you like them or not. Instead, we are going to keep pursuing you until we catch you and bring you to justice. These colors have never run and won't run now. 

Part One: There is a problem

This month's Republican National Convention featured the lowest portion of participation by African American delegates in the last 34 years. This year, the Republican Party is expected to get a historically low portion of the black vote. Many assume that the primary reason for this is the candidacy of the first black major party candidate for President - but it's not. Even if every single black voter in America were to vote for Obama, this would only be a relatively minor (11%) improvement over the portion of the black vote that John Kerry and Al Gore got. Why is it that for nearly five decades, black voters have voted nearly in unison against the Party of Lincoln? This article will be part of a series of articles that will attempt to answer that question, to show how this is hurting both the GOP and black voters and to make sugg