I’m still trying to figure out what magical circumstance arose recently that would make this far right-wing politician traverse across the political aisle to nuzzle up to the mostly left-wing black electorate?
Gingrich, once the most powerful politician outside the White House during the Clinton Administration, tried roasting the president on his home turf, denouncing Obama as a “food stamp president” who told blacks and others in Baltimore that Obama has failed them miserably. Gingrich, R-Ga., is trying to revive his presidential aspirations a decade-and-a-half after being ousted under a cloud of scandal.
Speaking adjacent the Baltimore-Washington International Airport in a traditionally blue state, Gingrich spun the line into a suggestion that the African American vote is ripe for the plucking.
“No administration in modern times has failed younger blacks more than the Obama administration,” Gingrich said.
Since when did Gingrich care about the plight of young blacks or, for that matter, any blacks? When the Georgia bomb-thrower was at the peak of his powers when he engineered the “Republican Revolution” in the mid-1990s that put Clinton on his heels, not once did he speak about the interests of young, old, rich or poor black people. Suddenly and miraculously, soon after he announced his presidential aspirations this year, young black teens have become the darling of his eye.
“In May, we had 41 percent unemployment among black teenagers in America.” That means if Republicans can put on a brave face, they might be able to turn the African American vote their way.
Most of Gingrich’s speech wasn’t about recruiting minority votes. He spent much of his time on stage dribbling on about an inevitable “tsunami of violence” from terrorists and warning that Obama’s “vision of the American Constitution is a mortal threat to our freedoms.”
Gingrich’s Republican presidential counterpart, Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., also tried riding on the racial bandwagon, telling an audience of Republicans in New Orleans that Obama “has failed the African American community” as well as Hispanics, who are suffering unprecedented levels of joblessness. So far, both race pimps, Gingrich and Bachmann, failed to provide any viable solutions or exemplified any true concern with minorities’ fate except to wield the negative data like a crowbar in an attempt to bash Obama’s political brains in.
–terry shropshire
