Conservatism Inc. has already transformed from movement to business and finally to racket. However, like some kind of twisted political Pokémon, it's now evolving into a little known fourth stage: a joke. And one joke in particular—“What do you call a black person at a conservative conference?” The obvious answer – “the keynote speaker.”
The next Great Black Hope of the conservative movement: Dr. Ben Carson, who recently spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast. These events are generally the stage for well-meaning banality, but Dr. Carson broke the nonpartisan tradition to condemn Barack Obama's political agenda even as the President sat only a few feet away. [YouTube]
Carson ripped the idea of a progressive tax system, instead suggesting that God mandates a flat tax through the institution of tithing. He blasted Obamacare and recycled the old conservative idea of Health Savings Accounts—an interesting concept that was strangely absent during the campaign. Finally, and refreshingly, Carson attacked Political Correctness, aptly observing that it “keeps people from discussing important issues while the fabric of their society is being changed.”
And so it does. But right now it is also working to the advantage of the good doctor.
Since the speech, the sober neocons of the Wall Street Journal published an editorial calling for Ben Carson to run for President. [Ben Carson for President, February 8, 2013] Sean Hannity, having lost half his audience because of his support for amnesty, urged the same and gushed “I'd vote for you.” Joe Concha at Mediaite called Dr. Carson the Republicans' “Dream Scenario.” Rush Limbaugh echoed Chris Matthews's reaction to Obama by saying, “Talk about a tingly feeling up your leg. I got it from Dr. Benjamin Carson.”
As Carson is now retiring so he can “educate” the American population, we can expect the good doctor (and the lab coat that he wears to his speeches and TV appearances) to at least try make Republican dreams of African-American advancing austerity come true.
Of course, none of what Carson said is particularly revolutionary—they were simply standard Republican talking points, a less sophisticated version of a policy panel at CPAC. Nor would a presidential candidate who makes the case that “God” commands a flat tax be likely to make much headway among socially liberal swing voters in this year of our Lord 2013 (or should that be 2013 CE?)
This hysterical reaction (“we found a black guy who agrees with us! Let's make him our leader and President!”) suggests deep self-loathing and fear among white Republicans who have internalized the Main Stream Media’s narrative that they are racist, hate-filled, and worst of all, backward.
Nor is this a one-time phenomenon—witness the recent coronation of one-term congressman Tim Scott as Senator from South Carolina.
The last round of the presidential primaries presented the unedifying spectacle of Herman Cain, the former CEO of a pizza company elevated to Tea Party favorite on the strength of a politically suicidal (but catchy) tax plan and dark complexion. (I kept waiting for someone to criticize “Godfather's Pizza” for exploiting anti-Italian stereotypes but it never happened.) Cain's campaign collapsed when it was revealed that he had an affair with a white woman (named, appropriately enough, White.) After making a few bizarre advertisements, he ended up endorsing “the American people” for President.
Florida congressman Allen West was a more promising contender. Despite foolish statements about the innocent Trayvon Martin and the predicable rhetoric about the “liberal plantation,” Allen West was generally a solid conservative. Lieutenant Colonel West won popularity among pro-war conservatives after he threatened a suspected insurgent with a pistol during the Iraq War and refused to apologize for it. Once elected, he took strong stands on racial preferences, federal spending, and illegal immigration. These stands were essentially identical to those of other Republican congressmen like Lou Barletta, Tom Tancredo, Steve Stockman, or Steve King. Nonetheless, it is only for Cain and West that conservative outlets like WND sold bumper stickers reading “I Have a Dream – Cain/West 2012.”
Now that West is out of Congress, the whole idea of him as a party leader seems foolish.
During the reign of George II, Condoleezza Rice was rarely seen conservative Affirmative Action twofer, a (1) black! (2) woman!! Political analyst Dick Morris (last seen predicting a landslide victory for Mitt Romney) titled his 2006 prediction of the 2008 elections Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.
In 2011, Dr. Rice was recycled as a (if I can be forgiven the phrase) dark horse that could rescue the lamentable Republican field after a well-received foreign policy speech that won approval from Conservatism Inc.'s hedge fund managers, including Bill Kristol.
However what Rice actually stood for was always unclear, aside from more foreign policy adventurism. Despite her reputation as a Russian expert, Rice's policy views are the usual cheerleading for aggressive confrontation with Vladimir Putin's conservative autocracy. Although conservative flacks repeatedly hail her “genius,” Rice does not actually speak fluent Russian. In domestic policy, despite making speeches talking about the Christian faith that guides her in all decisions, Rice is pro-choice. She also supports anti-white and anti-Asian racial preferences.
Predictably, her only current importance is as part of a working group on ramming through amnesty. If conservatism is to mean anything other than an interventionist foreign policy, it is hard to say what Rice is actually supposed to be conservative about.
During the 1990's, there was J.C. Watts, the black savior from God's Country in the plains of Oklahoma. Jack Kemp would justify his political ideology on the grounds that he used to shower with black people while playing football, but Watts had an additional advantage: he also took showers with black football players—while being black himself!
Watts of course went in to divide responsibility with profligate rake, serial cheater, and Catholic “convert” Newt Gingrich in torpedoing any attempt to end anti-white and anti-Asian racial preferences during the 1990's. Predictably, in 2008, J.C. Watts revealed that he was considering voting for Barack Obama.
Finally, there's the original Great Black Hope, Colin Powell. Powell gained fame during the First Gulf War and popularity among conservatives by opposing gays in the military during President Clinton's Administration. President Bush II capitalized on his popular reputation by making him his Secretary of State. A thinly veiled version of Powell is even the heroic President of Max Brooks’ wildly post-apocalyptic zombie (and quite liberal) story World War Z.
Of course, Powell frittered away his popularity by making the case for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and has spent the last few years lecturing an increasingly indifferent public about the evils of conservatives on issues like racism, immigration, Affirmative Action, and seemingly every other policy except the foreign wars for which he bears responsibility. He also endorsed Barack Obama,twice, and occasionally buttresses his credibility by dancing on stage with rappers at the usual white guilt festivals that support the African economy.
This parade of failures and false hopes conceals Conservatism Inc.'s actual contempt for African-Americans. They are real people with self-generated conceptions of their own interests. The condescending belief that blacks are trapped on a “liberal plantation,” that they simply vote for whoever has a black face, or that conservatives just need to “communicate” is a patronizing faction.
The reality is that blacks as a bloc want racial preferences, government aid, racial redistribution of wealth, and symbolic tributes to their displacement of whites in cities like Detroit, East St. Louis, and Birmingham. If conservatives want black votes, they would have to actually give blacks what they want—and that would mean confronting the uncomfortable truth about black public opinion regarding whites and the country that European-Americans largely built.
Instead, Conservatism Inc. has aggressively convinced themselves of an alternate reality, one where Martin Luther King (a Republican, don't you know) was a Tea Party Patriot who opposed Affirmative Action, where the literal nonexistence of black Republican voters in the inner cities is solely the responsibility of white Democrats who use fraud and trickery to disenfranchise hidden black conservatives, and where Django Unchained is a pro-American movie about using the Second Amendment to fight Southern Democrats.
Any evidence to the contrary, even from Conservatism Inc.'s own outlets like Human Events or National Review, is simply wished away to nonexistence.
Basic historical literacy is a severe career disadvantage in Conservatism Inc.
Paul Kersey calls what used to be our country “Black Ruled America” (BRA) not because blacks as a group literally rule America (just many of the major cities) but because the transfer of jobs, wealth, and resources to nonwhites is now the ideological justification of the entire country.
Central to this thesis is the idea that moral absolution can only be bestowed by nonwhites, who, as John Derbyshire has observed, have taken on a religious significance in our secular society as holy figures.
The Republican leadership are converts to this new theology. With the likes of Eric Cantor waxing poetic about “Rashawn's” search for a better school, the Beltway Right fêting failed congressional candidates because they are black while ignoring the likes of Stockman and Barletta, and the movement's utter surrender on issues like illegal immigration and racial preferences, Conservatism Inc. is taking on characteristics of what can be called “Black Run Conservatism” (BRC).
The lily-white department heads who process the checks evidently believe that the only ideological justification permissible is the claim that a pro-corporate agenda will somehow advance the best interests of America's teeming black and brown underclasses. While the likes of Glenn Beck once mocked liberals who believed Barack Obama was the “Messiah,” now Republicans look desperately for a savior to redeem them from their reactionary sins.
Columnist Joe Concha writes: “As the left tells it... old, white, angry males need not apply.” The GOP has internalized the liberal narrative and the actual Republican constituency of middle class white voters is as absent from Conservatism Inc.'s thoughts as Martin Luther King's support for Affirmative Action.
Nonetheless, despite their own best efforts, Republican reliance on white voters is only likely to increase.
Attention Republicans – you are the “Generic American Party,” the party of the historic American nation.
Accept it and fight for it—or die.
James Kirkpatrick [Email him] travels around the United States looking for a waiter who can speak English.
