Howard Dean’s Apology
There is a very small, very silly tempest brewing over Howard Dean’s remarks to the Congressional Black Caucus. He asked if the RNC could gather that many minorities into a room, and answered, “Only if they had hotel staff in there.” This has upset the only two black Republicans who’ve held major elective office in the last twenty years, Lt. Gov. Howard Steele of Maryland and former Congressman JC Watts of Oklahoma. They’ve both demanded that Howard Dean apologize, all two of them. The two major black officeholders elected in the past generation (one retired)…in the whole country. I’d think that would sort of make Dean’s case. But of course there’s another black Republican famous at least as a candidate; granted, Alan Keyes has run for office as a Republican repeatedly; Alan Keyes, who so loves his daughter he kicked her out of his house because she’s gay. (But you’ve got to admire a Republican with open contempt for family values. Now that’s a brave stand.)
So, the Republicans could get three people into the room. Six, if they invited appointees Clarence Thomas, Condeleeza Rice, and (the also retired) Colin Powell. If you can count Ohio Secretary of State as a major office (which I really don't think you can) that even pulls it up to seven. It would still take a lot of hotel staff to fill out a ballroom. (Is Dean’s alleged offense that some hotel staff are minorities? If so, do people want Dean to get minority hotel staff fired?) Nonetheless, people want Dean to apologize. Now, Howard Dean is a busy man, so I’ll apologize for him.
Howard Dean is deeply sorry that the Republican party stood in the door, trying to prevent blacks from being able to go to the same schools as whites. He is deeply sorry that Richard Nixon, a Republican, changed civil rights law from its original standard, which required businesses and schools to make “every effort” to integrate, and replaced this high standard with the much, much lower--and invidious--standard of quotas. He is sorry that the Republican party consistently favors the taxes of the rich falling while the poor and middle class pay an ever-greater share of the national tax bill (which every study will show, if you include payroll taxes). He is sorry that because of Republican policies, increasingly only the rich can afford to go to our best colleges and universities, and so those with parents with less assets are consigned to a second-class future. He is sorry that the Republicans pass laws that punish blacks far worse than whites committing similar offenses.
He is sorry that the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has become the party of Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott and Charles Pickering. He is sorry that Republicans are largely unwilling to vote for nearly any minority candidates, still less African Americans. And if Dean does his job in making the Democratic Party more competitive, then he may be able to usher in a day when the Republican party actually competes for black votes and Hispanic votes on an equal footing, and so has to stop actively trying to harm minorities in its desperate quest to leave no rich guy or off-shore corporation behind.
3:57:39 PM 
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