Dowple
04-20-2006, 07:56 AM
In fact, this last ploy is central to the strategy of the MCRI’s foes, and they’ve received help in pulling it off from seemingly unlikely allies: leading state Republicans. Announcing his opposition to the MCRI, the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate, Amway heir Dick DeVos, an otherwise reliable conservative, declared: “We must look for ways to unify and provide equal opportunity for all people in our state.” Two of the three candidates seeking the Republican senate nomination have followed his lead.
Most observers view this stance as a political calculation: Republican candidates prefer to run in this economically devastated state on bread-and-butter issues and not arouse the solidly Democratic black base. But Republican opposition to the MCRI winds up touted by the initiative’s foes and cited in almost every news account. The contrast with, for example, California, where then-governor Pete Wilson took a leading role in the fight for Prop 209, could hardly be starker.
Ward Connerly, for his part, is scathing about what he sees as the GOP’s desertion of principle. “The bottom line is, they’re scared of race—not just in Michigan, but nationally. They’re so afraid someone will call them Ωracist≈ or Ωmean-spirited≈ that they just reflexively align themselves with Ωdiversity,≈ ” Connerly says. “What voters have to ask is, if candidates have so little character on an issue as basic as this one, on what other issues will they cut and run when the going gets tough?” Moreover, he adds, those Republicans AWOL on racial preferences are “lousy politicians,” since it’s so demonstrably a winning issue.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_sndgs01.html
Most observers view this stance as a political calculation: Republican candidates prefer to run in this economically devastated state on bread-and-butter issues and not arouse the solidly Democratic black base. But Republican opposition to the MCRI winds up touted by the initiative’s foes and cited in almost every news account. The contrast with, for example, California, where then-governor Pete Wilson took a leading role in the fight for Prop 209, could hardly be starker.
Ward Connerly, for his part, is scathing about what he sees as the GOP’s desertion of principle. “The bottom line is, they’re scared of race—not just in Michigan, but nationally. They’re so afraid someone will call them Ωracist≈ or Ωmean-spirited≈ that they just reflexively align themselves with Ωdiversity,≈ ” Connerly says. “What voters have to ask is, if candidates have so little character on an issue as basic as this one, on what other issues will they cut and run when the going gets tough?” Moreover, he adds, those Republicans AWOL on racial preferences are “lousy politicians,” since it’s so demonstrably a winning issue.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_sndgs01.html