Buckeye RINO

The State of Ohio Blogger Alliance has undertaken the task of highlighting criticisms of the Obama ticket that the in-the-tank MSM works hard to downplay or outright ignore.  The effort has been titled “Help Ohio Prevent Electing Obama Now” (HOPE ON), and, in all, 13 installments will be rolled out for blog readers to peruse and reflect upon.

Here are my recaps of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8.

Cornell McCleary of American Experience has the scoop on Part 9.  The video link is here.  This is a reminder of Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition that we not look upon each other according to the color of our skin, but that we look upon each other according to the content of our character.

From the Buckeye RINO perspective:

We Americans haven’t yet arrived at the point where we pay no more attention to the color of our skin.  The progress we’ve made in our nation’s history from the days of slavery and the days of Jim Crow has continued apace, but has not been completed.  I, personally, have spent much of my adult life living in non-white households and non-white neighborhoods.  I can share personal experiences that are illustrative of the progress that still needs to be made, but I don’t wish to stir the pot today.  Having said that, I will say this:  The other nations of the Earth have not made as much progress toward tolerance as America has.  We blaze the trail that other nations follow.  And while other nations may have enacted policies that they may point to as being more friendly to diversity and more respectful toward basic human rights than the United States of America, I remind you that those same nations still have a longer way to go in real life than they do on paper.  In real life, America leads.

As a Republican, I belong to the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.  Abolitionists formed the core of the party faithful when it was founded.  Abolitionists in early America were among those most likely to adhere to the principle that “all men are created equal,” as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.  Abolitionists were found in large numbers in Ohio during the state’s early years.  The shortest routes of the Underground Railroad from the antebellum South to Canada ran through Ohio.  Ohio raised the largest contingent of soldiers to fight for the Union Army during the Civil War.  I am a descendant of early Ohio’s abolitionists.  For about a decade after the war, newly emancipated slaves identified strongly with the Republican Party until Rutherford B. Hayes screwed that up by swallowing a poison pill in order to win the presidential election of 1876 that was decided by the U.S. House of Representatives when all candidates failed to garner a majority vote of the Electoral College.  The end of Reconstruction ushered in the era of Jim Crow, and no attempt was made to crush Jim Crow for an entire century, when the Civil Rights era was ushered in.  During that century, America fought two World Wars, and a number of Americans, black and white, migrated to the industrial North from the agricultural South to find work in the factories that supplied the nation with its war hardware.  Ohio’s relatively progressive views on race were smothered beginning with the Hayes administration of 1877.  By the time that Democrats took the leadership role in the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960’s, Ohio’s population and attitudes had changed a lot.  While African-Americans found themselves enfranchised anew, and large numbers of them identified with the Democrat Party, pockets of deep racism existed among whites of both major political parties.  For my part, I have endeavored to join my voice with others in my party to urge Ohio Republicans to close the rifts that separate us by race.  Though I am not pleased by the scarcity of people of color within the Republican Party’s membership, I am pleased that we’ve been able to make progress in removing the glass ceiling for Republican candidates of color to aspire to any elected office they choose to pursue.  Regarding removal of the glass ceiling, I’d venture to say that Ohio’s Republicans have outshined Ohio’s Democrats.  Many Ohio Republicans nowadays are willing to cast votes for candidates based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.  I’ve already voted for a black U.S. President twice, during the primaries of 1996 and 2000 when I was drawn to the empowering message of Alan Keyes.  The Democrat Party’s insistence that this presidential election should be a referendum on racism by electing Barack Obama has elicited responses of puzzlement by many of my fellow conservative Ohio bloggers who were so passionately outspoken in their support for Ken Blackwell just two years ago.  For many of us, elections of candidates are already about the content of a person’s character, the vision for where a person wants to lead, the articulation of where a person stands on the issues, and not the color of a person’s skin.

Nevertheless, I have spotted instances of intolerance during this election cycle, and have even written some blog entries calling attention to some of those instances.  I think it was wrong to put Reverend Wright on parade.  Obama’s message was distinctly different than Wright’s.  I felt that Barack Obama was being persecuted for his religious observances.  I even called out Mitt Romney, the candidate I voted for in the primary, when I thought he was crossing the line.  I am familiar with liberation theology, and I see the positives that come from it, so I think that the fearmongering against it is inherently racist.  I was alarmed when it was rumored that someone shouted “Kill him,” referencing Barack Obama as the target, at a McCain rally, and I urged cooperation with the Secret Service if anyone had any evidence of such conspiracies afoot.