OK, let's do a rewind. In 2006, the GOP wanted to break the Democrats' decades-long grip on the black vote. Now, in 2007, the leading GOP candidates don't want to talk with black folks.
OK, maybe there is something I'm just not getting; let me walk through this. Maybe I'm missing something and I'm sure you will tell me. Now the old guy is not going to attend the GOP Presidential Forum at Morgan State University (a historically black college) in Baltimore, Maryland.
You know the old guy I'm talking about, right? No -- not John McCain, that's the other old guy. I'm talking about the old guy, Fred Thompson, who has become just another one in a line of old guys, who happen to be leading GOP presidential candidates who are shunning the GOP presidential debates.
OK, now, why are these four white guys shunning attendance at a PBS sponsored GOP forum being held in a predominately black city, in a historically black college, dealing with issues of importance to black Americans? No... it can't be... RACE.
As African American blogger Rikyrah of the black political blog Jack and Jill Politics noted, "This is not an isolated incident. In forum upon forum, the GOP has come up missing when it comes to speaking and presenting in front of Black audiences. Only Tom Tancredo has bothered to present himself to a Black audience, where he was received well."
She is not the only one feeling issues of race coming-up with these old line Republicans. "There is a pattern here," Tavis Smiley candidly told the Huffington Post. "When you tell every black and brown request that you get throughout the primary process that 'no, there's a scheduling problem.' That's a pattern... Are we really supposed to believe that all four of these guys couldn't make it because of scheduling?"
I guess Fred Thompson and his Grand "Old" Party don't see "2007 as the Year of the Black Republican." In fact, it appears that Fred Thompson and his Grand "Old" Party see 2007 as a year for "old" white Republicans standing their ground and preparing an old fashioned dish of classic old school race politics for black folks to eat. Let's hope even Republicans will shut down the Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain madness. These four guys seem to be following the Trent Lott and George Allen approach to race relations and political shenanigans. Maybe they will rethink there collective political stupidity and show up for the forum. But that would be too much to expect in an American democracy -- right?