California Conservative

It’s been pretty easy finding articles about how upset the base is with Republicans, but it’s been alot tougher reading articles that talk about how split the Democratic Party is. Here’s one that fits that bill.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has dropped her demand that Rep. William Jefferson, (D-LA), resign from the powerful House Way & Means Committee, in exchange for a promise from the Congressional Black Caucus that they won’t campaign against her in advance of this fall’s critical mid-term elections.

According to a Roll Call report this week, Pelosi struck a deal with the Black Caucus in a closed door meeting last Friday to “hold off taking any pre-indictment action against Jefferson” as long as the group refrains from attacking her.

While this article doesn’t have the same tone to it that ‘the GOP base is split’ articles have, there’s no mistaking the level of upset that the CBC has with Ms. Pelosi over the Jefferson must resign issue. They wouldn’t have threatened criticizing Pelosi over this if they weren’t hopping mad about her demands.

I also think that we’re seeing signs that (a) African Americans aren’t as hostile towards the GOP as they were 5 years ago and (b) African Americans won’t give their votes to Democrats as automatically as they have in the past. That’s got to have the serious people at the DNC worried like never before.

I talked with a former aid to a Republican senator about how certain issues would play with African Americans. The first thing I asked was “does anyone think that a black small business owner likes higher taxes than a white small business owner?” The answer was what I expected “Of course they don’t.” That’s just one issue that Republicans should be touting. Another is asking if legislation for school vouchers should be enacted.

Because the Democratic Party hasn’t listened to African Americans about their needs, they’ve left some rather significant openings for Republicans to capitalize on. This Pelosi incident is just one example of those opportunities.

Technorati Tags: Pelosi, William Jefferson, Congressional Black Caucus

Cross-post at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 at 12:14 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Elections, Pelosi, Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.