GOP in No Rush to Shed 'Bigot' Label

By: Cynthia Tucker

Every legislative body in America has a few idiots, dolts, nincompoops - elected officials who would hardly draw any notice at all were it not for their incompetence, bigotry, or venality. You can find them in City Halls, state legislatures, and even the hallowed halls of Congress.

So it hardly qualifies as front-page news that U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-WY) recently made blatantly racist statements in which, in essence, she tarred all black Americans as drug users. Cubin's remarks punctuated a debate over a bill to limit lawsuits against gun manufacturers - a debate that was already offensive since it curbs due-process rights for victims of gun violence.

Cubin stood to defend what she sees as her Second Amendment rights with the following remarks: "I am going to tell you what. My sons are now 25 and 30, and they're blond-haired and blue-eyed. One amendment said we couldn't sell [guns] to anybody that was on drugs or had drug treatment or something like that. Well, so does that mean if you go into a black community, you can't sell any gun to any black person? Or does that mean that because my..."

Before Cubin could insert her foot farther into her mouth, she was interrupted by U.S. Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), a black man, but her meaning was clear enough: All denizens of a "black community" can be assumed to be on drugs or have had drug treatment.

Of course, research shows that black Americans use drugs at a lesser rate than white Americans. But bigotry never did depend on research.

What is surprising is not Cubin's idiocy but rather the silence from influential Republicans that followed her remarks. Just a few months after U.S. Sen. Trent Lott's utterances called attention to the GOP's vulnerability on issues of race, you'd think that prominent Republicans would have been quick to condemn Cubin. None has.

Watt asked that Cubin's remarks be stricken from the Congressional Record, but she refused, suggesting that she had no second thoughts about her remarks. Her Republican colleagues defended her right to have her offensive comments stand. In a vote to have her comments stricken, Cubin won 227 to 195. Not one Republican voted against her.

Nor has Cubin issued an actual apology. Instead, she said she wanted to "apologize to my colleague for his sensitivities". In other words, she regretted Watt's having such a thin skin.

In a later statement, Cubin claimed that she was out to shatter stereotypes, not solidify them. "Had I not been interrupted, that would have been clear." But it's hard to see how.

Next year, with the 2004 presidential campaign in full swing, GOP operatives can be expected to repeat their constant affirmations that they are a colorblind party out to win converts among Americans of color, especially Blacks and Latinos. And you can count on having one or more of them mutter plaintively that they simply don't understand why the Republican Party doesn't attract more black votes.

Many staunch Republicans would recoil at the thought that they are perceived as racist, and, indeed, most are not. Nevertheless, the party has acquired a reputation for using race as a blunt instrument in political warfare.

Among other things, the Republican Party has cynically opposed affirmative action, even modest programs such as those at the University of Michigan. At the same time, the GOP is silent on legacy, a policy that gives preference to the children of college alumni, most of whom are white. (President Bush himself benefited from legacy in winning admission to Yale.)

The GOP is also associated with political campaigns that use a virulent "Southern strategy" to tap into the resentments of whites still hostile to the civil rights movement. Gov. Sonny Perdue's unfortunate pledge to allow a vote on the Confederate battle emblem is part of that strategy.

Given that background, do the benighted remarks by members of Congress such as Trent Lott and Barbara Cubin reinforce the GOP's association with blatant bigotry?

Well, they sure don't help.