July 8, 2002
IGNOBLY HE GOES :
How His Party Frustrated Watts : 'Robot-like' allegiances drove him out-but was there more? (Howard Fineman, 7/03/02, Newsweek)[D]eLay & Co. tended to emphasize the abstractions of conservative dogma more than the possibility of pragmatic compromise. That was especially true, he felt, on the issue of affirmative action. "Making opposition to affirmative action a test of ideological loyalty is as wrong as making support a prerequisite of political authenticity in the black community," he writes. "We can't promote diversity by demanding a robot-like allegiance to conservative views even when they are divisive."Some conservatives never forgave Watts for his support of affirmative action, which he regards as a necessary but temporary stopgap. His analogy, not surprisingly, is to football: Affirmative action is like the NFL draft, in which the weaker teams are allowed to pick first. The goal: to level the playing field. To Watts, it seemed to be a matter of common sense. [...]
The last straw for Watts was the administration's decision to cut funding for the Crusader artillery gun program, based in his home state and district in Oklahoma. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was adamant, and Watts's pleas were ignored. It was one thing to be ignored on "message" issues, but humiliating to be unable to protect federally funded jobs. "I think that did it," said an administration official who knows Watts well.
First, it's entertaining to compare this column to the nearly deranged screed by Earl Ofari Hutchinson below. Second, the more apt analogy would of course be if you required NBA teams to draft white players, thereby costing blacks jobs. No matter how passionately Mr. Watts believes in affirmative action, at the end of the day it is racist. It may be well intended but it says to one person "you get the job because you are black" and to another "you don't get the job because you're white". Third, At the time they were making the decision it was noted that the Bush Administration was demonstrating that it's serious about cutting wasteful military spending by beginning with a project in a squarely Republican state, instead of trying to shaft a Democrat state in the process. Mr. Watts wasn't exactly bucking for a Profile in Courage award by insisting that this boondoggle be restored.
MORE :
*A Black Republican Wises Up and Opts Out : At last, Watts saw the GOP power brokers' duplicity. (Earl Ofari Hutchinson, July 8 2002, LA Times)