TURN THE OTHER CHEEK (via Mike Daley)

'A Slap in the Face' (Kenneth R. Timmerman, 8/01/03, Insight on the News)

A meeting between George W. Bush and the Rev. Jesse Jackson after the president addressed the National Urban League in Pittsburgh on Monday has black Republicans roiling with anger and incomprehension.

Sources familiar with the meeting say it was set up by White House political-strategy director Karl Rove, with no consultation with black conservatives or the Republican National Committee (RNC). "Such meetings wouldn't have been coordinated with the RNC," an RNC official said. "But it was well-known that the meeting with Jackson was going to take place."

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie was standing behind the president when he was whisked away by the Secret Service for the private meeting with Jackson, a knowledgeable source tells Insight. "[Gillespie] was stunned when he learned what was going on."

Other sources dispute this account and say the White House was blindsided by Cummings, who requested a private audience to talk to the president about Liberia. "Out of respect for Cummings as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Bush agreed to meet with him. It was someone else who suggested to Cummings that he bring Jackson," one source told Insight. [...]

The African Methodist Episcopal Church plans to hold a major event in Dallas next week that is expected to draw an estimated 10,000 women involved in missionary work. "Here's a group that would be sympathetic to the president, especially to his faith-based initiatives," [A top black Republican Party insider] said. "They asked the president to give a speech, but haven't heard one word back."

Obviously if the Reverend manages to weasel his way into the meeting you have to meet with him; it's not worth giving him the opportunity to stand out in front of the cameras claiming that you're dissing and ducking him. Anybody have any doubt that Mr. Jackson would have preferred the issue of Mr. Bush refusing a meeting to the completely unproductive fact of the meeting itself?

The latter point is valid though. Sure, Mr. Bush will be vacation and has a reduced schedule, but Dallas should be doable and the GOP should be having as many high profile events with blacks as it can. Here's the message they should bring, House Majority Leader Tom Delay talks race (Armstrong Williams, July 30, 2003, Town Hall):

"The Democrats' policies for the last 30-40 years have failed African-Americans and have failed the rest of the country," DeLay said. He also admitted that the Republicans have done a poor job communicating their commitment to the civil rights movement. Despite getting only 9 percent of the black vote in the last presidential election, DeLay is optimistic that the Republican Party is uniquely poised to communicate its ideas about racial equality and that these ideas will be the engine of progress.

Throughout the conversation, one key phrase kept repeating - "equal opportunity." This is the embryo of the Republican outreach agenda. For DeLay, equal opportunity doesn't mean embracing racial quotas or other policies that link victim status with skin color. Nor does it mean supporting bottomless entitlement programs that dispense money to the underprivileged like some government-subsidized tranquilizer. Simply handing money out to the needy fails to create equal opportunity because it does not confront the problems that underlie poverty, like deteriorating family values and the absence of future expectations in poor neighborhoods. [...]

Government programs that embrace victim status for individuals or subsidize laziness are violations of equal opportunity. The ultimate violation is racial quotas. "Affirmative action had a good idea to begin with and that was to level the playing field so that everyone could have equal access," says DeLay. The problem occurred when the government hijacked the program by focusing on quotas, rather than on those social conditions that undergird inequality.

"The government decided to come in and provide equal opportunity by numbers rather than equal opportunity by stopping people from discriminating, or equal opportunity by assuring that African-Americans have access to decent schools or by making sure that job opportunities were based on equal opportunity not race or gender," says DeLay. We need to "come together as a color-blind society where the government doesn't pick winners of losers but the government mandates that everyone have an equal opportunity based on the capacity for each individual to grab opportunity and make something of themselves."

Opportunity, opportunity, opportunity... Posted by Orrin Judd at August 3, 2003 12:53 AM