The LA Times covers the latest in Bush outreach to the African-American community:
The criticism came in a letter delivered Tuesday to the White House from five of the nation’s most high-profile African American pastors. They called on the president to give his “ardent” support to a proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair under which industrialized nations would double their aid to Africa by 2010. Bush rejected the proposal last week and announced that the United States would release a smaller sum, already appropriated by Congress, for aid to Africa.
The letter exposed a potentially damaging wrinkle in what has been an aggressive outreach strategy by White House officials, who view socially conservative black religious leaders as potential allies in policymaking and domestic politics…
…”Some were confused by the fact that Prime Minister Tony Blair, who stood with the president on Iraq at enormous political cost to himself, did not appear to be receiving the same level of concrete support from the president when it came to Africa,” said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, a Boston pastor who backed Bush’s reelection last year and was one of the religious leaders who conferred last month with Rice. “It is our hope that the president will stand with the prime minister as strongly as the prime minister stood with him at the height of the controversy over the Iraq war.”
Let this be a lesson to any moderates that think they can work with this administration. I don’t care if you are an influential black minister, or the Prime Minister of England…if you make a deal with Bush, you are selling out your constituents and making a fool of yourself in the process.
I wonder if the people who backed Bush in 2004 are feeling shame right about now?
Some of them are. There were a few of those “buyer’s remorse” diaries soon after the past election. Not enough tho, and also some were not quite greeted with open arms, lol.
The honeymoon’s over. So many political marriages – so many divorces.
Every group seems to feel that they are the ones that are not going to be burned by this admin, no matter what’s happened to others.
Or maybe they just feel they have a long enough spoon… their mistake.
Ultimately Bush will do what is best for Bush. Given the history of this administration it’s amazing that 5 years in there is still any suprise when supporters are used. Maybe they can make a sufficiently big fuss and get the funding increased as was done with the tsunami funding.
Only… like with other funding, a good portion of the tsumami money was promised, but never delivered. Not just by the US… it seems to be a common shell game.
Same with aid money for Africa and other places… so many strings attached that sometimes one wonders if its’ worth it. Even this last round, Nag or someone has a diary on here somewhere showing how apparently the money is tied into privatizing public resources.
Can’t win for losing, I guess.
The Devil …deal with it
Heil!!
(…hell…!)
are good at bamboozling, fakery and lying, and too many Americans just don’t have the time or the inclination to do the research. The media would rather be “balanced” than “accurate.”
Sigh.
is neither balanced NOR accurate.
That’s a good, sound conclusion you draw at the end of the article, and one to bear in mind always. The man’s predictable that way.
Thank God you all are paying such close attention. I had forgotten about following the tsunami money.
This government has given us so much pain to carry;I wonder if some of us are bent beneath the burden.
We need to be working shoulder to shoulder with this population on projects they’re already doing in their communities. We need find ways to support them and keep in contact with them between campaigns, or they won’t be with us for elections.
The other side has a large grass roots religious network up & running. But right now we’re fortunate that God’s churches are His most perfectly segregated institutions. An NPR report a few yrs ago said 95% of churches are strongly segregated, and the other 5% aren’t integrated–most of them were simply caught mid-stream switching ethnic groups.
So at the moment, the right has limited ability to reach religious Blacks and Latinos. We on the other hand have our political parties, our grassroots organizing, and the new blogosphere. There must be ways to do it.
and this should be brought up in the same breath as lynching legislation.
They won’t have another chance to vote for Bush – some horror I can’t imagine aside – but it has to be more than Bush. It’s about the whole Republican Party.
Paul Krugman nailed this a couple of years ago in a column, talking about Colin Powell, I think. Don’t have his book handy, but someone who does and is reading it might know if that one is included in the text.
Krugman said to Powell (paraphrase): ‘Those people are users. They will use you and use you up, and when you are used up and of no further use to them, they will discard you like a piece of trash.’
That has been their pattern consistently. They have done it for years, and they will continue to do it as long as they are able. The only change is that they have “progressed” from using individual people to using up entire natural resources and countries.
Of course, “user” could also mean something else relative to what we now know about BushCo’s history.
“The pastors’ letter noted that the Bush administration had tripled U.S. aid to Africa…”
How is this possible? After 8 years of robust domestic economic growth under Bill “first black president” Clinton, how is it that a Republican controlled administration can find a way to make such a big increase?