In “rallying” “Good Democrats” to action, the email contained the following statements:
The time is upon us as Good Democrats to rebuke and send the Republican filth of Harris County back to the sewer it came from. …
TODAY those Racist Republicans are planning to have a Rally to “Take Back America” with the headline guest Sarah Palin at First Baptist Church. These racist have traded their white sheets, Confederate flags and burning crosses for Blackberries, business suits and soccer mom images. …
We are in the planning stages of having a Rally downtown to combat what these racist Republican judges have done in the past. We are rallying to show these racist Republican judges that they will be sent home on Nov. 2 and that we won’t be treated like slaves anymore. We will have pastors, community leaders and students present to speak on the treatment they have received at the hands of these Republican judges. …
These Republicans are not Republicans from the party of Lincoln that freed slaves. They are Republicans that sprayed our forefathers down with fire hoses, they are the racist who bombed our churches, and they are the racists that rode the country side terrorizing our family members under the cover of night. …
They call themselves “Patriots” and they follow Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck. They aren’t saying the N-Word anymore. They are calling us “Socialist” and they are sending “poll watchers” into our communities in order to intimidate us. They are using a group by the name of “King Street Patriots” to train these racist to come into our communities and prevent us from casting our ballots. They even have a Republican Racist Tea Party candidate running against our own Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. He does not live in the district or have a proven record of getting things done for our community like our Congresswoman. Beware of these poll watchers and lets show them that we are going to fight back! We must remember the images of our forefathers being beaten across the head as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in order to register to vote and have their say in elections.
It is important for us to rally at the courthouse. Our goal is to have 10,000 protesters that believe in our cause to unseat these Racist Republican judges.
Normally, I would ignore such filth as either a prank email, a desperate attempt by someone to gain attention, or a lame effort to whip up hysteria before the election. I know several of the Democratic candidates who are running this year, and know them to be honorable people who would not condone this type of diatribe if it was said in public in front of them, nor would they publish it themselves. I also know most of the Republican candidates on this year’s ballot—and I know the real history of the GOP—and know that these charges are ridiculously false. So, with just a few weeks left in the campaign, I normally would “consider the source”, “turn the other cheek”, and move on.
But, after hearing the outrage of some of our Republican candidates tonight, after realizing that this email my not be a prank, and after some soul-searching, I’ve decided I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of the lies and distortions about Republicans and the history of our party—when it was Republicans who supported a war to end slavery, passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, passed the first civil rights legislation, sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock so African-Americans could attend their neighborhood high school, whose appointees made up the controlling votes on the Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who supported civil rights in the 1960s and 1970s, and whose legislators provided the margin of victory for the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Meanwhile, it was the Democratic Party whose leaders turned their back while the Klan ruined lives and its followers bombed churches, whose members voted against the civil rights bills of the 1960s, and whose elected officials barred students from school and trained fire-hoses on civil rights marchers. I have no doubt that the Democrats of today cringe at a recounting of this history, and they do not share the views of their predecessors—but embarrassment about their party’s past is no justification to re-make history in order to lay the blame for those heinous acts on current Republicans.
I’ve also had enough of the lies about Republican candidates, officeholders, activists and voters. These are good men and women—your neighbors, who value the Constitution and the inalienable rights of all citizens. We Republicans want the same ends as all our neighbors want—better schools, safer neighborhoods, opportunities to succeed in life in the callings we choose to pursue, and secure and prosperous futures for our children. We just believe those ends are more effectively achieved by limiting government, and by promoting such ends person-to-person, family-to-family, and neighborhood-to-neighborhood through a commitment that is enriched by our faith, our principles, and our values. To accuse us of being “racist” for challenging our neighbors to consider our approach to achieving these ends, instead of a statist approach to achieve these ends, is ignorant and shameful.
Over 50 years ago the reputation of a young man was shamefully tarnished on national television by a sitting U.S. Senator. In response, a lawyer in the room finally called out the Senator with a famous question that needs to be asked today: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
So, I am now asking this same question not just to the authors and publishers of this vile email, but more importantly to the local Democratic Party and its candidates for whose benefit the email was disseminated: at long last, have you no sense of decency? Will the Democratic candidates on the November 2nd ballot denounce this email and its authors, or will they stand mute in the face of this indecency?
To the Houston Chronicle and to all media outlets, some of whose reporters I know have received copies of this email with a request to investigate it, I ask: at long last, are you going to be as diligent in investigating this email, and who is behind it, as you have been in attacking Republican candidates and elected officials with whom you disagree? Or, will you, too, stand mute in the face of this indecency because it is “obviously the work of someone who does not speak for the Democratic Party”? If so, will you be so silent and understanding the next time someone allegedly trying to rally conservatives or Republicans writes a vile email or holds an obnoxious sign?
The decent, hard-working men and women, who have sacrificed time with their families to come forward to serve the public by running for office, and who have done so as Republicans because they share a belief in the principles for which the party stands, at long last deserve an answer to these questions. Unfortunately, I expect the silence to be deafening.
Meanwhile, to my Republican friends, I leave you with the words Ronald Reagan said to President Ford at the end of the 1976 Republican Convention: “there is no substitute for victory.”
