[sailaway21]

Camaraderie,
Regarding the black and Jewish votes I must confess to the same bafflement you express. The only conclusion I can draw is that they vote democrat out of tradition and loyalty. Tradition originating around 1936, no earlier.

I have had the pleasure to be present for an Alan Keyes speech and found him to be tremendous. He is a fantastic orator and, unlike the Rev Jackson, there is intellectual weight to his oratory, and not just demogogary. The reason that, I think, he has not been successful in the political arena is that he is a polarizing figure. He tends to be a political preacher, not blessed with the politicians gift for 'finessing' certain points. That's part of why I like him, but death to a broader audience. He is much like Bill O'Reilly to a lot of people. You can agree with him on a lot of things, but not like the way he gets to where he's going.

I was listening to the radio this afternoon, while installing the new auto-pilot, and the topic of discussion was infant mortality, specifically in our local community. It wasn't 5 minutes into the discussion, before the designated socially aware person laid a large measure of blame at the door of institutional racism! I cracked my head a good one on the overhead upon hearing that one, and the rest of the broadcast passed me by.

The Republican party is the color blind party of the two. As I see it, color doesn't matter so there is little need to discuss it on a regular basis, unless it is the matter at hand. I, like the Republicans, see no purpose to 'hate crime' laws. Shouldn't a conviction for aggravated assault be enough without dignifying the cretin convicted by an examination of his motives? On the other hand, the Democrats, especially when in political season, wish to talk of little else. To my eyes, there seems to be little difference in their views of blacks in America than the condition of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein. I suspect that blacks, who don't buy into the endless victimology, are probably like most of the 50% of Americans who don't vote. Another words, life is comfortable enough that there is little need to get off the couch and down to the polls.

The Jewish vote seems to be taken for granted by the dems as well-for reasons that escape me. The Democratic party's treatment of Joe Lieberman may, hopefully, cause a sea-change in that regard. Hard to believe the guy was their vice-presidential canidate just four scant years before!

I suspect that the first woman or black president will be a Republican, on the theory of "only Nixon could have gone to China". We'll see. J.C. Watts must have got tired of being broke or something.