The NAALCP

The National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People held their convention this week and in an election year, it's always closely watched. People want to know who went and who didn't, what they said and what they didn't say. It seems to me that over the past few Presidential election cycles, the focus has been on the Republican candidate, mainly with an eye on whether or not he would attend. This situation is by no means particular to the NAALCP. It's sort of a kabuki dance. A gathering of a particular group with very identifiable tendencies to vote one way, will extend an invitation to both candidates, presumeably to demonstrate their even handedness, objectivity and of course, an open mind. Now nobody on the planet believes they are actually objective or posses an open mind, least of all themselves. But they love to toss the ball to their despised opponent just to see what he'll do with it. Of course the best response from their point of view would be for the opponent to decline the invite. Then they get to shrug their shoulders and lament. "Well, we tried. It's a shame he felt he had nothing to say to us, we really would have liked to hear his ideas for our community, but it looks like he just doesn't care about people like us." So most politicians seem to have concluded that it's better to go and suffer the slings and arrows than it is to run away. So Romney went and spoke and was roundly criticized by the conventioneers.

I have heard quite the collection of quotes criticizing Romney. He was termed "disrespectful." They said he had no business coming there and talking about jobs to black people. The accusation was that he had talked about things like entrepreneurship and upper middle class jobs that were simply beyond the grasp of African-Americans. He stayed consistent and said he would repeal Obamacare, and got booed. I'm sure that didn't surprise him, but the left then accused him of wanting to get those boos so that the film clip could be shown to "certain racist precincts." A black Washington Post writer said the speech was "hollow." I left a comment on his column. I wasn't able to hear the Romney speech I said, so I asked him if he thought the speech that Romney gave was even more hollow that the one Obama didn't. Oh, I forgot to mention that Obama didn't attend this year's convention. He was of course roundly criticized for snubbing the oldest civil rights organization in the country, and it was suggested this might actually cost him the black vote. (Haha, I bet you got all the way to the end of that sentence before you laughed.)