On the editorials/other articles section I posted excerpts from a
Washington Post profile of presidential candidate and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain "
". Another point to bring up besides how Cain advocates personal responsibility over resentment: Cain used to be a Democrat!
Cain says that some of the sharpest discrimination he has felt is not from whites, but from fellow blacks intolerant of his conservative views.
In an interview, Cain said he had voted Democratic for much of his young-adult life because of the party’s support of the civil rights movement. He became an independent as he began to climb the corporate ladder. Then in 1996, he campaigned for his friend Jack Kemp, the Republican vice presidential nominee that year.
Cain recalled joining Kemp for a campaign event in Harlem, where a crowd of Democratic demonstrators had gathered outside.
“There was a very large muscular black guy standing in the crowd,” he said. “And there were about seven or eight of us who were black who were with Jack. And this black guy said, ‘Black Republicans?’ — real loud, I’ll never forget it — ‘Black Republicans? There’s no such thing as a black Republican. You guys must be Uncle Toms.’ ”
The man’s insult “haunted me,” Cain said. A week later, he was driving by the voter registration office and, on a whim, changed his designation to Republican.
“You want to know why? Nobody will tell me how to think. Or what my beliefs are. Or what my party affiliation ought to be,” he said. “I was so resentful of that expectation of what I ought to do. In defiance of that expectation, I registered as a Republican.”
Hmm. Cain chose to be a Democrat because of the civil rights movement? Keep in mind that Republicans will unfairly take credit for black civil rights by oversimplifying history: for instance how the Republicans ended slavery (like you can compare Abraham Lincoln with Ronald Reagan) or connecting the KKK and Democratic Party (that was nearly 50-100 years ago, what about David Duke?) or broad-brushing the Democratic Party of the 1960s with the southern Dixiecrats like Strom Thumrond (who later became a Republican). So as a young man, Cain might have voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, given that he turned 21 in 1966. Sometime in the '70s, '80s, and early '90s as he worked in corporations he became an independent before becoming a Republican in 1996. And c'mon, "nobody will tell me how to think?" You mean the Koch brothers don't guide Cain's beliefs? Or Cain's corporate advisors?
Cain is another ex-Democrat who joined the other party and is now challenging Obama. As a Texas state representative, Rick Perry was a Democrat. In 1989, Perry switched to the GOP, and his first public office under the party was Texas agricultural commissioner (succeeding Jim Hightower in 1990). Another black conservative, the libertarian economist Thomas Sowell, also . In 1972, Sowell became an independent after disliking both George McGovern and Richard Nixon.
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