Controversial Ad Links MLK, GOP

[sabra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801754.html

Controversial Ad Links MLK, GOP
Assertion About Civil Rights Leader Angers Liberals -- and Conservatives

When a black conservative group ran a radio ad proclaiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, reaction was swift. "We've gotten some e-mails and telephone calls filled with vitriol," said Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association. "They've called me Aunt Jemima, a sellout, a traitor to my race."

In the battle for the black electorate, liberals, who make up the overwhelming majority of black voters, have long disagreed with conservatives over ideology, public policy and economic strategies to better the lives of African Americans. But when conservatives placed the civil rights movement in a Republican context, black liberals said, they crossed a line.

"To suggest that Martin could identify with a party that affirms preemptive, predatory war, and whose religious partners hint that God affirms war and favors the rich at the expense of the poor, is to revile Martin," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which the slain civil rights leader helped establish.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who marched with King in the 1960s, called the ads an "insult to the legacy and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr." and "an affront to all that he stood for."

[sugapablo]

1. First Jesus, now MLK...

...who next will the GOP claim as one of their own? Ghandi? :)

[corporatemedia]

2. Weren't FDR and Give 'em Hell Harry also Republicans? n/t

[KittyWampus]

7. Meanwhile they get the Mediawhores to start labeling their candidates "D"

for Democrat.

[bluestateguy]

3. MLK was not a Republican at the time he died

One biography I came across (I forget which one) said that he voted for Eisenhower in 1956 (or favored Eisenhower anyway; not that southern blacks were given easy opportunity to vote). But he favored Kennedy and LBJ in 1960 and 1964, and was aligned with the liberal, anti-war wing of the Democratic Party at the time of his death in 1968.

This ad is a bullshit lie, and I think most black Americans know that.

[Ken Burch]

9. In his last years, MLK was passionately denouncing the War in Vietnam

organizing a class-based mass protest for the summer of 1968(which went forward as Resurrection City)and calling for the US to adopt socialism.

In '68, had he lived, King would most likely have endorsed Robert Kennedy(who had also favored Eisenhower in '56 and allowed J. Edgar Hoover to force him to put wiretaps on MLK as Attorney General but had then gone on to repent his earlier conservatism and hardline Cold War worldview).

Are they gonna claim BOBBY next? Then maybe BELLA ABZUG? :wtf:

[tsuki]

4. I'm insulted, and I'm not even black. n/t

[area51]

5. MLK would've joined today's republinazi party ...

... just as soon as he joined the KKK. :eyes:

[beyurslf]

6. Lying assholes. Only an unthinking idiot (read: republican) would believe

that lie.

[progressivebydesign]

8. These groups running ads are out of control.

I would willingly give up our own groups who advertise during elections, if it meant removing theirs. If ads are not linked to a particular candidate, they are usually nasty or untruthful (on the right, of course). I'm sick about this ad. And how about the ad mentioned on another thread wherein a republican group/donor is running ads with a black man calling his women "ho's"?? These people have no shame. It's disgusting.

[Temporary1]

10. White is black and night is day to the GOP

Gosh...