Letters to the Editor

Alan Keyes called me a racist
BY JAKE TAPPER
(12/07/99)

You white folks need to get over your fear of being labeled "racist." Jake Tapper should be ashamed that he engaged in a debate with a moron like Alan Keyes, who thought he could take the Clarence Thomas approach to wiggling himself out of a political jam. Tapper took the bait, giving Keyes the press coverage he craves and probably bringing a few more loonies to his side of the river.

Keyes will never be a serious contender because he's just too fringe -- black or not black. It's as simple as that. It's a shame, because I think black conservativism is a very important voice -- but Alan Keyes is not the proper channel for it.

-- Corilyn Shropshire

Keyes is right. If a black man, Clarence Thomas for example, expresses conventional conservative views, he is automatically attacked or ignored. If a black man says, "Take your special benefits for presumably noncompetitive blacks, and shove them," he is seen as either a megalomaniac or a nut, like Ward Connerly or J.C. Watts. Only the liberal press remains unrepentantly racist.

-- Dorothy Jones

Jake Tapper says that Keyes' claims that Kosovo was a "propaganda war" are "ludicrous" and "superficial." I don't think so. Did the bombings bring peace to the region? Has the killing stopped? Have the forced displacements stopped? The answer to all of these questions is no.

-- Steve Hesske

Exporting Latino politics BY GREGORY RODRIGUEZ (12/07/99)

Check the facts: Bush received 40 percent of the Hispanic vote of those who voted. Not the vote of 40 percent of Hispanics. That election saw a low turnout in many areas of the state.

-- Victor Harpley

How can Gregory Rodriguez allege that George W. Bush and the GOP were gaining ground among Hispanic voters nationwide, particularly in California, when everything I've heard from eminently reliable sources such as the American Prospect (not to mention the voting results of the last few elections) has shown the exact opposite?

Voting results and demographic data show that Hispanics, who had been attracted to the Republican Party in the 1980s by its stance on moral issues such as homosexuality and abortion, are now leaving the party in droves -- especially in California -- over the perceived anti-Hispanic racism of the GOP. Only in Texas does even George W. Bush, supposedly utterly beloved of Hispanics, crack the 50 percent mark among Hispanic voters. How else does one explain the fact that California, after years of Republican dominance, is now one of the most heavily Democratic states in the nation?

-- Tamara Baker
St. Paul, Minn.

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