Here we go again.

A Republican official, this time a member of the Orange County, Calif., GOP central committee, stands accused of – racism!

Her crime?

She forwarded, to a circle of friends, an email depicting an image of a family of chimpanzees, with the superimposed face of President Barack Obama over the baby chimp’s face. The caption read, “Now you know why no birth certificate.” The national media soon picked up the story with the implicit “GOP-is-bigoted” story line.

Given her position as a central committee member, America’s ugly history of demeaning images of blacks and the Democratic Party’s unfair but calculated characterization of the Republican Party as racist, the official exercised poor taste and bad judgment. She has apologized. But many demand her resignation.

This is a teachable moment.

The Democratic Party has lost the “white vote” in every presidential election since 1964. Democrats attribute this to white racism. Yet in 2008, when a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll asked whether voters would refuse to vote for a qualified black for president, only 3 percent of Republicans said “yes.” More Democrats – at 4 percent – than Republicans admitted refusing to vote for a qualified black for president. Republican presidents have appointed more blacks to positions of authority than have Democrats. Of the black members of the House of Representatives, the only ones from majority white districts are Republicans.

Democrats are in trouble. Most Americans reject their left-wing agenda: bigger government; the refusal to address the need for entitlement reform; high taxes; anti-business regulation; anti-choice in education; pro-amnesty/porous borders; appointment of social-agenda-driven liberal judges; job-killing “climate change” hysteria; and the naive and dangerous strength-through-peace approach to foreign policy.

What tool does the Democratic Party often resort to in order to win elections? The race card.

As recently as 1960, the GOP attracted 32 percent of the black vote. Without the now-monolithic black Democratic vote, the Democratic Party could not survive. So it recruits and retains black voters by calling white Republicans “racists” – and by calling black Republicans “sellouts.”

We suggest black voters ask four questions:

First, why are Republicans painted as the bad guys and Democrats the good guys on the issue of civil rights?

The GOP is the party of Lincoln, a party founded to oppose slavery. The GOP, over the objections of the Democratic Party, backed the 13th, 14th and 15th constitutional amendments that freed blacks, granted blacks citizenship and granted blacks the right to vote, respectively. For over 100 years, Democrats fought against civil rights legislation, often reversing pro-civil rights legislation passed by Republicans.

Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan, once called the “terrorist wing of the Democratic Party.” It was Southern Democrats like Alabama’s Gov. George Wallace and Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety “Bull” Connor who opposed integration. As a percentage of the party, more Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act than did Democrats.

Second, since good education is the ticket to the middle class, why does the Democratic Party force children to go to government schools with a 50 percent urban dropout rate – while refusing to give the parents a say in the matter?

Third, how has government dependency helped black Americans? Since Democratic President Lyndon Johnson launched the pro-welfare-state “war on poverty,” poverty has flatlined. But the percentage of black children born to unwed mothers – many living in government-dependent households – has increased from 25 percent to 70 percent.

Fourth, why is there a double standard that protects Democrats who make racially insensitive or racist comments? Here are just some examples:

Jesse Jackson called Jews “Hymies” and New York City “Hymie-Town.” He apologized. Case closed.

Black Democratic former U.S. Rep. Diane Watson never apologized for her Ku Klux Klan-like attack against a black political opponent: “He’s married to a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn’t want to be black.”

Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of then-candidate Obama, he’s articulate and “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect” unless he wants one.

Former President Bill Clinton, in attempting to dissuade Ted Kennedy from endorsing Obama, said, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”

Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel said of Republicans, “They don’t say ‘spic’ or ‘nigger’ anymore, they just say ‘let’s cut taxes.’”

Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s former campaign manager, said Republicans “have a white-boy attitude.”

Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton told a black audience that the Republicans run the “House … like a plantation – and you know what I’m talking about.”

The GOP should also demand an apology.

It should demand an apology from Democrats who play the race card to divert voters from the destructive effects of their wrongheaded policies. It should also demand an apology from their co-conspirators in the media for allowing them to get away with it.

Now, let us all continue the pursuit of a society based not on color of skin – but on content of character.

COPYRIGHT 2011 LAURENCE A. ELDER
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