When too many wallets and purses go ” ouch ! ” the conservatives are the first to be run out of office, at least for a while.

BY: NADRA ENZI

My Beloved Grand Old Party took a beating November 4th, 2008 at the many-hued hands of a rainbow coalition who felt they had as much of this current brand of Republicanism as their pockets and hearts could bear.

Many of those hands were Black ones, convinced that the current brand of Republicanism was the 21st Century version of Jim Crow reincarnated.

I’m about to offer some unsolicited, probably unwelcome advice to the party of Lincoln but It’s for their own good; the good of the two-party system ( in dire need of a viable third one, by the way ) and on behalf of society as a whole.

The Dems ” out-Negroed ” you, plain and simple. The national swing vote that is the Black Electorate swung on Mccain/Palin like John Henry did his hammer.

Black voters feel the GOP, as currently branded, is a ” White ” party interested in denying opportunity to as many of us as possible.

Outrages like Bush lethargic response to Hurricane Katrina and attempts to revoke the NAACP’s tax exempt status because of Julian Bond’s statements only cemented already strong hostilities.

Add to this mix the huge number of White voters, from all ideological and partisan bents who voted for Obama/Biden and one must ask if the current GOP brand is interested in being a national party, or solely a regional collective in those few states where McCain/Palin won?

Bringing it home to Georgia, being “out-Negroed ” means the blind pursuit of racist policies like the demonization of teen Genarlow Wilson or supporting the suspicious prosecution of Troy Davis, which incidentally cost David Locke, his chief prosecutor a bid to become DA here in Savannah.

It means having only one member of the state Congressional delegation, Rep. Jack Kingston, vote to renew the Vote Rights Act.

It means an obsession with promoting one religion over all others; denying consenting adults the right to marriage and using tax dollars to underwrite private schools suspiciously born after the US Supreme Court’s Brown decision became the law of the land.

This particular brand has led to victory in the Governor’s Mansion and the legislature but also inaugurated a majority Democratic US House and Senate.

While I anticipate a change in two years on the US House of Representatives level, the right wing needs to realize it may need to either form its own party or recede to the shadows in favor of a more moderate, inclusive brand of Republicanism that can restore a healthy balance to the current lop-sided political system.

The symbol of this more moderate, inclusive Republican brand, Colin Powell, could have been our first Black president had he chosen to run. Also, had he done so, the same right wing who bitterly disagreed with his Abortion and Affirmative Action views is the same one responsible for driving some many voters to Obama.

I’ve always felt that Americans can’t handle too much conservatism. When too many wallets and purses go ” ouch ! ” the conservatives are the first to be run out of office, at least for a while.

My problem isn’t with self-reliance or traditional values, my dinosaur-sized bone of contention is with such hostility toward too many people of color or integration of public and private policy making groups.

Some African-Americans in the local Chatham County Republican Committee call ourselves ” the usual suspects ” given our handful status. The fault isn’t all on the GOP. Black folks, despite the Obama/Democratic victory, would do well to explore the other side of the aisle, especially in red states like Georgia where Republicans are the ruling party.

At its local helm in Chatham County is chairman Frank Murray, as decent a man as I’ve ever met in public life. That alone goes lightyears in calming Black concerns about a hostile reception.

Those of us who doubt the wisdom of social programs or secular humanism can find allies within the GOP who sincerely feel the same way. My diagnosis of White Republicans is they fall into roughly two categories: those who don’t know how to reach out to Black folks and those who want Black folks out of reach.

The same assessment held true for the Southern Democratic party of the 1960s.

I am not a supporter of bigger government and coming from a group whom the 19th century City of Savannah taxed even as slaves, I’m obviously against higher taxes.

My views on faith and family are that private solutions, like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s successful assault on Jim Crow, are preferred to publicly-funded social experiments where we are guinea pigs for some faceless bureaucrat who could care less about us.

Civil rights is a Republican heritage collecting dust on the back shelves somewhere, awaiting a new generation to continue the work of Reconstruction this party began under very different leadership.

A two-party system where each has a track record of opening doors long closed via competing methods is preferred to current one-sidedness.

While I view Democrats as the party of EBT cards for the poor and political payback jobs for the Black middle class, they still hold the high ground on contemporary race relations.

One huge factor that helped Obama’s campaign was most of the conservatives from the old FDR coalition had long left his party in favor of the Republicans, whose Southern Strategy welcomed them with open arms.

The Republican Party offers a home to those who believe that business development and owning your own social services are the way to go. It also provides solace for libertarians like myself who want as little outside interference as possible in my life.

My advice to the GOP is you’ve got some great ideals: smaller government; lower taxes; individualism, etc., but until you divorce yourself from the right wing, the party may well be over.

-Nadra Enzi is a writer and urban security consultant. As Captain Black he talks to at risk people about avoiding trouble.