All this week, and all the next, The Black Snob is taking a look at the views of black conservatives on Barack Obama. We’re examining who likes him, who doesn’t. Who will vote for him and who won’t. So far we’ve looked at the views of Amy Holmes, Condoleezza Rice, Alan Keyes, Armstrong Williams and more.
Only a few more minds to go in this series on black conservatives and their views of Barack Obama. Today it’s a pair who may have flown under your radar – Illinois Republican and publisher Eric Wallace and conservative author Star Parker.
They’re two Christian conservatives shaped by their environments through experiences good and bad.
An Illinois native, Wallace is an ordained minister and businessman. He’s keen on his Republicanism. So keen that when George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004 he started the African American Republican Council of Illinois and currently serves as chairman. Then after seeing the success of other minorities in the Republican Party he became politically active, running and losing a state senate seat in 2006.
He now publishes a black conservative online magazine called Freedom’s Journal, named for the first black newspaper.
Being from the same state as Obama gives Wallace a certain POV and that POV is that of opportunity ... an opportunity to reach a wider range of potential black conservatives through Obama-fever.
From the Illinois Review:
The Barack Obama phenomenon has created a tidal wave of excitement and enthusiasm within the African-American community, and it's understandable.
But there's a growing voice within the black community that warns "all that glitters is not gold." Obama's answers to the nation's ills will force us all to be more dependent on the State, they say, which will demand more and more of our hard-earned dollars.
And when he’s not operating with that view, Wallace sees Obama as a pure politician by the most stereotypical of standards – a lying charlatan.
Wallace writes extensively about this for the Illinois Review after the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor.
Now that the fairy tale veneer has been removed, the real Obama appears. He is nothing more than a slick talking Chicago style politician, who will say anything to get elected. This is not change, especially for those of us who live in Illinois. His association with Rezko and endorsement of Mayor Daley speak to his Chicago style politics. We have had enough of it and the corruption that breeds this style of politics (Blago and Ryan).
This is not change I can believe in. Nor is it change at all except that it comes from a black man who transcends race and a politician who has the audacity to hope that we don’t catch him in a lie. It is clear he lacks the integrity of faith, which would lead him to the discover truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us God!
Analysis: Unlike some more prolific writers, conservative and not, I didn’t have as much on Wallace on Obama, but I found his pounding of the "Chicago style politics" label telling.
When I hear "Chicago-style politics" my mind drifts back to a time when I didn’t exist. Back when the first Mayor Daley was holding up the ballot count to make sure Illinois went for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election. I think of mobsters and kick-backs. So I had to suppress a chortle on Wallace because Obama sounds more River North than Bridgeport.
It’s not that Obama doesn’t suffer from the usual political failings of lies, exaggerations and egos that come with their own entourages. But I don’t see Obama telling Johnny Two Eyes to take Short Tony out for a long walk. Obama’s the egghead. He totally has guys for that. And if he actually is crooked Obama would be Phillip Green from Casino. He’d have plausible deniability.
Wallace’s "integrity of faith" talk sounds a lot like some guy who couldn’t get elected state senator. That is something you totally say about your opponent when you want to convince other people that you’re the safer bet.
Don’t be surprised of there’s a Wallace in 2012 exploratory campaign running around.
While Wallace described his childhood as relatively nurturing and idyllic in a recent bio, author Star Parker came down the road less traveled (or frequently traveled depending on your tax bracket).
Parker’s story is one of a former unemployed mother on welfare, arrested in her teens for shoplifting who has had four abortions. After converting to Christianity she transformed herself into a successful Christian conservative author and speaker.
She is the reformed sinner, born anew through hard work and God’s grace. And in return, she shares her views and personal truths with the world, no matter how brutal. She is the founder and president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education and she regularly hits the speaker circuit, once snagging a one-time-only sub job on ABC’s "The View."
She’s cranked out books with a Pentecostal fire, including some vividly entitled barn-burners like "White Ghetto : How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay," "Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It" and "Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats: From Welfare Cheat to Conservative Messenger."
Just makes you either want to rip right into them or rip right into them with outrage, depending on where on sit along the political divide.
Parker is long on damnation and short on sympathy. When it comes to Obama she wants to see the meat, the red meat specifically, to back up all that hope hype she’s been hearing.
From the Kitsap Sun:
One fourth of blacks are entrenched in poverty at twice the national average, and so far we have not a single reason to believe that Obama has a clue, or even an intention, about seriously dealing with this problem ... As astounding as Obama's fundraising success is, it is equally astounding that he has been able to do it by being virtually indistinguishable from Clinton on issues. And how he can run as a breath of fresh air without putting a single new, creative idea on the table.
The above statement from Parker was written in 2007, but even after winning Iowa Obama was still too good to be true for Star, so she attempted to deflate Barack’s popular fictions.
From Townhall.com:
Obama not only obliterates the lines on race, but he also obliterates the lines on everything else. The end of the racial line is a great achievement. But the other points of demarcation we do need.
I am talking about the lines that define right and wrong in the sense of our religious traditions. The lines that define family and establish the standard by which we measure its health and breakdown. The lines that we have used in the past to instruct our children about how to manage and direct their sexual impulses.
Analysis: Parker reminds me of fellow Christian Conservative, anti-abortionist La Shawn Barber who I wrote about yesterday. Her militancy on abortion gives Obama no wiggle room. It is very different compared to Amy Holmes and Colin Powell who are moderate on social issues.
Parker, also like Barber, is of the opinion that Liberalism and the Democratic Party have done more to harm blacks than help. Parker sees a vote for Obama as a vote supporting a racist system that treats minorities as victims and places more government into our lives.
As for whom Wallace or Parker would vote or support for, I don’t know enough about Wallace to make that judgment call. I want to say no, but that’s because the little that I do know of him makes me thinks he’s just a tad bit bitter that Obama’s getting to do what he hasn’t yet. As for Parker, I don’t see her giving up an inch for anyone who doesn’t uphold her standards of a perfect anti-abortion, pro-Christian candidate. In her current writings she’s struggling with John McCain and before he became the Republican front-runner she was rather fond of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Check back to The Black Snob all this week and next, the series concluding on April 14th.
Sunday: Amy Holmes
Monday: Condoleezza Rice
Tuesday: Ward Connerly
Wednesday: Shelby Steele
Thursday: Alan Keyes
Friday: JC Watts
Saturday: Colin Powell
Sunday: Armstrong Williams
Monday: Michael Steele
Tuesday: John McWhorter
Wednesday: LaShawn Barber and Herman Cain
Thursday: Star Parker and Eric Wallace
Friday: Larry Elder and Thomas Sowell
Saturday: Juan Williams
Sunday: A final analysis, "Who Would Clarence Thomas Vote For?"