Immediately after Barack Obama was elected the first US President with known African ancestry, the Republican Party thought it politically opportune to appoint as its chairman an African-American, Michael Steele.
Under Steele's leadership, the Republican Party seemed to overcome the disastrous baggage of the incompetent George W. Bush legacy administration, and scored a historic mid-term win in 2010, not only reversing a Democratic supermajority in Congress to take control of the House, but the party made huge gains at the state level. Steele was then replaced after one term as chairman with Reince Priebus, whose clueless and bumbling leadership has left the party elites dangerously close to losing control to the reactionary rabble they have courted at the ballot box for two generations, and now Priebus and Rove are positioning their party for electoral suicide in two years. Can they even manage to snatch some sort of defeat from what should be a historically favorable midterm climate this year? Recently Priebus was rewarded for his leadership with a second term as chairman.
Was Steele just a token "black" face whose usefulness was not what he could do as leader, but simply to serve out a term before being replaced with another white guy who would take orders from Karl Rove and his benefactor political family? When are you dealing with a political party that sees its future hope for Hispanic votes lying with George P. Bush, you at least better believe that is possible.
There will be a "token" black face on the podium next to JEB! in the primary debates. The smart money says it will be Dr. Ben Carson. The ads are already running on right wing radio, probably funded from the same nebulous plutocrat sources as the cash filtered through Koch, Tea Party, and other independent PACs. "Paging Dr. Ben Carson...please report to the White House. STAT!"
Not really, but your face is needed on the debate podium. STAT!
Die hard conservatives, the same ones who are the target of Rove's latest disinformation campaign, will loudly denounce the idea that Carson is a "token," and the right wing blogosphere is already abuzz with countless "grassroots" outlets proclaiming him as a legitimate option for the Republican nomination. Sadly, none of it is true.
Carson, like Alan Keyes and Herman Cain before him, would not win a single caucus or primary, despite all of this "grassroots" support. And that is the way the GOP wants it.
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