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A Cause Whose Time Has Come: GOP Must Become The Party Of Frank Ricci

By Patrick J. Buchanan

" Having lost both houses of Congress and the White House in two straight elections, Republicans are going through an identity crisis, its leaders holding Town Hall meetings to "listen" to the people.

"What should we focus on? Should we drop the social issues? How do we
get the young people back?"

Such angst and soul-searching is not the mark of the leader, but the
mark of a man suffering from doubt and despair.

Why is the party in trouble? Simple. Dubya got a hold of the keys, got
high on neocon hooch, and crashed and rolled the family SUV.

He launched an unnecessary war against a country that had not attacked
us. With his utopian No Child Left Behind scheme and his Medicare drug
plan, he did his passable imitation of LBJ, and blew a hole in the
budget.

Touting globalism, he presided over the loss of one in every four U.S.
manufacturing jobs and ran up $5 trillion in trade deficits. He
refused to defend the Mexican border against an invasion, then pushed
an amnesty for the invaders.

This was no Reaganite. This was the neocons' apprentice.

How does the party reconnect with Middle America? How does it win back
the Reagan Democrats who went home disgusted?

Become again the party of Frank Ricci.

And who is Frank Ricci?

He is a fireman in New Haven, Conn., with 11 years in the department,
who suffers from dyslexia, but nonetheless has pursued his dream of
becoming a lieutenant and a captain.

Six months before the promotion test, Ricci quit his second job. He
bought $1,000 worth of the textbooks he was told to study, had a
friend read them onto tapes to compensate for his dyslexia, studied
every spare hour he got, and sat for the test, to compete for one of
eight lieutenant slots open.

Frank made it. Frank Ricci came in sixth.

It was after the results of the test were made known that the problems
arose. For, of the officers who had made the cut, all were white,
except for one Latino.

Concluding the test results would, if used by the department, have an
"adverse impact" on the black community, New Haven tossed out the
results and called for new exams to ensure a "fair" outcome.

Thus, because he is a white man whose people came from Italy, Frank
Ricci is to be denied a promotion he worked for and won, and be robbed
of his American dream by the liberal bigots who run New Haven.

Had Frank Ricci and half of the other top performers been black, all
would be on their way to becoming lieutenants and captains.

What is being done to Frank Ricci is exactly what was done to black
folks for decades. Great black ballplayers who might have become
legends like DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig never got the chance because they
were black. Black students were denied admission to prep schools,
colleges and military academies because of their color.

Now, what was done to them is being done to white folks. And it is
just as wrong as it was then.

In 21st century America, race discrimination endures.

All we have done is switch the color of the victims with the color of
the beneficiaries. Today it is white males applying for jobs and
promotions as cops, firemen, government workers, who are held back
because their color does not comport with the desired "diversity".

What New Haven has done to Frank Ricci is like the U.S. Olympic
Committee throwing out all the trial heat results in the 100- and 200-
meter races because not a single white runner qualified.

New Haven contends the "disparate impact" of the test hurts the black
community, proving discrimination. But does the relative absence of
blacks in the National Hockey League prove discrimination?

If the Republican Party wants a future, it will become again the party
that stands on the principle that "No discrimination means no
discrimination", that stands with the victims of state bigotry, and
that stands up to hypocrites like the Jim Crow liberals of New Haven.

Affirmative action began as a mandate to cast a wider net and ensure
all had an equal shot. It has become a mighty engine of state
injustice that seeks to remedy the consequences of past racial sins
and crimes, by committing new ones.

In Michigan, Washington and California, none of them red states,
majorities have voted to abolish affirmative action. Only Colorado
failed in a dead heat last fall. A Republican drive to write into
federal law an end to all race and gender preferences, as well as to
all race and gender discrimination, is a cause whose time has come.

This is a winning issue for the GOP, for it is rooted in principle and
comports with what is written on the human heart.

Down deep, even liberals know that what is being done to Frank Ricci
is not right."

http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/090507_gop.htm