Calpundit comments on an article in National Review Online. Here, GOP apologist Bryen Preston tries to make a case that the GOP has a good record of pro-minority policies. His examples:

• School vouchers: Preston states in the article

  The granting of vouchers to needy students enabling them to pay for tuition in private and parochial schools, would allow those students to escape the crumbling schools which current circumstances force them to attend.

  However, this completely ignores the history of vouchers, which were initially proposed by suburban white "Christian" (or CHINO*) Republicans to allow their constituents to flee integrated city schools for private white "Christian" schools. According to Kevin Drum,

  The history of vouchers is clearly not based on any kind of commitment to racial justice. Republican conservatives began fighting for them two decades ago, and the fight was led primarily by members of the Christian right, who wanted public funding for Christian schools. Then, sometime in the mid-90s, after it became clear that this argument wasn't resonating with enough people, the GOP hit on a new argument: vouchers are good for black people!

  This puts a overly charitable gloss on the historical facts. The drive of these parents was not for a "Christian" education but for "safe" "neighborhood" schools, all code words for whites only. Now "Christian" has become another code word for racism in the hands of the "Moral Majority" and other GOP fundamentalist mullahs. In elementary school, I went to Linkhorn Park Elementary. Just on the other side of Old London Bridge Road was Seatack Elementary, an identical building and a "separate but equal" school. White kids living west of Hilltop Rd. were bussed past Seatack to Linkhorn. My father was principal at Linkhorn and, in the years leading up to the merger, I had opportunity to visit Seatack often. I remember the school as clean, smaller (lacking one wing that Linkhorn had), and with an almost empty library. The schools were merged in 1964 when I was in 7th grade. I was in public high school in this era, and in private school too. The private schools in Virginia had a major renaissance in the years after Brown vs. Board of Education with some, including my alma mater coming back from near death in the 50's. But these were for students whose families had the means. Nothing grated on the parents of some of my classmates than paying taxes to support "those" schools while having to pay again for Muffy to be educated at the Academy. This was the genesis of both the property tax rebellions and the voucher movement, now hallowed core values of the Republican party.

• GOP tax policy: The Bush administration has decided that the poor don't pay enough taxes and has proposed a plan to make the tax system less progesssive, shifting more of the tax burden to lower income groups. However, they label any criticsm of this plan which points this out "class warfare." As Mark Kleinman posts:

  The Treasury Department and the Council of Economic Advisers are hard at work on increasing taxes for the non-rich. First step: redefinition. Let's make the current system look more progressive than it is, so we can then make it less progressive without feeling guilty. Since the payroll tax for Social Security is the federal tax that hits the non-wealthy hardest, the folks at Treasury have now decided that -- could I possibly make this stuff up? -- they're not taxes after all.

  To paraphrase Clinton, "It depends on what the definition of tax is." By cynically redefining "taxes" and ignoring the regressive flat taxes like state and sales taxes, the GOP is enaging in a little class warfare of their own, which not incidently, impacts blacks and minorities disproportionately. For more details see Max Sawicki, the Citizens for Tax Justice, and Avedon Carol.

• National Defense: Again, as Kevin Drum points out, the connection is clear:

  African-Americans are allowed to join the army, Republicans support the army, therefore Republicans support racial equality. Right.

  
  

The article is enough to make you reach for Dramamine. Only in a magazine preaching to the choir would this kind of specious ahistorical bullshit pass.

As Radley Balko points out, there are some GOP policies that could be considered minority-friendly, but these will never get a hearing when they are proposed by Lott, Delay, Bush or any other of the GOP crypto-segregationists (to see why I put Bush in with this gaggle, see this post).

(* CHINO = Christian in name only, from Slacktivist)