Call it the Obama playbook. You base your campaign on a personal aspect of your life where you have been successful, and you campaign on that issue. Your opponents challenge you on that issue and you respond, not on the issue of course, but you respond by telling your opponents that that issue is off-limits for them to talk about, otherwise their responses will be deemed racist and they will pay a penalty. Only you are allowed to discuss it.

We saw it when Obama made his personal faith a centerpiece of his campaign then deflected criticisms of Rev. Wright as racist, and we’ve seen it several times since. So we’re not surprised or disappointed when Barack does it. But we are disappointed when an Arizona Republican candidate does it.

Recent GOP convert Tony Bouie is an African-American who was a lifelong Democrat before re-registering as a Republican five days before filing his campaign paperwork for the State House in LD6. This last second change has sparked concern among GOP officials who fear that Democrats who could not otherwise get elected in solid Republican districts willl simply run as Republicans, and then govern as Democrats. Think Slade Mead. Early reports on Bouie’s positions on critical issues were also cause for concern as emails sent by current GOP State Representative Sam Crump indicated that Bouie was soft on border issues and undecided on tax issues.

Soon thereafter, Bouie’s campaign website was launched and it described him as a solid conservative, invoking comparisons to the mightiest of all “former Democrats”, Ronald Reagan himself. On it, Bouie also spent a great deal of time telling his life’s story as an “up from the bootstraps” kind of guy who started businesses and did things the hard way, overcoming several major hurdles including a serious battle with cancer.

The issue positions on his website were in stark contrast with his early positions, so folks were eager to hear from the man himself and a crowd was on hand for the Clean Elections debate that featured Bouie, Rep. Crump, and Carl Seel, the third Republican candidate for the two seats. Sadly, Bouie was a no-show after indicating that he would attend, so no one was able to ask him any questions or get any answers from him. The debate carried on however and one of the questions dealt with Ward Connerly’s Civil Rights Initiative that will be on this fall’s ballot. As part of his answer, Crump indicated that he supported the initiative and that racial preferences in business contracts should be done away with. He preferred that people stand on their own merits. Then Crump pointed out that Bouie was a small business owner whose business website claims that he is a certified minority business owner, a designation that allows one to claim preference in government contracting. Crump’s point seemed to be that he opposed racial preferences being given while Bouie had gone to the trouble of getting his business certified to receive those very same preferences.

This was a legitimate policy difference, it was an answer to a direct question posed at a debate, and it also attacked one of Bouie’s major arguments regarding his qualifications for office, specifically, his success as a businessman who did things the right way. Had Bouie bothered to attend the debate he could have explained his rationale or indicated whether or not he had ever used the designation, or he could have responded in any number of ways. Instead, he pulled out the Obama playbook, attacked Crump, and interjected racism into the debate.

In an email with a subject line of “Crump the Chump and Seel the Heel”, Bouie tries to combine Dr. Suess rhyming with a defense of preference-based contracting. He accuses Crump and Seel of wanting to “strip away the ability of these small businesses to compete in the marketplace, therefore, placing them back in the disadvantaged place they were just in 10, 15, 20 years ago.” Then, the rhetoric gets lofty and a touch, dare we say “Obama-esque” as he describes the difficult life he has endured, the racial challenges he has overcome, etc. It even comes complete with the grand finale of “This is a historic campaign. There will be no one that gets in the way of our destiny.”

First, let us congratulate Bouie on overcoming the challenges he has. They were substantial and he deserves real credit for accomplishing all that he has accomplished. There is, in fact, much to like about Bouie were it not for his fatal personal and ideological flaws.

Second, Bouie needs to understand that his campaign is not “historic” by any means. He is not the only black man to ever run for office as a Republican. He’s not even the only black man to run as a Republican here in Arizona. In fact, he’s not even the only black man running for office as a Republican in 2008. We’re not here to speculate what will happen to those who “get in the way” of his destiny, but judging by Bouie’s tone we’ll urge them to be careful.

Third, and most important, we urge Bouie to return to the issues and not hide behind race. If you want to make your business acumen a central theme in your campaign and you have set yourself up to benefit from racial preferences, then your support for racial preferences in government contracting is a fair issue for your opponents to take up. It is not racist to talk about it. By refusing to debate his opponents and choosing the path of grade-school rhymes, Bouie demeans his campaign and the entire contest.

Campaigns should be about lofty ideas and visions. But sooner or later, you have to get into specifics and answer for your ideas and records. Its unavoidable no matter how much some candidates wish otherwise. Don’t believe us? Just ask Obama.

Since the Ministry of Information started laying off its senior writers, the quality of the writing has begun to slide.  The July 4th print edition contained a glaring error on the front page. The article began, “Should local school districts be merged to save money? Should affirmative action be banned in state hiring, contracts and college admissions?” The second sentence was referring to the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, which would ban race and gender preferences in government.

Contrary to the reporter’s characterization, the intiative would not ban “affirmative action.” Affirmative action is a phrase originally used by JFK to refer to ensuring that minorities were not being discriminated against, e.g. excluding them completely from hiring or admissions. Affirmative action was never meant to give them preferential treatment. (read more about it here)

Of course, the phrase has been distorted by race-baiters and used to describe separate beneficial treatment for minorities and women. That kind of treatment would be banned under the Civil Rights Initiative. But not the traditional type of affirmative action. Regardless, preferences by private organizations would not be prohibited by the initiative, making the vague statement “ban affirmative action” used by many even more misleading.

With sloppy reporting such as this prevalent on the front page of the Ministry of Information, one has to wonder how many additional egregious errors are in it that we are unaware of.

This November we will have the opportunity to vote for or against affirmative action. For those folks out there who do not quite understand how it works or what it is about, this example should do. Let’s say McCain finishes the presidential election with 54% of the vote and Obama finishes with 46%. McCain wins by 8% right? Wrong, under affirmative action Obama is given 10% for being black and is elected President of the United States of America based on race and race alone! In this example, McCain needed to win by more than 10% to actually win, while Obama needed to only lose by no more than 9.9%. Is this fair? Is this the American way? We are teaching our society that underachieving is okay as long as it is within the 10% margin of theft!

Now, somehow political elections have never applied affirmation action. Unfortunately, construction contracts, post office jobs, college scholarships, police forces, and basically every other occupation are held to the unfair practice of legalized racism, aka affirmative action.

Bill Blair