A black Republican dream deferred — again
in their campaigns.
Now that she had lost re-election, she said in her concession speech in Salt Lake City, she is free to speak her mind and she did, particularly about Trump.
“The president’s behavior toward me made me wonder: What did he have to gain by saying such a thing about a fellow Republican?” Love questioned.
Actually, Trump had little to gain from his personal attacks except a little selfprescribed therapy after the drubbing his party took in losing control of the House. Love was not loving any of that. “However, this gave me a clear vision of his world as it is,” she continued. “No real relationships, just convenient transactions. That is an insufficient way to implement sincere service and policy,” she said.
That’s the basis of the Grand Old Party’s problem with minority voters, she said. “It’s transactional, it’s not personal.”
“You see, we feel like politicians claim they know what’s best for us from a safe distance, yet they’re never willing to take us home,” Love said, “… and into their hearts, they stay with Democrats and bureaucrats in Washington because they do take them home — or at least make them feel like they have a home.”
With that, she was describing an ideal of politics at its best: a process that responds to the voters’ needs in a way that makes all feel their voices are being heard.
Yet I wonder: Why did it take her so long to make her feelings known about Trump after voting with his agenda almost 96 percent of the time, according to an analysis by the website FiveThirtyEight? I am not alone. “She (Love) was silent for the most part during her entire time in the House,” Howard University political scientist Michael Fauntroy, author of “Republicans and the Black Vote,” told me after Love’s speech. “Now she wants to talk about decorum and all these kind of things, it just doesn’t sound impressive coming after the fact.”
Fauntroy sounded pessimistic about any growth in black Republican ranks as long as the party continues its Trumpian swing to the far right.