Republicans should vote for the first black speaker of the House, Byron Donalds
Christopher Tremoglie
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After two days and six rounds of voting, the House of Representatives has been unable to reach the 218-vote threshold to elect a House speaker. While Democrats have unanimously stood by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Republicans have been divided on their support. Yet this stalemate presents a golden opportunity for the GOP.
‘HE IS A PROP’: CORI BUSH DIMINISHES BYRON DONALDS SPEAKERSHIP NOD
Republicans should embrace their remarkable legacy as pioneers of civil rights, empowering black people and promoting racial equality, and vote for Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) as speaker of the House. He is a great public speaker, a staunch defender of conservative cultural issues, and believer in sound fiscal policies. He is everything any Republican could ever want in a politician, let alone speaker of the House.
Some have brought up the issue that Donalds has only been in Congress for two years, but that is a specious argument. Former President Barack Obama was only a senator for a little over two years before declaring his candidacy for president. And, if experience and longevity in Congress were a positive, then President Joe Biden would be a better leader.
Moreover, Donalds is a black conservative Republican, and there is nothing that Democrats fear and loathe more than black Republicans. Consider some of the attacks Democrats have already launched at him.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) scoffed at the idea that the political party responsible for freeing the slaves and introducing the country’s first civil rights legislation could nominate a black man for speaker of the House. Consider her tweet about Donalds, which many claimed was biased and bigoted.
“Byron Donalds is not a historic candidate for Speaker. He is a prop,” Bush tweeted. “Despite being Black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy. His name being in the mix is not progress—it’s pathetic.”
Democrats such as Bush don’t find Donalds historic because their own intolerance is blinding. To them, Jeffries is historic, but nominating a black Republican such as Donalds is akin to tokenism.
Democrats believe they have a monopoly on minority rights in this country. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. To promote such falsehoods, they engage in a massive revision of history. In reality, consider the long, established history of the Republican Party and its efforts to bring racial equality to the country.
From its beginning, the Republican Party was created to oppose the extension of slavery. Its first president, Abraham Lincoln, issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves and presided over the Civil War, which ultimately ended slavery in the country.
Next, President Ulysses S. Grant championed the civil rights of black people in the United States. His tireless efforts to advance racial equality culminated with his crusade to fight against the Ku Klux Klan and push for the right of black people to vote.
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to invite a black person to dine at the White House when he asked Booker T. Washington in 1901. In the 1920s, President Calvin Coolidge advocated improved healthcare and advanced economic opportunities for black people, and he encouraged black people to pursue higher education and to run for office.
It was Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower who ordered the 101st Airborne Division to protect the “Little Rock Nine” (nine black teenagers integrating into an Arkansas public school). Eisenhower also signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.
Nominating Donalds would be the next logical step of this legacy in championing the rights of black people in the country. He would help advance a Republican agenda both socially and fiscally, destroy and discredit the Left’s stranglehold on identity politics, and be the new face of the Republican Party that would lead it into the future.
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