Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign for president in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers had been murdered 18 years earlier. Speaking in the code language of the day, Reagan expressed his support for “state’s rights.”

Last week, President George W. Bush rebuked Senator Trent Lott in Philadelphia, Penn., by voicing an eloquent condemnation of segregation.

Bush had returned to the city where the Republican delegates had expressed Brotherly Love by electing him as their presidential standard-bearer. It was a well-orchestrated show in 2000 that substituted the faces of its hard-core Right with the smiling symbols of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.

GOP handlers engaged in what they termed the “politics of pleasantry.” They even put on musical minstrel shows that featured Brian McKnight, Chaka Khan, the Temptations, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the Delfonics and Aaron Neville.

Call it “A Tale of Two Philadelphias.”

Philadelphia, Miss., and Philadelphia, Penn., are 923 miles apart. But when it comes to enticing Black voters, Republicans are in the same place today as they were 22 years ago when Ronald Reagan launched his campaign in Mississippi.

In that campaign, Reagan received only 8 percent of the Black vote. In 2000, the George W. Bush, masquerading as a “compassionate conservative,” won the same percentage of the African-American vote.

And that’s not likely to change. After all, the Republican Party rose to national prominence by directly appealing to Dixiecrats—Southern Whites who were Democrats in name only. The mass exodus began with Barry Goldwater’s anti-civil rights campaign in 1964 and was solidified four years later with Richard Nixon’s successful “Southern strategy.”

Recognizing that Republicans can’t win national elections with overt racial appeals, the elder Bush promised a “kinder, gentler” style of leadership. Now his son is using a similar strategy.

But it’s all part of a game.

“Most people are uncomfortable talking about race so politicians convey messages in code,” writes Eleanor Clift in “Newsweek.” She explains, “Standing up for state’s rights has long been a favorite cover for racist impulses. When Lott stepped out of that polite way of speaking about race, he exposed the GOP’s double game: the lip service the party gives to reaching out to blacks and the winks and nods to whites assuring them nothing fundamental will change.”

An examination of how Republicans vote shows dramatically how nothing has changed.
Now that there will be a regime change in the U.S. Senate, in reality, there will be no change at all. Trent Lott’s expected successor, Bill Frist of Tennessee, routinely earns an F on the NAACP’s Civil Rights Report Card.

It gets worse.

On the report card for the 107th Congress (January-November 2002), of the 49 Republicans in the Senate, every one of them received an F. Of the 226 Republicans in the House, 216 earned an F. Another seven completed only partial terms and received an incomplete, and two died while in office. Only one—the now-disgraced Gary Condit of California—earned a D. Taken together, of 275 Republicans in the House and Senate, only one managed to score as high as a D.

On the Democratic side, 31 senators earned an A, 12 received a B, three were awarded a C, two were given a D, one received an I and one—Zell Miller of Georgia—got an F. In the House, 120 Democrats earned an A, 60 received a B, 14 got a C, eight were awarded a D, five were given incompletes and six earned an F.

Ralph G. Neas, president of the People for the American Way, says replacing Trent Lott is not enough.

“It’s one thing to disavow legalized segregation, but it’s another thing altogether to make a commitment to supporting policies that will protect civil rights and equal opportunity,” says Neas.

George W. Bush has supported civil rights with his words, but not action. During his campaign, he spoke at Bob Jones University, which at the time prohibited interracial dating, and refused to take a stand on whether the Confederate flag should fly over the dome of the South Carolina state capitol.

As president, Bush appointed John Ashcroft, a Right-wing zealot, as attorney general; he opposes affirmative action and he has no meaningful domestic policy.

Bush likes to brag about having Colin Powell as his secretary of state and Condoleeza Rice as his national security adviser. He is likely to appoint at least two U.S. Supreme Court justices and he has already announced that his ideal candidates will be in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the most reactionary judges on the court.

His determination to pack the federal courts with Right-wing judges tells us more about George W. Bush’s real agenda than how many Black faces he can parade across a stage in Philadelphia or Washington, D.C.