Republicans like taking problems out of Washington, DC and devolving them to the states. And damned if they don’t practice what they preach!
Like the problem of GOP hokum-peddlers and their comically and offensively retrograde views on race, for instance.
Now that Trent Lott’s out of the way, or at least out of the GOP Senate leadership, this ‘problem’ seems to be devolving to the several states in a big way. On Wednesday night we spotlighted the estimable Doug White, 
Republican President of the Ohio Senate, who has a tendency to use the word ‘jew’ as a verb and, apparently, rubs the heads of black people for good luck.
Now we’re on to Randy Ridgel, a member of the Board of Directors of the California GOP, who just fired off a letter to GOP activists about Shannon Reeves, a black member of the Board, who recently said the GOP has treated blacks like “window dressing.” (Reeves’ comments were in response to the last California race imbroglio in which a candidate vying to head the state party, Bill Back, had to apologize for republishing an article which was a touch soft on slavery.) Ridgel, whom the Times calls “a retired white rancher from rural Lake County,” might also be a future candidate for the ‘cracker defense.’ But, alas, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Ridgel is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. According to today’s LA Times Ridgel’s letter read, in part …
“I, for one, am getting bored with that kind of garbage. Let me offer this suggestion to Mr. Reeves: ‘Get over it, bucko. You don’t know squat about hardship.’ … I personally don’t give a damn about your color … so stop parading it around. We need human beings of all human colors in our party to pull their weight, so get in without the whining or get out.”
Never one to go on the defensive, Ridgel also endorsed the earlier pro-confederate, sorta-kinda pro-slavery article. “Most of the poor devils [i.e., newly-emancipated slaves] had no experience fending for themselves, so they fared worse than before the war and during the war,” Ridgel opined in his letter. Ridgel says he might even republish the original article. “You sure as hell won’t see me apologize to these turkeys,” he insisted.
No doubt, we’ll soon be hearing more from the D.W. Griffith wing of the Republican party.
