The Congressional Black Caucus is blocking a black Republican from joining

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The Congressional Black Caucus has blocked GOP Rep. Byron Donalds from becoming a member, showing once again that Democrats only care about race when it serves to advance their politics.

Donalds, a freshman representative from Florida, had previously been a member of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus. But the CBC, made up entirely of Democrats, has rejected Donalds as a member, apparently on the grounds that he did not vote to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.

Of course, a double standard is being applied to Donalds here even if that is the logic the CBC is using. After all, California Reps. Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee and Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, all members of the CBC, similarly tried to stymie the certification of the 2016 presidential election. Waters and Jackson Lee have a history of refusing to accept GOP presidential victories going back to 2000.

This marks a shift for the CBC, which had not previously blocked membership for black Republicans. Former Reps. Allen West and Mia Love had both been members, while former Rep. Will Hurd and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott had declined to apply when they served in the House. But now, the CBC seems to be indicating that black Republicans no longer count.

Brianna Keilar, one of the many Democratic operatives masquerading as a journalist on CNN’s airwaves, decided to reinforce that view. She suggested that Donalds’s views would be “incongruent” with being a member of the CBC given his support for former President Donald Trump (CBC members such as Illinois Rep. Danny Davis, who has heaped praise on noted antisemite Louis Farrakhan, apparently are not “incongruent” to its mission).

While it would be new for the CBC, it isn’t new for Democrats to freeze out minority members of the GOP. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus bars any Republicans from joining, a fact it boasted about when rejecting former Rep. Carlos Curbelo in 2017. Like the other two, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus also currently includes no Republicans.

Most importantly, the CBC’s move comes at a time when Democrats are increasingly seeing their advantages among certain demographics decrease. Black men have trended toward the GOP in presidential elections since 2008, to the point that 18% of them backed Trump in 2020. Democrats are losing their vise grip on minority voters. In order to compensate, liberals are leaning even harder into racial identity politics.

As when Democrats belittled Scott as a token, the CBC is showing that the Democratic obsession with race starts and ends with support for Democrats. This isn’t a surprise, but it is a worthwhile reminder as Democrats continue to put race at the forefront of American politics.

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