For decades the liberals in the Democrat Party have treated women and minorities as property. Politically speaking, blacks, women, gays, Hispanics and Jews were owned by them.
These groups are expected to fill the coffers of liberal politicians and turn out to elect Democrats on Election Day. In exchange for their slavish loyalty at the polls and their willingness to serve as the ATM for the left, these groups are rewarded with policies that have left each of their respective communities worse off than they were before.
The left’s plantation mentality has been built almost exclusively around fear. Liberals constantly tell women and minorities that they are victims, that the deck is unfairly stacked against them, that the country is filled with racists, bigots, xenophobes, misogynists and homophobes all hell-bent on brutalizing them. They are told they are powerless and that they need protection and the only one who can protect them is a benevolent big government.
Those who reject victimhood and have the courage to escape the left’s political plantation are treated as traitors and vilified by liberals. Gay conservatives are called “self-loathing,” black conservatives are ridiculed as “Uncle Toms,” and conservative women are called “sellouts.”
As a gay conservative, I know first-hand the contempt with which the left treats those who dare to think for themselves. Fortunately, more and more women and minorities are waking up to the reality that liberal policies have been devastating to them and their communities.
Right now there is no one doing more to challenge the left’s plantation mentality than Herman Cain.
Herman Cain is speaking out boldly and courageously. Unlike so many of his privileged liberal elite critics, Cain is a self-made man. His life story is a testament to the greatness of America and an affirmation of the American dream.
Growing up in a time of real racial discrimination — the segregated South of the ’60s — Cain beat the odds through hard work and determination. Cain rose through the corporate ranks — not thanks to a government hand out or a government hand up — but solely through his own work.
Herman Cain has watched as the left’s big-government policies have destroyed black families and left generations of black Americans with little hope of escaping the vicious cycle of poverty and dependence.
Cain knows first-hand that free markets lead to free people. Cain’s entire presidential campaign is built around empowering individuals and getting the government out of people’s lives.
Cain is offering women and minorities a new way forward. Instead of more broken, empty promises about what the government will do for you, Cain is focused on returning power to the people.
Herman Cain is proposing bold reforms. Bold reforms to systems that have failed the very people it claims to help: from Social Security to healthcare to the tax code, Cain’s message is about empowerment.
Cain supports personal savings accounts in Social Security that would create an entirely new class of investors and build intergenerational wealth — a key component in moving communities out of poverty.
Cain has been a long-time leader in opposing the expansion of government-run healthcare. As a cancer survivor, Cain knows that we need free-market reforms that make our world-class healthcare system more affordable and more available to all Americans — not a government take-over that would destroy quality of care.
Cain’s bold 9-9-9 tax reform jettisons a broken tax code and replaces it with one that dramatically simplifies taxes, cuts rates and unleashes the American economy — allowing for the creation of millions of good, high-paying, 21st-century jobs.
Not only is Cain offering real-world solutions that would benefit all Americans, including women and minorities, he has thrown off the shackles of political correctness and spoken with courage and clarity about the how many in the black community have been “brainwashed” by the left.
For speaking out, Cain has been vilified by the race-baiters on the left who view Cain’s entire candidacy — and indeed his life story — as an existential threat to their ownership of minorities.
Herman Cain’s candidacy offers all American a chance at a better tomorrow, but in particular for women and minorities in this country it offers an escape from the left’s plantation. For many, the Cain Train is a political underground railroad.
Christopher R. Barron is a Republican political consultant and Chairman of the Board of GOProud, a national organization for gay conservatives and their allies. He blogs at Red Barron.