Moment of pride for GOP

Last year it was Kathy Miller whose racist rants shoved her onto the global political stage.

Today it’s Tracey Winbush, who expressed her unwavering support for President Donald J. Trump as he suggested a moral equivalency between white extremists like the neo-Nazis and decent Americans who are fighting for racial and ethnic equality in this country.

So who are Miller and Winbush? They are prominent members of the Mahoning County Republican Party and disciples of the president.

Miller served as chairwoman of Trump’s presidential campaign in Mahoning County; Winbush is the GOP’s vice chairwoman and coordinated Trump’s race in the county.

Winbush also is president of the Ohio Black Republicans Association.

Last September, Miller, a long-time Realtor and former Boardman Township trustee, was interviewed by reporters Paul Lewis and Tom Silverstone from the Guardian newspaper of Britain and had this to say as she sought to explain Trump’s popularity with white blue-collar workers in the Valley:

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you. You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”

The interview was videotaped and linked online to the story that was published by the Guardian in September.

Black voter turnout

But Miller wasn’t done with her racist rant. In discussing black voter turnout, she suggested the numbers are low because of culture.

“I don’t think that’s part of the way they’re raised,” she said, implying that black families do not consider voting to be important. “For us, I mean that was something we all did in our families: we all voted.”

And then there was her blistering critique of the first black president in the history of the United States, Barack Obama.

“I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this … Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama had perpetuated on America.”

Miller’s comments caused such an uproar that she had no choice but to resign as chairwoman of Trump’s campaign in Mahoning County.

But she was not expelled from the party, nor was she told that the Trump campaign did not want the support of voters of her ilk.

President Trump’s responses last week to the violence that occurred when white extremists demonstrated in Charlottesville, Va., explain why Miller’s comments were not a deal breaker.

The demonstration triggered counter demonstrations.

“I think there is blame on both sides,” Trump said. “You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I will say it right now.”

White nationalist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, had gone to Charlottesville to protest the removal of the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Many in the crowd were heavily armed.

They were confronted by smaller gatherings of individuals committed to erasing the vestiges of this country’s racist past.

And while Trump sought to place blame for the violence in Charlottesville on both sides, the fact remains it was a white extremist who used his car as a weapon in a terrorist attack on the opponents of the alt-right groups. One woman, Heather Heyer, was killed; 19 people were injured; and two state troopers who were on helicopter patrol died in a crash.

James Alex Fields, 20, of Maumee in suburban Toledo is being held without bail on charges of murder and malicious wounding in Heyer’s death.

“What he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing,” the president said, but he would not call it “domestic terrorism.”

Nonetheless, Winbush, president of the Ohio Black Republicans Association, is not only standing by the president, but has joined him in pointing the finger of blame at the media.

“It is our belief the violent activities would not have risen to the level it did and we would not be having this discussion” if the media had not publicized last Saturday’s rally before it happened, an email from the association stated.

Winbush, who sent the email, said the group has 75 members.

“The media talking heads and the hosts that continue to compare and insinuate that President Trump, the Republican Party and [its] affiliates condone and encourage this despicable behavior should be exposed for the race baiters that they are,” the email said. “They don’t care about the consequences of their style, just that they are first on the scene with the juiciest story for their 15 minutes of fame.”

Fifteen minutes of fame? Legitimate journalists aren’t after fame. Many have spent a lifetime honing their skills in a profession that while denigrated by the president and his followers is one of the main pillars of democracy.

Without a free press, America would be no better than some banana republic ruled by an iron-fisted dictator.

Winbush and the other members of the black Republican association are deserving of public scorn when they blindly follow the president and ignore the role he has played in energizing the KKK, neo-Nazis and other white extremist groups that are bound and determined to tear this nation apart.

During the July 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Winbush was only one of 18 black delegates out of a total of 2,472.

In an interview with The Vindicator, she stoutly defended Trump, describing him as “Uncle Bob who sits at the Thanksgiving table who says something that embarrasses you,” but doesn’t mean to do so.

The Mahoning County Republican Party must be proud to have the likes of Kathy Miller and Tracey Winbush as its public faces.