Texas Democrats have this plan to start taking over Texas, by turning it into a purple state, and ultimately a blue state. They even have a stellar candidate for governor named state Senator Wendy Davis, who wowed the public with her courageous support for women’s reproductive rights, and wants to take over the highest position in the state.
Then along came a black woman named Kesha Rogers who is now polling at the top of a field of candidates in the Senate race against John Cornyn (R, Texas).
On her campaign website, Rogers says she wants to restore the JFK-FDR legacy in Texas. That’s great, a sign of progress, right? Think again. Rogers, who is a two-time congressional nominee, is not your typical Democratic candidate, and not necessarily the type of candidate the Democrats’ progressive, pro-Obama constituency would want to vote for if they read the fine print. And they’d better read the fine print.
You see, Kesha Rogers is a follower of Lyndon LaRouche, who is, well, a fringe political cult leader of sorts. LaRouche is a left-wing Marxist-turned-right-wing conspiracy theorist, and believes in off-the-wall policies like space colonization, a quarantine for everyone with AIDS, and opposition to abortion and gay rights.
And LaRouche, himself a former perennial presidential candidate, has been accused of espousing fascist, racist and anti-Semitic views. As the late Manning Marable once said, “LaRouche appeals to fear, hatred and ignorance. He seeks to exploit and exacerbate the anxieties and frustrations of Americans by offering an array of scapegoats and enemies: Jews, Zionists, international bankers, blacks, labor unions-much the way Hitler did in Germany.”
Not running for political office these days, LaRouche, 91 years old, has his minions on the ballot—people such as Kesha Rogers. Like other LaRouche supporters, Rogers has compared President Obama to Hitler, complete with the mustache, and likened Obamacare to the policies of Nazi Germany. And she wants to impeach him, too.
Sounds awfully Tea Partyish, huh? But it is much worse, and far more insidious.
Meanwhile, when traditional Obama Democrats—including African-Americans— see someone named Kesha Rogers on the ticket with Wendy Davis, they may very well figure they’re voting for the real deal. But what they’re voting for is the real something else.
To be sure, there are many sophisticated voters out there who can see behind such shell games. And African-Americans are known to vote their interests and not necessarily their skin. But all of us are susceptible to backsliding.
Remember the white, conservative, anti-gay dude who won a seat on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees by fooling black folks into thinking he was black?
A recent poll has Rogers leading the pack of Democratic would-be senators with 35 percent, followed by 27 percent for David Alameel, 15 percent for Maxey Scherr, 14 percent for Harry Kim and 9 percent for Michael Fjetland. Alameel is spending $3 million on the race, and Scherr has a chance of moving ahead of Rogers. So far, no one candidate has the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. And if Rogers were to win in a Democratic runoff, she might not win against Cornyn in the general election, but she would do a lot to embarrass Texas Democrats in the meantime.
Obviously, someone out there, namely LaRouche, and Rogers for that matter, is counting on Obama-supporting Texans to fail to read the fine print and buy into the deception. In other words, somebody will fall for the okeedoke. And that’s how a black woman who wants to impeach a president with a Hitler mustache could pull a bait and switch on his supporters.
As a son of Texas and brilliant statesman once said, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove