2010: The year of the black Republican?

An unusually large number of black Republicans are running for Congress this year... thanks to Obama?

Princella Smith, 26, is running for an open Republican Congressional seat in Arkansas.

At least 32 black Republicans are running for Congress this year, a post-Reconstruction record, The New York Times reports, with several well-positioned to become the first black GOP congressmen since Oklahoma's J.C. Watts retired in 2003. While some Party leaders and candidates credit Obama for proving that white voters will support black contenders, African-American talk-show host Tavis Smiley notes wryly that the last "Year of the Black Republican" — 2006 — "fizzled out." Has Obama's victory ushered in a renaissance for black Republicans? (Watch a Christian Broadcasting Network report about black conservatives)

This is about Obama's incompetence, not his precedent: There's a reason several of these conservative black candidates have "enthusiastic Tea Party support," says Ed Morrissey in Hot Air. They're in sync with the movement on fiscal and national security policy, and in their desire to oust Obama. This should finally kill the "increasingly desperate" media "fiction" that conservative opposition to Obama is driven by racism.

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