Shocking Statement by CBC Chairman Emanuel Cleaver

LEE’S SUMMIT, SEPTEMBER 20, 2012 – Congressional Black Caucus Leader and Missouri’s 5^th Congressional District Representative Emanuel Cleaver said about African-Americans who refuse to vote “They are not worth the color if they don’t vote.  They ought to give us their color back.  Their African-American credentials need to be snatched if they don’t vote,” at a CBC forum on voting rights, according to a video and accompanying story from CNSNews.com.

Cleaver had been invited to the Clay County Business Forum yesterday, an event he missed as well as today’s South Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Candidate Forum.  Representative Cleaver had time to tell African-American’s to “…give us their color back.” But he did not have time to tell those who would vote in the November 6^th Election what he has done for constituents, and what he will do about bringing jobs to his district.

It seems that his words are one thing, but his actions are totally different.

If Emanuel Cleaver wants people to vote, then he should help them understand what he stands for, and what he will do in Washington over the next two years.  The 5^th District, one he spent political capital with the Missouri Assembly to have drawn to protect his seat, appears not to deserve his time to allow voters to get to know him.  Voting without knowing who you are voting for is blind faith at the very best, and terribly damaging to a country financially hemorrhaging to the tune of $16,000,000,000.00 ($16 trillion and still climbing) at least.

If his harsh rhetoric from the pulpit of the CBC is not backed up by meeting his constituents, then the words are empty.

If his words are empty, then when he talks about the need for “compromise” in Washington are these vacuous words, words that are fully empty of meaning, conviction and action?

Is it not fair then, to assume that any campaign promises will be empty and meaningless as well: words designed to get your vote, and then abandon them like yesterday’s news?

The Reverend Cleaver is not one to talk the talk, and walk the walk; especially when he will not take the time to meet with his new constituents at forums that are designed to have a large level of interaction between candidates and with the people they’ll represent.

He may be a great speaker, someone who can speak the moral high ground of voting – a right won by the shedding of blood by all of our ancestors whether oppressed by the tyranny of slavery, or the tyranny of a European Monarch who saw all as subjects of the Crown – but Mr. Cleaver does not walk the same moral plane he expects the rest of us to walk: His moral compass is a V.I.P pass – but we can take that away on November 6^th.

Hopefully then we can start reducing spending and find our way to a fiscally sound budget that pays down the debt in our lifetimes.

Respectfully Submitted,
The Lee’s Summit Conservative