Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team.
I think Newt Gingrich has a proven track record of changing Washington and getting results.
I have often said one of the reasons more blacks don't support Republicans is because they don't trust the GOP establishment.
Like any group that has endured much, African Americans have created a strong and mutually reinforcing sense of group identity. That's not a bad thing in and of itself.
Republicans think that the NAACP is the only voice in the black community. It is a voice in the black community. But it's not the only voice.
As an Oklahoma quarterback, you learn to perform under pressure.
We need to remember that politics is all about people, not programs. We shouldn't want to take the humanness out of the political arena.
In 2008, as a matter of fact, I had people accusing me of being a Senator Obama supporter because I wouldn't slam him. I said, 'Well, consider the fact that I voted for impeachment for President Clinton, but it wasn't a personal vote. I voted based on the facts and the law and the Constitution and what we were dealing with.'
I still get to preach 14, 15 times a year. But you have to make a living.
You always hear 'black Republican,' but you never hear 'white Democrat.' We've got to get beyond the labels and stereotypes. Other people have hang-ups about it. I don't.
In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.
I would love to be associated with some sports organization. I was a journalism major. That's kind of intriguing, to do something in the political-commentary arena.
The more I ponder some of the boneheaded decisions GOP candidates have made of late, I can't bring myself to believe that they are serious about capturing more than about 8 percent of the black vote.
I believe government should be loyal to parents, teachers and children.
I think that anybody that stays in school, gets good grades, pays the price, I think we are wealthy enough in the public and the private sector in America to make sure that every child in America that wants to continue their education, they should be able to do that.
I guess probably in my time in politics, it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community, despite being subscription television's most valuable customers, they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.
Consider in Washington, around the country today we are talking about balanced budgets, paying down our national debt, getting the economy going, defending ourselves, activist judges. Newt Gingrich did all those things when he was speaker. We got tax relief. We got balanced budgets. We got, you know, job creation. We paid down our national debt.
For longer than I've been involved in the political process, the Republican establishment has claimed to want to provide an alternative for the black community, yet party elite refuse to show up for the game.
They said that I had sold out and (am an) Uncle Tom. And I said well, they deserve to have that view. But I have my thoughts. And I think they're race-hustling poverty pimps.
Well, Mark, I led the charge for five or six years to get reforms for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I was chairman of an organization called 'FM Policy Focus.' What we were saying was, if there was blip in the housing market, Fannie and Freddie would destabilize the greatest economy in the world.
The past two decades revolutionized the way we access information. You and I can have our questions answered with the click of a mouse at any time of day. If America, both corporation and citizen alike, can use these services to solve problems, why can't Washington?
Good policy makes good politics and what I've done has been good politics.
If a 25-year old can't read and write and he or she isn't gaining marketable skills, it doesn't matter if a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House. His or her future will be bleak.
I would caution all of us or I would remind all of us that any candidate that we support, they are going to be flawed.
There's a whole lot more to the African-American community than entertainment and sports.
