Matt Kibbe, president and CEO of FreedomWorks, tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview that it's time to launch a “serious conversation” with African-American voters about how big government economics affects the black community.
Kibbe, whose new book is called “Black and White” said “unemployment is higher in the African-American community and big government policies ultimately punish those who can least afford higher energy prices, higher taxes — all of the things that this administration has done," he said. "So we wanted to go and really challenge those preconceived notions that the establishment pounded us with.”
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Progressive activist and former adviser in President Barack Obama’s administration Van Jones criticized the book as borderline insulting and said the GOP would be better off addressing elements within the party that are hostile to people of color.
Kibbe blasted that assessment.
“It’s funny. He’s a classic Alinskyite,” Kibbe countered. “He never names names. There’s always this vague smear that somehow somebody in our community is racist. Call them out. Call them out by name. He’s trying to change the subject because he doesn’t want to talk about the damaging economics of the Obama administration.
"He doesn’t want to talk about the debt. He doesn’t want to talk about what Obamacare does to our healthcare system and he certainly doesn’t want to talk about 14 plus percent joblessness in the black community.”
Kibbe rejects the idea that because Obama is ahead in the polls in some swing states that he is bound for re-election.
“Obviously, some of these polls are spin,” he said. “They’re trying to repress Republican turnout, but honest political scientists and pollsters that are trying to get it right have a hard time measuring the energy on the ground. They got Texas wrong with Ted Cruz, they got Indiana wrong with Richard Mourdock and they have it fundamentally wrong in Ohio. We just did a major event in Cincinnati — 7,000 people — sold out. Josh Mandel told me that it was the biggest, most energetic crowd he had seen in this entire campaign.”
Kibbe said Mitt Romney is a “good debater” and “if he performs like he did in the primaries, he will do well.”
He said Romney can’t win merely by opposing failed Obama policies. “Voters want to know what you would do, and don’t listen to the Republican establishment types that tell you say nothing,” according to Kibbe.
If Romney loses, Kibbe said he doesn’t consider it a referendum on tea party fiscal conservatism.
“Obviously, tea partiers were looking for an alternative to Mitt Romney but they also understand that firing Obama is our first priority,” he said.
“We’ve always been focused more on the Senate and we think it’s important to understand that we are repopulating the Republican caucus in the Senate with real constitutional conservatives and that’s going to create a fundamental change in public policy regardless of who is president.”
Kibbe said he thinks the Senate will be dominated by tea party members.
“We’re very close to a functional majority in the new Republican majority in the Senate,” he said. “You can just look at the various senators from Mike Lee to Rand Paul to Pat Toomey to Marco Rubio — all of them offering real ideas in contrast to Harry Reid who hasn’t been able to write a budget in three years.
“What’s interesting about the map is the battlegrounds we need to win — Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida — these are the same states that Mitt Romney needs to win,” he said. “These are the states that we need to win to take control of the Senate and these are the states where the tea party has been particularly organized for years. They won these states in 2010."
But Kibbe refused to weigh in on the Todd Akin situation in Misouri.
“We’re going to stay out of that race and, frankly, the first principle of the tea party ethos is self-responsibility," he said. "Todd Akin committed a self-inflicted wound and, frankly, his actions look quite selfish to me. He’s putting at risk taking the Senate. We’ll leave it to everybody to make up their own mind on that but FreedomWorks is staying out.”
FreedomWorks has endorsed scores of candidates in Senate, House and state races but Kibbe said he is most excited about Josh Mandel's chances in Ohio.
“If you watched him evolve as a candidate and a real legislative entrepreneur, he’s going to be the surprise on Election Day,” Kibbe predicted.
“He’s going to win that race in Ohio. Same with Connie Mack in Florida," Kibbe added. "If you start adding up the number of legislative entrepreneurs that are coming to the U.S. Senate, returning to the U.S. House, this is a fundamentally different process than we’ve seen in the past.”
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