Although she was indoctrinated into liberal thinking at a young age and has been a life-long Democrat, Anita MonCrief said in an interview that she now identifies with economic and social reforms that are championed by conservatives.
MonCrief is a former employee of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) and its Project Vote affiliate who offered testimony last year in Harrisburg, Pa. as part of an election law suit filed against the organization. MonCrief discussed Project Vote’s voter registration activities and ACORN’s relationship with the Obama presidential campaign as part of her testimony.
“I’ve always been an outsider in my party because I ask a lot of questions and I didn’t like some of the answers I’ve been getting,” she said. “The problem I have with Democrats is that they promise you the world but then they don’t deliver. I identify now with conservative ideas because the answer is not social welfare. The answer instead comes from being less dependent on the government and keeping families together.”
MonCrief now plans to drop her party registration as a Democrat but is not quite ready to embrace Republicans. Instead she is more inclined to be an independent, unaffiliated voter. However, MonCrief does see an opportunity for Republicans to connect better with African-American voters who actually share the party’s convictions on key issues. This can happen if Republicans adopt a better communications strategy, she added.
MonCrief also said she very supportive of the ACORN 8 whistleblower group that came together last year in response to an embezzlement scandal involving the national organization’s top officials. But she is not part of ACORN 8 and prefers to chart her own path.
“While we are fighting the same cause, my beliefs and viewpoints have changed and I have moved more to the right in my thinking,” MonCrief said. “I am an ex-liberal trying to find my way.”
By contrast, ACORN 8 members have said that they remain committed to ACORN’s stated mission and would prefer to reform the organization from within by calling for greater transparency and accountability.
“They’re working their way, and I’m working mine,” MonCrief said. “I’ve come to believe that social programs do not work and are actually quite destructive to the black family.”
Food stamp and housing assistance programs, for instance, do not provide people with an incentive to get married and to keep husbands and wives together, she said.
MonCrief who is Catholic is now engaged to a Baptist and looks forward to providing her daughter with a stable family home.
“You might think there would be some push, pull as far as religion for our daughter is concerned,” she said. “But we have common interests, common values and common goals. I’ve also been able to connect with people across the country from areas like the Midwest. We’ve been able to get beyond media stereotypes of what Republicans are and I find that we have a lot in common, even though I have a different set of experiences being a black woman from Alabama.”
Unfortunately, Republicans still allow their opponents to define the national debate too much and to hide behind the specter of racism.
“If you want to shut a Republican up just call him a racist,” she said. “They just don’t know how to respond to these accusations. But historically Republicans have been favorable to blacks, while the Democrats have actually pushed policies that were quite harmful.”
MonCrief is also an ardent supporter of Second Amendment rights.
“Even when I was a liberal I always thought Charlton Heston was a firecracker and I loved him to death,” she said. “He stood up for the Constitution and did a good job of explaining why these rights were important. I’ve noticed that whenever there is movement to take away gun rights it’s usually in African-American community like Washington D.C.”
This is yet another area where Republicans and African-Americans can find common ground, she said.
