The GOP puts much stock on their "Christian Values Platform" although there are "MANY" Democrats that are devout Christians the Democratic Party is "AFRAID" to use Christianity and the Bible to back up their views. The Bible and Jesus were very very liberal by today's standards. I am an Independent, former Republican and would like to help President Obama win re-election. So I compiled my own set of Christian Values to help the Democratic Party backup some of their "VALUES" and these "Christian Values" are curiously missing from the Republican Platform:

Psalms. 140:12. I know that the LORD will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and justice for the poor.

Deuteronomy. 15:7. If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

Isaiah . 10:1-3. "Woe to those who enact evil statutes, and to those who continually record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, and rob the poor of My people of their rights... Now what will you do in the day of punishment, and in the devastation which will come from afar?"

Luke 6:24. "But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full."

Proverbs 29:7. The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor; the wicked does not understand such concern.

Matthew. 6:24. "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Money."

Timothy 6:10. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith, and pierced themselves with many a pang.

Matthew 7:1-5“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

James 4:11-12 “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?”

Galatians 5:14 “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Proverbs 31:9 “Open your mouth, judge righteously; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Leviticus 19:34"You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."

Ezekiel 47:22 “You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel."

Any show that has Karen Finney on as a guest I am watching. She is my favorite person next to Rachel

I regularly watch and enjoy your show, today as a gay viewer I turned it off. Traynham the cowardly self loathing VICHY QUEER that worked for Santorum, that equated OUR LIVES with screwing a DOG, and equated us to child mollestors, and that sniveling piece of human refuse helped him spread that message. Tranyham was "outed" by the LGBT community, and I can't imagine he's a crowd-pleaser in the African American community either.

How can you have Amy Holmes on your show? did your forget some of the comments Beck made about Pres. Obama? How can this woman even work for Beck unless its purely for the money. And what does that say about her?

BTW why do identify Holmes as a Conservative Independent instead of what she does like you do with most other guests? You should Identify her as working for Glenn Beck's GBTV. If you are going to have her on make sure people know what she does for a living.

Agree about Amy Holmes. You may respect her as a person of color, but most of us just see her as a hack. Please don't invite her back.

Thanks for this discussion about AA republicans. I am a 66 year white female. I am a lifelong, liberal. I have supported Obama in 2008 and will again this year. I come from a family of immigrants. My mother was born in Sicily....my paternal grandparents in Southern Italy. We are the "swarthy" dark Italians as opposed to the Northern version. Our family is diverse in politics.
To clarify, I am still trying to figure out how anyone in our Italian American family could be republican, the anti immigrant party; the anti-health care party. So the notion of African American republicans has perplexed me as much has that bent had perplexed me in my own family. And the notion of a gay African American working for, supporting Rick Santorum simply blows me away. As an Italian American any mention of Santorum, Alito, Scalia, Guilliana makes me squeamish and angry anytime they use their ancestry to justify their right wing world view? So clearly when I hear African Americans working for the likes of Romeny, Santorum, et al....I remain confused and do not understand.

I love Melissa's strong stance to explain African Americans are not a monolith. As well, women are not a monolith. Nor, obviously, are members of my own family. I get that. I just still do not get how anyone of color, anyone of immigrant ancestry, any woman can hear the dog whistles, see/hear the birtherism, listen to the likes of some of the bigots given a voice in that party, can remain Republican.

I listened to you all. I paid attention and in the end, for me, it is about policy. The policies of the republican party are anti education, anti diversity, anti woman and anti worker. When people of color, women, those with immigration as their recent ancestry will be hurt by these policies, how does one justify it STILL. And as for religion, I was raised Catholic. I no longer belong to an organized religion. But over my lifetime I have read and been educated in the teachings of Jesus Christ. There is no way anyone can spin for me how the modern republican party can be considered anything but anti the teachings of Jesus Christ.

But thanks anyway for trying. I remain unconvinced that anything republican will benefit people of color, women, immigrants, workers.

Disappointing to have a discussion about black conservatism with self-identified black conservatives and not talk about the GOP's concerted (and blatant) effort to suppress the black vote. Or maybe that's what Amy Holmes meant when she suggested that turnout among black voters would be down in 2012.

I agree with the theory that black republicans from Clarence Thomas to Arturo Davis become so for the purpose of getting to the head of the political line faster than they would if they were democrats. Of course a little self loathing doesn't hurt.

You guys need to chill out. We are the good guys and shouldn't be fighting. I think belonging to the Heritage Foundation should be a reason to get a photo ID.

hello, i don't why everyone thinks the president of the us is god! where were all people when mr. bush was running the country into ground ! i'm sick and tried of the racism that has come out since he has taken office. just because you put african americans in your ads don't make it right ! congress stated they were going to make sure he failed and he will be a 1 term president! well you idiots when he failed the country fails! so when we are all on the welfare line when romney and ryan take office and the rich get richer remember what you did !

Melissa, I am just now watching your show from this morning, and I want to clarify why Jack Ryan and the sex clubs was a big deal.

I am a liberal and personally I would not be bothered if my senator had consensual sex in a sex club with his wife, but that was not the damning revelation that tanked Jack Ryan's campaign. As I recall it, the damning revelation from the unsealed divorce records was that he repeatedly tried to coerce his wife into having sex in public in a sex club, after she had made it clear to him she was not comfortable with the idea of having sex in public, and he made her feel humiliated by this coercion.

I am a regular viewer of MHP on both Saturdays and Sundays. The whole 2-hour show on Sunday, 26 Aug, was far and away the best one I've seen yet. I have been watching Ms. Harris-Perry since she first appeared on Rachel's show, maybe 5 years ago.

I was surprised by one thing MHP said as she was defending a woman’s right to choose. She recounted her experience, at a particular point during her pregnancy, of having formed a relationship with the fetus being nurtured inside her. She went on to say that she didn’t know whether this happened in the first or twentieth week or whenever — i.e., there was no consensus among women as to when such a feeling might arise for any one of them. So MHP averred to a sense that human life might precede birth, but that it could not be ascribed to an agreed upon timing and that therefore the law ought to remain silent on the question of when life begins.

But how does that conclusion follow? In fact, we see the right wing draw quite the opposite conclusion — that the uncertain timing of this relationship actually requires government intervention in favor of the earliest possible moment, so as not to exclude women who recognize their particular relationship at the moment of fertilization. For MHP, the absence of consensus argues for political restraint, but it rather constitutes a vacuum that is bound to provoke more rash and arbitrary legislation than might otherwise be contemplated.

In fact, the inception of life is the most favorable basis upon which anti-abortion advocates can argue, for the very reason that it cannot be stipulated. There is no science that is widely agreed to define human life. In the absence of science, the right wing is in its comfort zone, and in the absence of agreement, the most reckless and high-handed political forces are at liberty.

Contrarily, rightful ownership of a woman’s body is the most favorable basis upon which to argue for legal abortion. This was the main point of the show, and here there is perhaps less room for dispute. If a woman doesn’t own her body, who does? Can it be the fetus? If so, upon what terms? Absolute ownership? In an ectopic or high-risk pregnancy, does the fetus have a right to kill its mother? Does a fetus have the right to impoverish its mother and her existing family? To drive her into despair or make her ill? And has the mother no countervailing rights? Must a woman who has had bad luck in birth control fully cede her body to a fetus (or even a blastocyst), with the further result that she become thereafter indentured for a generation? On what moral or legal basis does the fetal claim arise? (Note Judith Jarvis Thomson’s hard-minded essay in this vein: )

Finally, though I unreservedly trust MHP’s account that she communed with her child-to-be — certainly she did — I don’t believe she draws a proper conclusion from her own account. The point is not that she and other women share this experience while failing to agree on its timing. The point is that this experience cannot be shared. MHP’s relationship was something that no one else in the world could have been privy to. Other women have felt (or not felt) what she did, but they, too, had their experience in utter privacy. The issue is not about when the experience occurs, but whose experience it is. The relationship to which MHP refers, if and whenever it may occur, excludes all other parties — most especially the government. It’s not only a woman’s body, it’s also her mind, and taken together, everything that privacy means.

Helo Malissa,

I love your show, and I appreicate you having Black Conservatives on. Although, I'm a democrat, I do respect those who value something, even if it's counter to my own value system. MLK once said it you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Obviously they are standing for something.

My question to them if I had the chance would have been, What is their stand on voter suppression methods of the Republican Party?, What is their stand on the extreme positions of their party?, and Have they been able to impact either two things? In other words, would these two things be worst with out input from the black convervatives?

James K. Polk was associated with 'Manifest Destiny' a policy which said the US had a right to all real estate to the Pacific shore. Was this land vacant? No, it was populated with Native Americans. How did we treat them? We lied, broke treaties, appointed political hacks to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, spread forced Christianity, blankets infected with smallpox, etc. Cannot believe none of your guests mentioned James K. Polk in association with our shameful treatment of Native Americans.

This election has certainly made the stark contrasts of the political parties transparent like never before. There was a time when I would vote split ticket, because I could vote for the reasonableness and fresh ideas on which the candidates ran. But today's politics are different and we have drawn sharp lines.

It's so unfortunate that the Republican party has clearly become a party
that shows little compassion for the poor or anyone who is different from them
(since they are mostly catering to whites), they have become the party of
"no" and refuse to govern for which we pay them for, and they have
become the party of no new ideas. Democracy always works best when all positions are examined and a great compromise crafts legislation that represents all of us. I believe the Democrats still have such a vision for which I'm grateful.

I understood Melissa's outburst, and mostly because when most republican pundits
come on the various shows, they have a mantra, and they repeat it without thought of the questions and situations posed. It's very difficult to reason with a brick wall. As I've written in my book "Time to Act America" Republicans tend to embody the disease I call "SINS"...the symptoms are Short-sightedness, Ignorance, Narrow-mindedness and Stupidity. As Democrats we need to stay calm, keep the facts in front of us at all times show their inflexibility to dare to think issues through then continue to give them the facts.

I am sorry but does Michael Steele stand behind a door or in a tunnel before he comes on the AIR? His comments so many times have nothing to do with reality. Send him over to Fox News. I think then his thoughts will make sense or nonesense. But over there it doesn't matter.