"Look behind me -- veeewy slowly --

and tell me if that colored fella is still back there?"

Apparently not.

From the AP.

Black conservatives conflicted on Obama campaign

By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press

Black conservative talk show host Armstrong Williams has never voted for a Democrat for president. That could change this year with Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's nominee.

"I don't necessarily like his policies; I don't like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it," Williams said. "I can honestly say I have no idea who I'm going to pull that lever for in November. And to me, that's incredible."

Just as Obama has touched black Democratic voters, he has engendered conflicting emotions among black Republicans. They revel over the possibility of a black president but wrestle with the thought that the Illinois senator doesn't sit beside them ideologically.

"Among black conservatives," Williams said, "they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him in November."

Perhaps sensing the possibility of such a shift, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has made some efforts to lure black voters. He recently told Essence magazine that he would attend the NAACP's annual convention next month, and he noted that he recently traveled to Selma, Ala., scene of seminal voting rights protests in the 1960s, and "talked about the need to include 'forgotten Americans.'"

Still, the Arizona senator has a tall order in winning black votes, no doubt made taller by running against a black opponent. In 2004, blacks chose Democrat John Kerry over President Bush by an 88 percent to 11 percent margin, according to exit polls.

J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he's thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he's still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.

"And Obama highlights that even more," Watts said, adding that he expects Obama to take on issues such as poverty and urban policy. "Republicans often seem indifferent to those things."

...

By eagerly lining up to join a political party whose electoral margins depend entirely on appeasing people who hate them, that squirrelly, self-loathing hyperminority known as "black conservatives" have always operated under the bizarre converse of Groucho Marx's famous dictum: "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."

And in return for their inexplicable loyalty to an organization that fundamentally despises their existence, black conservatives are trotted out one day every four years at the Republican National Convention to "prove" to people who don't know any better that it's not a John Birch Society reunion.

But now, according to this article, black conservatives have some serious rethinking to do.

All seven of them.