Editorial: Campaign racial codes like dog whistle for bigots

[mfcorey1]

South Carolina, site of Saturday's potentially pivotal Republican primary, has a long history of elections with ugly racial undertones.
In 1980, a strategist for Ronald Reagan spread anonymous charges that Texas Gov. John Connally was "trying to buy the black vote." In 2000, anonymous "push" pollsters called South Carolina voters to ask what they'd think of candidate John McCain if they knew he had a black child. (The McCains had adopted a baby girl from Bangladesh.) And in 2008, former president Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife, suggested Barack Obama was unelectable in part because of his race.

This year, Newt Gingrich is continuing that sorry tradition. At Monday's debate in Myrtle Beach, Gingrich repeated attacks he has made elsewhere, calling President Obama a "food-stamp president" because the number of recipients is up 43% since he took office and denying that he's insulting black Americans by saying that blacks should prefer work to food stamps. Never mind that about 70% of food-stamp recipients are white or Hispanic.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-01-19/Campaign-racial-codes-like-dog-whistle-for-bigots/52685174/1

[HopeHoops]

1. WHOA! HALT BOOT - What the hell do facts have to do with a Republican election?

[BiggJawn]

2. Dog Whistle?

Naw, I think it's gone beyond that. The only thing they haven't done yet is start using "The N-Word" in public.

This is more like it...

[IDemo]

4. I was going to say..

[redqueen]

5. Exactly. It's an air-raid siren. 'Dog whistle' implies subtlety

and a message that is vague enough that most would miss it.

These don't seem to be coded, vague, or subtle.

[Zax2me]

3. Yet somehow Obama was elected.

Not selected as was little bush.
Didn't work the first time.
Why would it matter now?

[divide_and_rule]

6. I agree

but most here do not.
the question is why that is so?