Race and the GOP race: Republicans seem to be in a contest to see who can dogwhistle loudest

[marmar]

Race and the GOP race
So much for America's 'post-racial' politics: Republicans seem to be in a contest to see who can dogwhistle loudest

Teresa Wiltz
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 7 January 2012


The other night, I dreamed that I was fighting off the zombie apocalypse, single-handedly, armed with nothing more than a stick. I kept walloping those zombie heads, but they just kept coming, indefatigable, constant, terrifying. I woke up; told my husband about my nightmare. His response: "that's because you've been watching the Republican primaries."

He's got a point. These days, watching the GOP presidential wannabes in action is akin to watching a horror movie. Except that this is reality TV, and the utterances spilling from the mouths of zombie pols like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul remind me of an old school flick that gave me serious nightmares: Birth of a Nation.

First, there were those new-old revelations about Rep Ron Paul's extremist newsletters, which blamed "malicious gays" for spreading Aids, threw out a lot of crazed antisemitism and lobbed all kinds of insults against African Americans, including this little gem: "I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in [Washington, DC] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal." In case you were inclined to buy the crotchety libertarian's story that he didn't read the newsletters and they were written by a rogue ghostwriter back in the 1980s and '90s, and didn't reflect his own beliefs, think again. This week, Paul, the darling of disaffected liberals, reiterated his aversion for the landmark Civil Rights Act, declaring that if he were president, he would repeal it. (It erodes privacy and personal property; yay, states' rights!)

Then, there's Rick Santorum, who certainly seemed to say, while stumping for the Iowa caucuses, "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them someone else's money, I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money." And, just this Thursday, we had Newt Gingrich, the champion of child labor, announce that, should he be invited to the NAACP conference, "I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps." Yeah, that'll go over well – but don't hold your breath: NAACP president Ben Jealous told MSNBC that the NAACP has invited Gingrich to speak at its convention many times and he has always turned them down. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/07/race-and-the-gop-race

[JoePhilly]

1. They've dropped the dog whistle and moved on to the bull horn.

[JNelson6563]

4. Agreed.

[rocktivity]

2. I disagree about the dogwhistling -- They've dropped any pretense at subtley

Last edited Tue Jun 16, 2015, 06:18 PM - Edit history (2)

Santorum's "'blahs' are living on your money"; Gringrich's "blacks should demand paychecks"; the Huntsman "Manchurian candidate" video -- all in an effort to corner the racist/fundie base. But I'm not complaining, because little do they know that the harder they embrace the far right, the more they repel their moderate and center-right voters -- the same voters who decided to "bite the bullet" and put Obama over in 2008!


rocktivity

[Scuba]

3. The party of divide is down to one increasingly smaller slice: white male racists.