The mainstreaming of racism on Fox News - By Jennifer Rubin

[DonViejo]

Rubin's ripping; her three blog entries from today:


Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.

By Jennifer Rubin

We’ve made the distinction before, but it bears repeating: There are professional, fair and conscientious news people on Fox News. No one could watch the final debate and deny that Chris Wallace is among the best in the business. Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly have earned their place among top debate moderators and interviewers. What we are about to discuss does not apply to them, but it threatens to diminish the news legitimacy of their employer and depress their own ratings as the Fox News label becomes tarnished.

The degree to which Fox fake-news programming (e.g. Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, “Fox and Friends”) has mainstreamed and defended blatant racism is shocking. Overshadowed by Newt Gingrich’s outburst on Megyn Kelly’s show last night was Sean Hannity’s birther dog-whistle. He directed his rant to President Obama:

You want to go to Canada? I’ll pay for you to go to Canada. You want to go to Kenya? I’ll pay for you to go to Kenya. Jakarta, where you went to school back in the day, you can go back there. Anywhere you want to go. I’ll put the finest food — caviar, champagne, you name it. I have one stipulation: You can’t come back.

Now, do we think it’s coincidental that he picked Kenya, folks? Do we think Hannity is not ringing the birther bell, suggesting (affirming, actually) for the benefit of his alt-right audience that, in his mind, Obama is a foreigner, probably Muslim and definitely not “one of us”?

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/10/26/the-mainstreaming-of-racism-on-fox-news/?utm_term=.487f4211e66b&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

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Look where anti-immigrant advocates have taken the GOP

By Jennifer Rubin October 26 at 2:50 PM

Republicans understood, or some of them did, after the 2012 presidential election that the GOP could not continue to put off Hispanic voters. The GOP nevertheless nominated an openly xenophobic candidate bent on demonizing Hispanics. The very fact that the border problem is minor (net immigration now flows from the United States to Mexico) compared with the visa overstays (many from Asia) suggests Donald Trump is fixated on keeping certain illegal immigrants out — the ones he calls “murderers” and “rapists.” If the GOP had a problem with Hispanics before this election, we can only imagine where it will be after the election.

Remember: Texas and Arizona, two red states with large Hispanic populations, are now in play and are winnable by Hillary Clinton, in part because of her strength with Hispanic voters. Trump this month has not had more than a four-point lead in polling. In Arizona, Clinton is ahead in the RealClearPolitics average. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is leading comfortably in his reelection race.

Then there is Nevada, a state Trump won in the primaries and that is absolutely winnable in the general election. Nevada political guru Jon Ralston reports:

Of Culinary (Union)’s 57,000 members, more than 30,000 are Hispanic and nearly 7,000 are African-American. And on the eve of the election, nearly 60 percent – 34,000 – of the union’s members are registered to vote, a record total for Local 226. . . .

This is no fly-by-night operation, either. They may be blue-collar workers, but they have sophisticated charts and algorithms designed to maximize the possibility that the doors they knock on will produce voters for their candidates. The Culinary hall is festooned with color-coded charts and tallies of doors knocked, while down the corridor red pins are stuck in a map to show where they have contacted voters.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/10/26/look-where-anti-immigrant-advocates-have-taken-the-gop/?utm_term=.a2c63e4dccb4&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

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Sane Republicans should pack their bags and flee the GOP

By Jennifer Rubin October 26 at 11:30 AM

If we do not experience some cataclysmic event, Donald Trump will lose badly and many Republicans will lose their seats. Trump may or may not concede, and the nutty cheering section (from Bill O’Reilly to Breitbart) can cry foul and blame whomever they please. (Surely not themselves!) But it will hardly matter. There will be much discussion on the right, some thoughtful and some ridiculous, about what went wrong, who is to blame, how to fix the GOP, etc. But is all that really necessary?

Surely there is a sufficient body of people in the center-right who are entirely and thoroughly disgusted with the existing GOP. The once Grand Old Party has come to embody the heinous qualities that liberals unfairly attributed to all Republicans (e.g. hostile to women, the poor and immigrants) and as a political matter has atrophied and accommodated itself to charlatans, snake-oil salesmen and alt-right bigots. Don’t try to reason with this crowd; just up and go.

Center-right Americans committed to a strong national security policy, free markets with a humane safety net and corrupt-free politics can just leave the GOP and start something new. No furrowed brows and sweating over whether to fire Reince Priebus would be needed. No need to figure out how to expel the evangelical charlatans who believe in nothing but their own power. No need to figure out how to keep talk-radio hecklers and fake Fox News figures from spreading nonsense and making the party dumber by the year. No need to wrest control of early primaries from states that favor fringe candidates.

Plant a flag, announce your principles and then decide whom you want to invite. Save all the energy that otherwise would be wasted on another useless autopsy report and arguing with people who threw away every conviction to support Trump.


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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/10/26/sane-republicans-should-pack-their-bags-and-flee-the-gop/?utm_term=.4c82e10c0d39&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1