Republican Racist Agenda

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

GOP's Southern Strategy

The Philladelphia Inquirer's editorial "The Southern Strategy: Free at last" states, "Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!"

At least, America should hope it's dead. The witch being the vaunted Southern Strategy of the Republican Party, which since 1968 has used racial fears to divide this country politically and reap the results in presidential elections.

Following passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, white Southerners feared the impact of the growing black electorate. So, lifelong Democrats pledged allegiance to the GOP, which promised to protect them from the miscegenating throng.

For 40 years, Republican strategists used code words about black criminals (remember Willie Horton?), welfare cheats, and con artists to suggest that any minority candidate might be susceptible to such behavior, to suggest that no black politician could be trusted.

But the election Tuesday of Barack Obama to be the nation's first African American president should finally move the GOP to a new direction.

Dead bear covered with Obama signs found at school

CULLOWHEE, N.C. – Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.

Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor for public relations, said Monday night that maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school's administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear's head, Tvedt said.

The bear had been shot in the head, Tvedt said.

"Western Carolina University deplores the inappropriate behavior that has led to this troubling incident," Tvedt said.

"Confederate flag replaces Obama sign"
CHESTER, Va. (AP) - Chesterfield County police are investigating the theft of a resident's campaign sign supporting Barack Obama's historic bid for the presidency.

The 4-by-8-foot sign in the yard of a black resident was replaced by a Confederate flag.

The Obama sign was posted by 78-year-old Leroy C. McLaughlin, a Baptist minister. He reported it missing on Friday.

...A spokesman for Obama's campaign in Virginia said there have been other incidents ini Virginia and elsewhere that have had racial overtones.

Associated Press - October 21, 2008 7:45 AM ET

George Wallace's Heirs: McCain-Palin

Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home, wrote an excellent piece in Slate entitled, "A Legacy of Resentment:Are McCain and Palin Wallace's heirs?"

I finally understand the switch of doom that tripped somewhere deep in my soul during Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention. Her rhetorical star turn—the exuberant snideness, the gut-level rapport with the audience, the frank pleasure at being a yokel on the big stage—reprised the great gifts of the politician who dominated my youth: George Corley Wallace, perpetual governor of Alabama and frequent candidate for president of the less-than-United States.

U.S. Rep John Lewis of Georgia also noticed the similarity. He issued a statement last week accusing Palin and John McCain of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division." He invoked "another period, in the not too distant past," when George Wallace "created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights."

So how is Sarah Palin like—and not like—George Wallace? And how much is John McCain relying on tactics Wallace used? The answers: more than she can probably know and more than he appears to have admitted to himself.

Wallace is a pivotal figure in American politics, the man who yoked white racism with middle-class cultural grievance when the civil rights revolution and the Vietnam War protest movement provoked a (so far) permanent counterinsurgency of "real Americans." At the time of his ascendance in the 1960s as Alabama's "Segregation Forever!" executive, Wallace seemed to be on the wrong side of history, a "stumpy, dingy, surly orphan of American politics" (in the words of Marshall Frady, whose work I rely on here) standin' in the schoolhouse door of enlightenment. He turned out to be the godfather, avatar of a national uprising against the three G's of government, Godlessness, and gun control. There is ample analysis—see especially Wallace biographer Dan T. Carter, whose book I also rely on—tracing the line from Wallace to Ronald Reagan and on to Newt Gingrich with his 1994 junta. Now comes Sarah Palin.

Read the entire McWhorter article "A Legacy of ResentmentAre McCain and Palin Wallace's heirs?" here.

GOP's Mob

"Married to the Mob," by Steven Wells, published on October 17, 2008 in the Philadelphia Weekly:

The last weeks of the campaign reveal the GOP's rotting soul.

A new sport hits America—nelly baiting. It involves walking up to a McCain/Palin supporter with a video camera and pressing ”record”. The result is a guaranteed instant real–life horror documentary, several fine examples of which now litter the Internet.

In the future these videos will be prized historical documents. They mark the exact moment the Republican Party ceased being the most powerful, sophisticated and successful political organization in world history—and instead became a batshit insane racist lynch mob.

Recent research indicates that the more impotent a person feels, the more likely they are to believe in ”magical thinking”.

The crowds at McCain/Palin rallies are proof that the utterly impotent—the broke–ass, credit squeezed, mortgage defaulting, 401(k)–raped, Wal–Mart–waged losers desperately searching for reasons to a) believe that George Bush hasn’t totally screwed them over seven ways to Sunday and b) not to vote for the black guy—will believe absolutely anything.

So the news from the rancid guts of the GOP—freshly fed by Palin and McCain’s ooga–booga speeches— is that Obama is a ”scary”, mysterious, black, Arab, communist, Marxist, PLO–supporting, Hamas–backed, secret ”Muslim” ”faggot” ”one man terror cell” who ”supports terrorism” (because ”it’s in his bloodline”) and is single–handedly responsible for the ongoing collapse of Western capitalism. And who will—if elected—”make us speak Muslim.”

And that Democrats need to get jobs, stop being ”Jews” and ”European socialists” and ”commie faggots” and ”socialist swine”, and to get back to Russia and stop murdering babies and die. Pretty much in that order.

For anyone with a brain and/or a soul—by which I mean everybody on the planet hoping for an Obama victory—these YouTube videos are glorious evidence of what lies at the heart of the GOP—nasty, snarling, finger–sniffing, pin–prick pupiled, reptile brain–stem fascism.

Read the entire article here.

GOP Racist Base Voters

Bart Rettberg writes, "Republican events look like KKK rallies," I have but one thing to ask Sen. John McCain (as well as his sidekick, Gov. Sarah Palin): “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?“

By now everyone in America has witnessed the numerous excerpts of what is occurring at the McCain/Palin stumps around the country. Both candidates have been spouting unbridled hate, fear, division, and derision, then standing back with a smile as the crowd erupts with various chants of “Terrorist!,” “Off with their head!,” “N——-!,” and “Kill him!,” just to name a few. Not to mention the constant swell of boos and hisses every time Obama’s name is uttered.

But where are the flaming crosses? Shouldn’t everyone be wearing their cleanest white sheets? And why isn’t there a noose hanging from the nearest tree, or for an even better photo op, placed on stage behind the speakers standing next to the American flag flapping gently in the wind?

Because let’s face it, these Republican-sanctioned gatherings have become nothing more than heinous KKK rallies. It is unbelievable. Yet what’s really scary is that there are a large number of children amongst the crowds, who are carefully taught to accept the hate and fear being spewed around them.

Of course, now that the word is out about the true nature of his campaign in recent days, McCain is suddenly suggesting, albeit half-heartily, that Sen. Obama is actually “a decent man.” But by then, the damage has already been done. I’m sorry, but you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater and then stand near the exit with a big smile and say “Oops, just kidding!“

So again — and I paraphrase — does the McCain/Palin campaign, and most especially the Republican “mob” backing them, have any sense of decency left?

Letter by Bart Rettburg from Charleston.

John McCain's Southern Strategy

They wheeled George Wallace in backward and then lifted him onto a seat behind his bulletproof lectern. Confetti, thrown by little girls in straw hats, caught in his swept-back hair. Wallace waved to the crowd.

We were in South Boston in February 1976, and Wallace was running for president. Five hundred people were packed into a small hall, and 300 more waited outside.

Wallace had been shot and paralyzed in Laurel, Md., during the 1972 presidential primary. Many people remember that. But not many remember that he also won the Maryland primary that year, just like he won Michigan, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Now he was in Southie, where a few nights before, police and anti-busing protesters had clashed, with many injuries. Wallace was not cowed.

“You! The working men and women will be the kings and queens instead of the ultra-liberal left that has been getting everything all the time!” he roared.

After his speech, Wallace took some questions.

“My strategy?” Wallace said. “I put down the hay where the goats can get it.”

The name of George Wallace, who died in 1998, was invoked recently by Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who likened the rhetoric of Wallace to the rhetoric of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

“George Wallace never threw a bomb,” Lewis said. “He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Ala. As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all.”

A stunned McCain called on Barack Obama to “repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments.”

Obama obliged. In part. Bill Burton, spokesman for Obama, said: “Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace. . . But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee . . . ‘pals around with terrorists.’ ”

McCain wants to get out of this campaign without being accused of racism. And that was the point of Lewis’ statement. Lewis was issuing a warning to McCain: Don’t lay down the hay where the goats can get it.

By Roger Simon writer for Politico.com.

Lewis: "I do not regret what I said"

U.S. Rep. John Lewis on Tuesday said he had no regrets for claiming that Republican rhetoric in the presidential contest reminded him of words spoken by segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace —- but he admitted that he could have made his point “in a different way.”

“I do not regret what I said,” Lewis said. “Maybe it could have been said in a different way, because it was not suggesting that [Republican running mates] John McCain or Sarah Palin was closely related [in] any way to the actions of Governor Wallace.”

Said the Atlanta congressman and civil rights icon: “It was all about what I call toxic speech —- statements [and] an audience that can unleash bitterness and hatred. And I don’t need anyone to lecture me about my feelings, or what I have observed for more than 50 years.”

Last week, in the face of declining polls, Republicans concentrated on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and what they called issues of character —- and what Democrats called “code words” for race.

Before large crowds, GOP vice presidential nominee Palin repeatedly criticized Obama for “palling around with terrorists.”

“This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said.

On Saturday, Lewis rocked the presidential campaign with his statement that McCain and Palin “are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

“During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate.”

McCain immediately called Lewis’ remarks “beyond the pale” and called on Obama to repudiate them. On Monday McCain fumed to CNN that Lewis’ controversial remarks were “so disturbing” that they “stopped me in my tracks.”

The Obama campaign said any comparisons to Wallace were out of line, but also said that “Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked.”

Lewis made his Tuesday remarks at Spelman College in Atlanta, after the unveiling of a video documenting the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march and the confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge between Alabama state troopers and 600 African-American demonstrators.

Speaking with reporters, Lewis said that a comparison that wouldn’t have injected racial images would have been the McCarthy era of the 1950s and the accusations of “guilt by association” that marked that period.

Regardless of any criticism, which he characterized as overblown, Lewis said his Saturday protest had its effect. “I think it checked some of the things that had been going on. I don’t think you’re going to see people making reference to a young man who is the nominee of his party as running around with terrorists. I don’t think you’re going to have that anymore,” Lewis said.

McCain and the Republican Reich Wing

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne's aticle "McCain and the Raging Right" states:

Are we witnessing the reemergence of the far right as a power in American politics? Has John McCain, inadvertently perhaps, become the midwife of a new movement built around fear, xenophobia, racism and anger?

McCain has clearly become uneasy with some of the forces that have gathered around him. He has begun to insist, against the sometimes loud protests from his crowds, that Barack Obama is, among things, a "decent person."

Yet McCain's own campaign is playing with powerful extremist themes to denigrate Obama. When his running mate, Sarah Palin, first brought up Obama's association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, who has become a centerpiece of McCain's attacks, she accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists." What other "terrorists" was she thinking about?

Since Obama was a child when Ayers was part of the Weather Underground, and since even Republicans have served on boards with Ayers, this is classic guilt by association.
Ayers has been dragged into this campaign because there is a deep frustration on the right with Obama's enthusiasm for shutting down the culture wars of the 1960s.

Precisely because Obama is not a baby boomer, he carries none of that generation's scars. Most Americans (including most boomers) are weary of living in the past and reprising the 1960s every four years.

Yet culture war politics is relatively mild compared with the far-right appeals that are emerging this year. It is as if McCain's loyalists overshot the '60s and went back to the '50s or even the '30s.

What we are witnessing is the mainstreaming of the far right, a phenomenon that began to take shape with some of the earliest attacks on Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

Read the entire E.J. Dionne column here.

David Gergen on August 3, 2008:

David Gergen:

Bill Kristol Said for Palin to Go Kramer on Obama

Bill Kristol's article "The Wright Stuff," says that the "Hockey Mom" is going to go for the Michael Richards (Kramer)attack against Obama. Bill Kristol called Mrs. Palin to remind her that her base was still extremely racist, and for her to take the gloves off and play the race card. He didn't mention Sarah Palin's own husband's association with the Alaska Independence Party. Mr. Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, happens to be a card-carying member of a secessionist movement in Alaska that wants Alaska to gain its independence from the rest of the USA and form its own state.

As McCain drops in the polls, the calls for the Michael Richards (Sinefeld's Kramer) will grow even louder. Matt Drudge has been doing his part by conflating OJ with Senator Obama. Drudge even replaced Obama's picture with OJ's on his website. Kristol and Drudge as well as the David Duke types know that there is a large number of straight-up racists brownshirts that can't wait to scapegoat a race for their own political gains. Kristol knows this, since that was Joseph Goebbels' tact in Nazi Germany to exterminate the Jews.

Check out Kristol's column, he even entitled it "The Wright Stuff"......Ha, ha, ha....Kristol said for Palin to take the gloves off and play the race card with a wink and a nod:

Palin also made clear that she was eager for the McCain-Palin campaign to be more aggressive in helping the American people understand “who the real Barack Obama is.” Part of who Obama is, she said, has to do with his past associations, such as with the former bomber Bill Ayers. Palin had raised the topic of Ayers Saturday on the campaign trail, and she maintained to me that Obama, who’s minimized his relationship with Ayers, “hasn’t been wholly truthful” about this.

I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?

She didn’t hesitate: “To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

I guess so. And I guess we’ll soon know McCain’s call on whether he wants to bring Wright up — perhaps at his debate with Obama Tuesday night.

Aint Yo Bama: Conservative Forum Sells Racist Stereotypes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as a racial stereotype on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.

Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed "offensive material." The summit and the exhibit hall where the boxes were sold had been open since Thursday afternoon.

The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box from a rented booth at the summit sponsored by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council.

While Obama Waffles takes aim at Obama's politics by poking fun at his public remarks and positions on issues, it also plays off the old image of the pancake-mix icon Aunt Jemima, which has been widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype. Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.

Placing Obama in Arab-like headdress recalls the false rumor that he is a follower of Islam, though he is actually a Christian.

On the back of the box, Obama is depicted in stereotypical Mexican dress, including a sombrero, above a recipe for "Open Border Fiesta Waffles" that says it can serve "4 or more illegal aliens." The recipe includes a tip: "While waiting for these zesty treats to invade your home, why not learn a foreign language?"

The novelty item also takes shots at 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry, Obama's wife, Michelle, and Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Wearing white chef's aprons, Whitlock and DeMoss were doing a brisk business at noon Saturday selling the waffle mix to people crowded around their booth. Two pyramids of waffle mix boxes stood several feet high on the booth's table.

"It's the ultimate political souvenir," DeMoss told a customer.

Asked if he considered the pictures of Obama on the box to be racial stereotypes, Whitlock said: "We had some people mention that to us, but you think of Newman's Own or Emeril's — there are tons and tons of personality-branded food products on the market. So we've taken that model and, using political satire, have highlighted his policies, his position changes."

The socially conservative public policy groups American Values and Focus on the Family Action co-sponsored the summit.

Read the full AP story "Forum sells 'Obama Waffles' with racial stereotype," by Joan Lowy.