By Patrick Martin in the USA:
Infighting in South Carolina presidential primary
21 January 2012
The campaign for the Republican presidential nomination reached a new low in this week’s campaigning in South Carolina. Rival right-wing candidates appealed to racism, anti-immigrant prejudice and religious bigotry in an increasingly vicious contest in the state, with the polls opening at 7 a.m. Saturday.
Only four candidates remain in the race with the withdrawal of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman on Monday and Texas governor Rick Perry on Thursday. Huntsman endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, seen as the frontrunner nationally, while Perry endorsed former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who now holds a narrow lead in the polls of likely voters in South Carolina.
Besides Romney and Gingrich, the remaining candidates include former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
This week’s campaigning revolved around two debates, Monday night in Myrtle Beach with the four candidates plus Perry, who had not yet quit the race, and Thursday night in Charleston, with the field reduced to four.
The turning point in the South Carolina primary may turn out to have been the debate Thursday, when the first question put to the four candidates went to Gingrich. CNN host John King asked him about the impending ABC News broadcast of an interview with his second wife, Marianne, in which she denounced him for his marital infidelity in the 1990s.
Gingrich responded with a denunciation of both ABC for its broadcast and King for his question, which prompted a standing ovation from the audience.
There is vast irony in Gingrich’s purported outrage, as he declared, “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.” It was Gingrich who pioneered what came to be known as the “politics of personal destruction,” particularly in his role in spearheading the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998-99.
As ABC News pointed out in its broadcast Thursday night, Gingrich was having an affair with a congressional aide, now his third wife, Callista, at the very point that he was declaring that Clinton had “less moral authority than any administration in history” after the exposure of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
There was, however, no discussion of the Clinton impeachment in either the Republican debates or the media coverage of the campaign. Gingrich’s personal conduct in the 1990s was raked up only to provide lurid television footage and headlines, while the critical political background—the right-wing effort to oust a twice-elected president through a sex scandal—was ignored.
Once again, sensationalized coverage of marital infidelity served to obscure the real political issues, both historical and contemporary. The result—a further degrading of the already abysmal level of political discussion in the corporate-controlled media and the election campaigns of the two big business parties.
While the media was devoting hours of coverage to Gingrich’s conduct towards his three wives, there was relatively little attention paid to the increasingly frenzied shift to the right by all the Republican candidates.
Gingrich openly appealed to racial bigotry during the first debate. Fox News panelist Juan Williams, who is black, asked about his repeated declarations that African-Americans should seek jobs instead of being satisfied with food stamps and his calling Obama a “food-stamp president.”
Gingrich clearly welcomed the criticism and received a standing ovation from the audience when he denounced “political correctness” and declared, “I’m going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job”—as though mass unemployment were not an inescapable reality imposed by the capitalist system on millions of working people, black, white and Hispanic.
In campaign appearances and press statements in South Carolina, Gingrich also avowed that on his first day as president he would issue an executive order to defy Supreme Court rulings providing legal rights to prisoners at Guantanamo and other US facilities who were seized by the US military and the CIA overseas.
Gingrich Surges With Old, Familiar Ploy: Racist Attacks on Poor People: here.
Mitt Romney pays lower taxes than average American: here. And here.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his tax returns Tuesday morning, revealing that he collected income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million in 2011, nearly $42.6 million over the two-year period. Not a penny of this income was from salary or wages reported on a W-2. Nearly all of it was investment income, including capital gains, dividends and interest: here.
Who Is the GOP Nominee Going to Be – the Adulterer, the Flip Flopper, the Radical, or the Homophobe? Here.
Why Evangelicals Don’t Care When Rich White Conservatives Defile Marriage: here.
Rick Santorum Gets Glitter Bombed, Again: Protesters Shower GOP Candidate With Glitter Over Gay Rights: here.
Santorum Excommunicates 45 Million Christians: Mainline Protestants Are ‘Gone From The World Of Christianity’: here.
Kim Severson, The New York Times News Service: “Fed by antagonism toward President Obama, resentment toward changing racial demographics and the economic rift between rich and poor, the number of so-called hate groups and antigovernment organizations in the nation has continued to grow, according to a report released Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center, which has kept track of such groups for 30 years, recorded 1,018 hate groups operating last year”: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Reblogged this on The Blogspaper.
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Ron Paul Was Implicated In Failed White Supremacist Island Invasion
http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/ron-paul-was-implicated-in-attempted-white-supremacist-island-invasion/
January 20, 2012
In 1981, a lawyer tried to subpoena Ron Paul to testify in the trial
of Don Black, a Grand Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan who would later go
on to found the white supremacist, neo-Nazi website, Stormfront. Black
was charged along with two other Klansmen with planning to violently
overthrow the small Caribbean country of Dominica in what they called
“Operation Red Dog.” While a judge refused to subpoena Paul, Don Black
would come back to haunt him many years later.
In 1981 a group of American and Canadian white supremacists lead by
Klansman and mercenary, Michael (Mike) Perdue planned on taking over a
small West Indian country called Dominica by overthrowing the
government and Prime Minister Eugenia Charles and restoring its
previous prime minister, Patrick Johns into power. The group planned
to create an Aryan paradise in Dominica and make money through
casinos, cocaine and brothels.
On the day the group of white supremacists were supposed to travel to
Dominica, they were arrested by ATF agents and were found with over
thirty automatic weapons, shotguns, rifles, handguns, dynamite,
ammunition, a confederate flag and a Nazi flag. The plan would be
dubbed “The Bayou Of Pigs” after the failed invasion of Cuba.
The leader of the group, Michael Perdue, would plead guilty to
planning the coup and turned state’s evidence. Perdue would testify
that several other people helped organize and fund the coup and that
two Texas politicians were aware of the plan. Among those Perdue
implicated were infamous white supremacist, David Duke, former Texas
Governor, John Connally and Congressman, Ron Paul whom he claimed knew
about the plot. Connally was credited with helping Paul win his first
congressional election.
A judge refused to subpoena Paul and Connally despite the fact that
Perdue had claimed that both of them were aware of the plot. Don
Black’s friend and fellow KKK Grand Wizard, David Duke was called to
testify before a grand jury but claimed that he would take the Fifth
Amendment and never testified. While Duke was never charged with a
crime, several books points to Duke as the organizer who connected
Perdue to the other mercenary Klansmen and the people who funded their
endeavor. (1 2 3) Everyone else implicated by Perdue was charged with
the plot.
Perdue implicated three men as funders of the plot, L.E. Matthews of
Jackson, Mississippi, James C. White of Houston, and David Duke’s
close friend and backer, J.W. Kirkpatrick. Kirpatrick would kill
himself before he could stand trial and White and Matthews would be
acquitted in court. Former Prime Minister of Dominica, Patrick Johns
would be sentenced to 12 years in prison for his part of the plot.
Michael Perdue, Don Black and seven other Klansmen would be sentenced
to only 3 years in prison.
Ron Paul has never made a statement denying knowledge of the plot
despite the fact that he was implicated by Perdue and almost
subpoenaed. Two of the people involved in the plot, Don Black and
David Duke have gone on to become two of the most prominent white
supremacists of the modern era, and also two of Paul’s most
controversial supporters.
Top 10 Racist Ron Paul Friends, Supporters
Paul would be once again tied to Don Black 26 years after the Bayou Of
Pigs. After it was revealed that Black donated $500 dollars to the Ron
Paul Presidential campaign, Ron Paul’s campaign refused to give it
back. Paul was photographed with Black and his son by David Duke’s
former assistant, Jamie Kelso who was an organizer for Ron Paul and
the owner of white supremacist sites, WhiteNewsNow.com and
TheWhiteRace.com and a moderator for Black’s neo-Nazi website,
Stormfront.
Black would become one of Paul’s most enthusiastic supporters and
helped rally the white supremacist community around Paul, through
Stormfront. Paul would praise another Operation Red Dog planner, David
Duke in his newsletters and Duke would return the favor calling him
“our king” and endorsing him for President.
This would not be the first time Paul was tied to white supremacists.
In 80’s, Paul claimed that the best source of his campaign donations
came from a list from notorious neo-Nazi, Willis Carto’s publication,
The Spotlight. In the 90’s, Paul’s newsletters were originally
discovered from an online neo-Nazi directory. As recently as 2006,
Paul was scheduled to appear on David Duke’s white supremacist
protégé, James Edwards’ radio show, “The Political Cesspool.”
Ron Paul’s White Supremacist Radio Connections
Given the scrutiny given to presidential candidates, should not Paul’s
connection to an attempted violent invasion of a small island by white
supremacists be re-investigated. If the media investigates every
accusation of affairs or sexual harassment for Herman Cain or Newt
Gingrich, shouldn’t they investigate accusations that Paul knew about
a white supremacist plot to violently overthrow the government of a
small Black island, especially with Paul’s other connections to white
supremacists?
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Romney Staff Spent Nearly $100,000 to Hide Records
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/us-usa-campaign-romney-computers-idUSTRE7B500X20111206
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Gingrich wins South Carolina Republican primary with right-wing, pseudo-populist appeal
http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/scar-j23.shtml
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TRUTHOUT’S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES
The brazen hypocrisy of the GOP on sexual, religious and family matters has been a consistent source of bewilderment for BuzzFlash since the site was founded in May of 2000.
In fact, BuzzFlash (now a part of Truthout) began largely in reaction to the dissemination of a disingenuous, Republican, demagogic, political hypocrisy that is inexplicable on any rational level – and we’ve covered about every psychological theory that tries to explain how people who hold themselves out to be godly can be full of such hate, bitterness, greed and gross double standards.
In fact, during the last South Carolina debate, Newt Gingrich – who has made the alleged collapse of America’s “moral values” one of his trademark “red meat” appeals – deflected questions about his Lothario, adulterer, callous “family values” behavior by attacking the press. Gingrich knows that lacerating the supposed “liberal media” rouses the Tea Party faction of the GOP like splashing a bowl of blood on a vampire.
Gingrich claimed to be “appalled” by the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media.” He called a panelist question about charges that he wanted an “open marriage” with his second wife (who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the time), while he was having a multiyear affair with his eventual third wife, as “close to despicable as anything I [Gingrich] can imagine.”
Jon Stewart is feeling BuzzFlash’s pain now – one that is particularly acute when watching the GOP presidential debates. In fact, after playing a segment on the “Daily Show” about Gingrich’s “indignation” over questions about his egregious, immoral family values, Stewart’s brain appeared ready to explode as he listed just some of the audacious hypocrisies in which the former House speaker has engaged.
Recently, I recall seeing a clip of Newt in high dudgeon denouncing the alleged secular godlessness and lack of morality in Europe – and he vowed that he would not let the US sink into such degeneracy. Gingrich is the ultimate con man, saying whatever needs to be said to arouse the ember of the dark side of fundamentalist faith. He creates a fantasy world of demons who are supposedly set out to destroy “divinely” bestowed “American exceptionalism,” when he himself has spent more time playing “Sympathy for the Devil” in his life than following the Ten Commandments.
And, most significantly, as Jon Stewart has come to learn, Gingrich is filled with such confident cunning – such calculated lying – that he can make those who engage in reason want to jump out the nearest window in dismay.
He is a master magician of the dark arts. That much you can say for him.
Mark Karlin,
Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout
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Romney Income Calculator: How Much Does Mitt Make? How Long Would It Take Him to Earn YOUR Salary?
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/01/romney_income_calculator_how_much_does_mitt_make_how_long_would_it_take_him_to_earn_your_salary_.html
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The 10 Most Racist Moments of the GOP Primary (So Far)
By Chauncey DeVega
January 26, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/153895/the_10_most_racist_moments_of_the_gop_primary_%28so_far%29
One cannot forget that the contemporary Republican Party was born with the Southern Strategy, winning over the former Jim Crow South to its side of the political aisle, and as a backlash against the civil rights movement. This is a formula for a politics of white grievance mongering and white victimology; a dreamworld where white conservatives are oppressed, their rights infringed upon by a tyrannical federal government and elite liberal media that are beholden to the interests of the “undeserving poor,” racial minorities, gays, and immigrants.
In keeping with this script in order to win over Red State America, the 2012 Republican presidential candidates have certainly not disappointed. Both overt racism and dog whistles are delectable temptations that the Republican presidential nominees cannot resist. With the election of the country’s first African-American president, and a United States that is less white and more diverse, the GOP is in peril. In uncertain times, you go with what you know. For the Republican Party, this means “dirty boxing,” digging deep into the old bucket of white racism, and using the politics of fear, hostility and anxiety to win over white voters by demagoguing Obama.
Racism is an assault on the common good. Racism also does the work of dividing and conquering people with common interests. While the 2012 Republican candidates are stirring the pot of white racial anxiety, this is a means to a larger end—the destruction of the country’s social safety net, in support of vicious economic austerity policies, and protecting the kleptocrats and financiers at the expense of the working and middle classes.
Here are the top 10 racist moments by the Republican presidential candidates so far.
1. Newt Gingrich puts Juan Williams “in his place” for daring to ask an unpleasant question during the South Carolina debate. This was the most pernicious example of old-school white racism at work in the 2012 Republican primary campaign. Newt Gingrich, a son of the South who grew up in the shadow of legendary Jim Crow racist Lester Maddox, is an expert on the language and practice of white racism (in both its subtle and obvious forms). He has ridden high with Republican audiences by suggesting that black people are lazy, and their children should be given mops and brooms in order to learn the value of hard work. With condescending pride, Gingrich has also stated that he would lecture the NAACP–one of America’s most storied civil rights organizations–that they ought to demand jobs and not food stamps from Barack Obama.
On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, under the Confederate flag, in the state of South Carolina, Gingrich defended his racist contempt for African Americans by putting Juan Williams, “that boy,” in his place. During the debate, Juan Williams had gotten uppity and was insufficiently deferential to Newt.
This dynamic was not lost on the almost exclusively white audience in attendance (nor on the white woman who congratulated Gingrich the following day for his “brave” deed). They howled with glee at the sight of a black man, one who dared to sass, being reminded of his rightful place at Newt’s knee. In another time, not too long ago, Juan Williams would have been driven out of town for such an offense, if he was lucky — the lynching tree awaited many black folks who did not submit to white authority.
The symbolism of Newt Gingrich’s hostility to black folks, on King’s birthday, and the personal contempt he demonstrated for Juan Williams, was a classic moment in contemporary Republican politics. This was the “scene of instruction,” when a black man was a proxy for a whole community, a stand-in for the country’s first black president, as Newt Gingrich showed just what he thinks about Barack Obama, specifically and about people of color, in general. In that moment, white conservatism’s contempt was palatable, undeniable and unapologetic.
2. Herman Cain, in one of the most grotesque performances in post-civil rights-era politics to date, deftly plays his designated role as an African-American advocate for some of the Tea Party and New Right’s most racist policy positions. Most notably, in numerous interviews Cain alluded to the Democratic Party as keeping African Americans on a “plantation,” and that black conservatives were “runaway slaves” who were uniquely positioned to “free” the minds of their brothers and sisters. The implication of his ahistorical and bizarre allusion to the Democratic Party and chattel slavery was clear: black Americans are stupid, childlike and incapable of making their own political decisions, as Cain publicly observed that “only thirty percent of black people are thinking for themselves.”
Doubling down, as a black conservative mascot for the fantasies of the Tea Party faithful, Herman Cain also suggested that anyone who accuses them of “racism” (ignoring all available evidence in support of this claim) were in fact anti-white, and the real racists.
Herman Cain’s disdain was not limited to the black public. He also argued that undocumented immigrants should be electrocuted at the U.S. border by security fences, and that Muslim Americans are inherently treasonous and should be excluded from government. Perhaps most troubling, Herman Cain advocated for extreme forms of racial profiling in which Muslims would have to carry special identification cards.
Racism and anti-black sentiment know no boundaries. Herman Cain demonstrates that some of its most deft practioners are (ironically) people of color.
3. Ron Paul argues that the landmark federal legislation that dismantled Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s was a moral evil and a violation of white people’s liberty. Ron Paul’s claim that the rights of black Americans are secondary to the “freedom” of whites to discriminate, is an almost perfect mirror for the logic of apartheid. Ron Paul’s white supremacist ethic is more than a dismissal of one of the crowning legislative achievements of the 20th century: it is the endorsement of a principle that conveniently allows white people to hate and discriminate in the public sphere at will–and without consequence–against people of color. This “freedom” is the living and bleeding heart of white racism.
4. Rick Santorum tells conservative voters that black people are parasites who live off hard-working white people. Santorum’s claim that “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money” is problematic in a number of ways. First, Santorum channels the white supremacist classic Birth of a Nation and its imagery of childlike free blacks who are a burden on white society. In addition, Santorum’s assumption that black people are a dependent class is skewed at its root. Why? Santorum presupposes that African Americans are uniquely pathological and lack self-sufficiency, ignores the black middle-class, and directly race-baits a white conservative audience by telling them that “the blacks” are coming for their money, jobs and resources. There is no mention of Red State America’s disproportionate dependence on public tax dollars, or how the (white) middle-class and the rich are subsidized by the federal government.
5. In keeping with the class warfare narrative, and as a way of proving their conservative bona fides, Republican candidates have crafted a strategy in which they repeatedly refer to the unemployed as lazy, unproductive citizens who would “be rich if they just went out and got a job.” In fact, as suggested by Mitt Romney, any discussion of the wealth and income gap in the United States (and the destruction of the middle class), should be done in a “quiet room,” as such truth-telling stokes mean-spirited resentment against the rich. Conservatives have an almost Orwellian gift for manipulating language. The financier class is reframed as “job creators.” Programs that workers pay for such as Social Security are equated with “welfare.” Americans who are victims of robber baron capitalism and structural unemployment are painted as dregs who want nothing more than to “live off of the system.” Despite all evidence to the contrary, unions are painted as bastions for the weak, the greedy, and those who hate capitalism.
Race is central here: Conservatives seeded this ground with their assault on the black poor. The invention of the welfare queen by Ronald Reagan became code for lazy, fat, black women who game the system at the expense of hard-working whites. The Right uses the same framing in order to attack immigrants as people who want to destroy the country and steal the scarce resources of “productive” white Americans.
Efforts to shrink “big government” are closely related to the Right’s observation that the federal government employs “too many” blacks. The Republican Party refined its Ayn Rand-inspired shock doctrine and disaster capitalism through decades of practice on black and brown Americans. The racist tactics that were once used to justify the evisceration of programs aimed at helping the urban poor are now being applied to white folks on Main Street USA during the Great Recession.
6. Mitt Romney wants to “keep America America.” The dropping of one letter from the Ku Klux Klan’s slogan, “Keep America American,” does not remove the intent behind Romney’s repeated use of such a virulently bigoted phrase. While Mitt Romney can claim ignorance of the slogan’s origins, he is intentionally channeling its energy. In the Age of Obama, the Republican Party is drunk on the tonic of nativism. From remarks about “the real America,” to supporting the mass deportation of Latinos and Hispanics, a hostility to any designated Other is central to the 21st-century know-nothing politics of the Tea Party-driven GOP. Romney’s slogan, “Keep America America” begs the obvious question: just who is American? Who gets to decide? And should there be moats and electric fences to keep the undesirables out of the country?
7. Rick Perry’s nostalgic memories of his family’s ranch, “Niggerhead.” You cannot choose your parents (or decide what your ancestors will christen the family retreat before your birth). You can, however, choose to rename the family ranch something other than the ugliest word in the English language.
The world that spawned and nurtured Rick Perry’s Niggerhead was none too kind to black people. Jim and Jane Crow were the rule of the land; it was enforced through violence, threats and intimidation. Moreover, Rick Perry grew up in a “sundown town.” These were communities from which blacks were banished by violence, and where white authorities made sure that African Americans would never again be allowed in the area. The whiteness of memory and nostalgia is blinding. While he has finally dropped out of the race, the Niggerhead episode is emblematic of Rick Perry’s obsession with states’ rights, and a broader fondness for the Confederacy and secession. These are traits he shares in abundance with the remaining Republican presidential candidates.
8. Former candidate Michele Bachmann suggests that the black family was stronger during slavery than in freedom. Her claim is not just a simple misunderstanding of history and the importance of family in the Black Experience. No, she is signaling to a tired, white supremacist, slavery-apologist narrative which opines that African Americans were/are not yet ready for freedom, and could only “flourish” under the benign guidance of the Southern Slaveocracy.
In a moment when states such as Arizona and Texas are outlawing ethnic studies programs, and when the Tea Party and its allies are leading an assault on educational programs that are not sufficiently “pro-American,” Bachmann’s claims are part of a broader effort to literally whitewash U.S. history.
When married to her belief in a willful lie that the framers of the United States Constitution were abolitionists who fought tirelessly to eliminate slavery (in reality, both Jefferson and Washington were slaveowners), and a defense of slaveholding Christian whites who “loved their slaves,” Bachmann’s ignorance of the facts transcends mere stupidity and slips over to enabling white supremacy.
9. The Republican Party’s 2012 presidential candidates’ near-silence about how the Great Recession has destroyed the African American and Latino middle-class. This speaks volumes about just how selectively inclusive the Republican Party—which markets itself as the defender of the “American Dream” and of an “opportunity society”—really is. During the Ronald Reagan-Politico debate, the Republican candidates were asked what they would do to address the gross and disparate impact of the Great Recession on black and brown communities. While whites are suffering with an official unemployment rate of almost 10 percent, African Americans have struggled with a rate that is almost two to three times as high. In addition, the black and brown middle-class has seen its income, assets and wealth gutted by the Great Recession, where in 2011, whites have almost 20 times the average net worth of African Americans. As always, when White America gets a cold, Black America gets the flu…or worse.
In that awkward moment, only Rick Perry chimed in and proceeded to recycle the same tired rhetoric about “growing the economy” as a vague cure for all ills. One must ask: how would the Republican candidates have responded if the white middle-class had been devastated in the same manner, and to the same degree, as the black and brown middle-class? I would suggest that for the former, it would be treated as a crisis of epic proportions; for the latter, it is a mere curiosity and inconvenient fact.
Politics is about a sense of imagined community. The Ronald Reagan-Politico debate made clear that while the African American and Latino middle-class is being destroyed, the Republican Party has little concern or interest in remedying such a tragic event. It would seem that the Republican Party’s “big tent” has no room for “those people.”
10. The echo chamber that is Fox News, right-wing talk radio, the conservative blogosphere, and Republican elected officials daily stoke the politics of white racial resentment, bigotry and fear. Ultimately, the Republican candidates would not use racism as a weapon if it were not rewarded by their voters, and encouraged by the party’s leadership. An army travels on its stomach; it needs foot soldiers and shock troops to advance its aims. From the ugly, race-based conspiracy fantasies of Birtherism to the astroturf politics of the Tea Party to a news network whose guests routinely disparage Barack Obama with such labels as “ghetto crackhead” to the bloviating racist utterances by opinion leaders such as Rush Limbaugh, to the common bigotry on display at right-wing Web sites that use monkey, ape, gorilla, pimp, and watermelon imagery to depict the United States’ first black president and his family, it is clear that racism “works” for the Republican Party. To ignore the attraction of rank-and-file white conservatives to such ugliness is to overlook the driving force behind the Republican nominees’ behavior.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153895/
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2b.
Re: The 10 Most Racist Moments of the GOP Primary (So Far)
Posted by: “ALAN BOND” alan_bond@btinternet.com alan504450
Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:00 am (PST)
Hi Folks,
             I think this makes it pretty clear that the elitism of the Nazis is well grounded in the republican party. We have a similar problem here in the UK with Cameron and his fascist cronies attacking everything and everyone except those who have caused the problems we are suffering from. Adolf Hitler would have been proud of these bigots. Long may they rot in hell or wherever they finish up.
TTFN – 007
— On Thu, 26/1/12, bigraccoon wrote:
From: bigraccoon
Subject: [Leftwing] The 10 Most Racist Moments of the GOP Primary (So Far)
To: leftwing@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, 26 January, 2012, 14:26
The 10 Most Racist Moments of the GOP Primary (So Far)
By Chauncey DeVega
January 26, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/153895/the_10_most_racist_moments_of_the_gop_primary_%28so_far%29
One cannot forget that the contemporary Republican Party was born with the Southern Strategy, winning over the former Jim Crow South to its side of the political aisle, and as a backlash against the civil rights movement. This is a formula for a politics of white grievance mongering and white victimology; a dreamworld where white conservatives are oppressed, their rights infringed upon by a tyrannical federal government and elite liberal media that are beholden to the interests of the “undeserving poor,†racial minorities, gays, and immigrants.
In keeping with this script in order to win over Red State America, the 2012 Republican presidential candidates have certainly not disappointed. Both overt racism and dog whistles are delectable temptations that the Republican presidential nominees cannot resist. With the election of the country’s first African-American president, and a United States that is less white and more diverse, the GOP is in peril. In uncertain times, you go with what you know. For the Republican Party, this means “dirty boxing,†digging deep into the old bucket of white racism, and using the politics of fear, hostility and anxiety to win over white voters by demagoguing Obama.
Racism is an assault on the common good. Racism also does the work of dividing and conquering people with common interests. While the 2012 Republican candidates are stirring the pot of white racial anxiety, this is a means to a larger end—the destruction of the country’s social safety net, in support of vicious economic austerity policies, and protecting the kleptocrats and financiers at the expense of the working and middle classes.
Here are the top 10 racist moments by the Republican presidential candidates so far.
1. Newt Gingrich puts Juan Williams “in his place” for daring to ask an unpleasant question during the South Carolina debate. This was the most pernicious example of old-school white racism at work in the 2012 Republican primary campaign. Newt Gingrich, a son of the South who grew up in the shadow of legendary Jim Crow racist Lester Maddox, is an expert on the language and practice of white racism (in both its subtle and obvious forms). He has ridden high with Republican audiences by suggesting that black people are lazy, and their children should be given mops and brooms in order to learn the value of hard work. With condescending pride, Gingrich has also stated that he would lecture the NAACP–one of America’s most storied civil rights organizations–that they ought to demand jobs and not food stamps from Barack Obama.
On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, under the Confederate flag, in the state of South Carolina, Gingrich defended his racist contempt for African Americans by putting Juan Williams, “that boy,†in his place. During the debate, Juan Williams had gotten uppity and was insufficiently deferential to Newt.
This dynamic was not lost on the almost exclusively white audience in attendance (nor on the white woman who congratulated Gingrich the following day for his “brave†deed). They howled with glee at the sight of a black man, one who dared to sass, being reminded of his rightful place at Newt’s knee. In another time, not too long ago, Juan Williams would have been driven out of town for such an offense, if he was lucky — the lynching tree awaited many black folks who did not submit to white authority.
The symbolism of Newt Gingrich’s hostility to black folks, on King’s birthday, and the personal contempt he demonstrated for Juan Williams, was a classic moment in contemporary Republican politics. This was the “scene of instruction,†when a black man was a proxy for a whole community, a stand-in for the country’s first black president, as Newt Gingrich showed just what he thinks about Barack Obama, specifically and about people of color, in general. In that moment, white conservatism’s contempt was palatable, undeniable and unapologetic.
2. Herman Cain, in one of the most grotesque performances in post-civil rights-era politics to date, deftly plays his designated role as an African-American advocate for some of the Tea Party and New Right’s most racist policy positions. Most notably, in numerous interviews Cain alluded to the Democratic Party as keeping African Americans on a “plantation,†and that black conservatives were “runaway slaves†who were uniquely positioned to “free†the minds of their brothers and sisters. The implication of his ahistorical and bizarre allusion to the Democratic Party and chattel slavery was clear: black Americans are stupid, childlike and incapable of making their own political decisions, as Cain publicly observed that “only thirty percent of black people are thinking for themselves.â€
Doubling down, as a black conservative mascot for the fantasies of the Tea Party faithful, Herman Cain also suggested that anyone who accuses them of “racism†(ignoring all available evidence in support of this claim) were in fact anti-white, and the real racists.
Herman Cain’s disdain was not limited to the black public. He also argued that undocumented immigrants should be electrocuted at the U.S. border by security fences, and that Muslim Americans are inherently treasonous and    should be excluded from government. Perhaps most troubling, Herman Cain advocated for extreme forms of racial profiling in which Muslims would have to carry special identification cards.
Racism and anti-black sentiment know no boundaries. Herman Cain demonstrates that some of its most deft practioners are (ironically) people of color.
3. Ron Paul argues that the landmark federal legislation that dismantled Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s was a moral evil and a violation of white people’s liberty. Ron Paul’s claim that the rights of black Americans are secondary to the “freedom†of whites to discriminate, is an almost perfect mirror for the logic of apartheid. Ron Paul’s white supremacist ethic is more than a dismissal of one of the crowning legislative achievements of the 20th century: it is the endorsement of a principle that conveniently allows white people to hate and discriminate in the public sphere at will–and without consequence–against people of color. This “freedom†is the living and bleeding heart of white racism.
4. Rick Santorum tells conservative voters that black people are parasites who live off hard-working white people. Santorum’s claim that “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money†is problematic in a number of ways. First, Santorum channels the white supremacist classic Birth of a Nation and its imagery of childlike free blacks who are a burden on white society. In addition, Santorum’s assumption that black people are a dependent class is skewed at its root. Why? Santorum presupposes that African Americans are uniquely pathological and lack self-sufficiency, ignores the black middle-class, and directly race-baits a white conservative audience by telling them that “the blacks†are coming for their money, jobs and resources. There is no mention of Red State America’s disproportionate dependence on public tax dollars, or how the (white) middle-class and the rich are subsidized by the federal
government.
5. In keeping with the class warfare narrative, and as a way of proving their conservative bona fides, Republican candidates have crafted a strategy in which they repeatedly refer to the unemployed as lazy, unproductive citizens who would “be rich if they just went out and got a job.†In fact, as suggested by Mitt Romney, any discussion of the wealth and income gap in the United States (and the destruction of the middle class), should be done in a “quiet room,†as such truth-telling stokes mean-spirited resentment against the rich. Conservatives have an almost Orwellian gift for manipulating language. The financier class is reframed    as “job creators.†Programs that workers pay for such as Social Security are equated with “welfare.†Americans who are victims of robber baron capitalism and structural unemployment are painted as dregs who want nothing more than to “live off of the system.†Despite all evidence to the contrary,
unions are painted as bastions for the weak, the greedy, and those who hate capitalism.
Race is central here: Conservatives seeded this ground with their assault on the black poor. The invention of the welfare queen by Ronald Reagan became code for lazy, fat, black women who game the system at the expense of hard-working whites. The Right uses the same framing in order to attack immigrants as people who want to destroy the country and steal the scarce resources of “productive†white Americans.
Efforts to shrink “big government†are closely related to the Right’s observation that the federal government employs “too many†blacks. The Republican Party refined its Ayn Rand-inspired shock doctrine and disaster capitalism through decades of practice on black and brown Americans. The racist tactics that were once used to justify the evisceration of programs aimed at helping the urban poor are now being applied to white folks on Main Street USA during the Great Recession.
6. Mitt Romney wants to “keep America America.” The dropping of one letter from the Ku Klux Klan’s slogan, “Keep America American,†does not remove the intent behind Romney’s repeated use of such a virulently bigoted phrase. While Mitt Romney can claim ignorance of the slogan’s origins, he is intentionally channeling its energy. In the Age of Obama, the Republican Party is drunk on the tonic of nativism. From remarks about “the real America,†to supporting the mass deportation of Latinos and Hispanics, a hostility to any designated Other is central to the 21st-century know-nothing politics of the Tea Party-driven GOP. Romney’s slogan, “Keep America America†begs the obvious question: just who is American? Who gets to decide? And should there be moats and electric fences to keep the undesirables out of the country?
7. Rick Perry’s nostalgic memories of his family’s ranch, “Niggerhead.” You cannot choose your parents (or decide what your ancestors will christen the family retreat before your birth). You can, however, choose to rename the family ranch something other than the ugliest word in the English language.
The world that spawned and nurtured Rick Perry’s Niggerhead was none too kind to black people. Jim and Jane Crow were the rule of the land; it was enforced through violence, threats and intimidation. Moreover, Rick Perry grew up in a “sundown town.†These were communities from which blacks were banished by violence, and where white authorities made sure that African Americans would never again be allowed in the area. The whiteness of memory and nostalgia is blinding. While he has finally dropped out of the race, the Niggerhead episode is emblematic of Rick Perry’s obsession with states’ rights, and a broader fondness for the Confederacy and secession. These are traits he shares in abundance with the remaining Republican presidential candidates.
8. Former candidate Michele Bachmann suggests that the black family was stronger during slavery than in freedom. Her claim is not just a simple misunderstanding of history and the importance of family in the Black Experience. No, she is signaling to a tired, white supremacist, slavery-apologist narrative which opines that African Americans were/are not yet ready for freedom, and could only “flourish†under the benign guidance of the Southern Slaveocracy.
In a moment when states such as Arizona and Texas are outlawing ethnic studies programs, and when the Tea Party and its allies are leading an assault on educational programs that are not sufficiently “pro-American,†Bachmann’s claims are part of a broader effort to literally whitewash U.S. history.
When married to her belief in a willful lie that the framers of the United States Constitution were abolitionists who fought tirelessly to eliminate slavery (in reality, both Jefferson and Washington were slaveowners), and a defense of slaveholding Christian whites who “loved their slaves,†Bachmann’s ignorance of the facts transcends mere stupidity and slips over to enabling white supremacy.
9. The Republican Party’s 2012 presidential candidates’ near-silence about how the Great Recession has destroyed the African American and Latino middle-class. This speaks volumes about just how selectively inclusive the Republican Party—which markets itself as the defender of the “American Dream†and of an “opportunity societyâ€â€”really is. During the Ronald Reagan-Politico debate, the Republican candidates were asked what they would do to address the gross and disparate impact of the Great Recession on black and brown communities. While whites are suffering with an official unemployment rate of almost 10 percent, African Americans have struggled with a rate that is almost two to three times as high. In addition, the black and brown middle-class has seen its income, assets and wealth gutted by the Great Recession, where in 2011, whites have almost 20 times the average net worth of African Americans. As always, when White America gets a cold,
Black America gets the flu…or worse.
In that awkward moment, only Rick Perry chimed in and proceeded to recycle the same tired rhetoric about “growing the economy†as a vague cure for all ills. One must ask: how would the Republican candidates have responded if the white middle-class had been devastated in the same manner, and to the same degree, as the black and brown middle-class? I would suggest that for the former, it would be treated as a crisis of epic proportions; for the latter, it is a mere curiosity and inconvenient fact.
Politics is about a sense of imagined community. The Ronald Reagan-Politico debate made clear that while the African American and Latino middle-class is being destroyed, the Republican Party has little concern or interest in remedying such a tragic event. It would seem that the Republican Party’s “big tent†has no room for “those people.â€
10. The echo chamber that is Fox News, right-wing talk radio, the conservative blogosphere, and Republican elected officials daily stoke the politics of white racial resentment, bigotry and fear. Ultimately, the Republican candidates would not use racism as a weapon if it were not rewarded by their voters, and encouraged by the party’s leadership. An army travels on its stomach; it needs foot soldiers and shock troops to advance its aims. From the ugly, race-based conspiracy fantasies of Birtherism to the astroturf politics of the Tea Party to a news network whose guests routinely disparage Barack Obama with such labels as “ghetto crackhead†to the bloviating racist utterances by opinion leaders such as Rush Limbaugh, to the common bigotry on display at right-wing Web sites that use monkey, ape, gorilla, pimp, and watermelon imagery to depict the United States’ first black president and his family, it is clear that racism “works†for the
Republican Party. To ignore the attraction of rank-and-file white conservatives to such ugliness is to overlook the driving force behind the Republican nominees’ behavior.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153895/
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