GOP, Get More ‘Racist’
IF the GOP wants to win more black votes, it will need to get a lot more “racist.” The scare quotes are necessary because I don’t think the Republican Party is racist now (and, historically, has a lot less to answer for than the Democratic Party does).
But that hasn’t stopped people from slandering Republicans as racist for one reason or another.
Right now, many inWashington insist that Republican attacks on UN Ambassador Susan Rice are racist and, yawn, sexist. The basis for this claim is that some Republicans are calling Rice unfit for the job of secretary of state.
More specifically, they’re cross with Rice for what they contend to be her dishonest and incompetent handling of the Benghazi scandal.
And, because Rice is a black woman, well, blah, blah, blah. Racism! Sexism!
Never mind that Republicans haven’t had a white secretary of state since Lawrence Eagleburger concluded his term two decades ago. Never mind that Republicans appointed the first black secretary of state ever (Colin Powell) and the first black female secretary of state ever (Condoleezza Rice).
Also, never mind that Susan Rice’s handling of Benghazi— and several other matters — can quite defensibly be dubbed incompetent.
But that doesn’t stop Democrats or liberals from crying racism.
Just consider some recent examples from over the summer. When Mitt Romney visited Michigan, he joked about not needing a birth certificate to prove he was from there.
Not very funny? OK, sure. Poor taste? Eh, maybe, I guess. “The basest and the most despicable bigotry we might be able to imagine”? Errr, no. And yet that’s what one respected “expert” on race, Michael Eric Dyson, called it on MSNBC.
Rather than show some skepticism, MSNBC host Alex Wagner agreed that Romney was “scraping the very bottom of this sort of racist otherist narrative.”
At the GOP convention, MSNBC host Chris Matthews explained that “Chicago” was a racially loaded code word. Fellow host Lawrence O’Donnell said Republican convention speakers were reaching “for every single possible racial double entendre they can find.” His proof? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made a joke about Obama playing a lot of golf.
Now, the cynical motivations behind this relentless slander are too numerous to count. Such moral bullying makes white liberals feel better about themselves. It scares moderates and centrists away from the Republican Party, and it no doubt helps dissuade wavering blacks from even thinking about giving the GOP an honest look.
It also does wonders to stifle journalists terrified of having their racial bona fides questioned in any way. And it helps a feckless leftwing black political class explain away its own failures. Racial slander is like duct tape: There’s no limit to what you can do with it.
But can you imagine how much worse it will get if Republicans actually do reach out to black community (as they should)?
One of the points of racial slander is to signal that only liberal policies are guaranteed to be nonracist (even when such policies were forged with racist intent, like the DavisBacon Act). This is why the Congressional Black Caucus insists on calling itself the “conscience of the Congress.”
That’s why policies like school choice are routinely denounced as racist, even though they’re largely aimed at improving the lives of innercity blacks trapped in bad schools. Teachers unions don’t like school choice, ergo, it’s racist.
Any serious attempt by the GOP to win black votes won’t involve Republicans copycatting liberal policies. It will require going over the heads of black andwhite liberal slanderers to offer a sincere alternative to failed liberal policies on schools, poverty, crime, etc. The more effective that effort, the more the GOP will be called racist.
When Romney, whose father marched with Martin Luther King Jr., spoke to the NAACP, Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast dubbed him a “race-mongering pyromaniac,” primarily for using the term “ObamaCare” — a term Barack Obama used himself.
Just imagine the attacks in store for a more effective Republican. Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
The stage is now set for a new Lebanon war, one dramatically larger in scale and more farreaching than the last one there between Israel and Iran’s proxy.
Since the 2006 Lebanon War, Tehran has shipped a massive supply of sophisticated missiles to Hezbollah. These have been used to build a weapons machine that can bring a full war directly into the heart of Israel.
Hezbollah’s arsenal now includes far more missiles — ones that are more deadly, accurate and longerrange— than what Hamas has had to rely on, some mere hundreds of Grads and Qassam rockets and the occasional longerrange Fajr5. They’re certainly a far cry from the Katyushas that