Friday, April 19, AD 2024 11:25am

How Not To Be A Racist

 

 

I wish I could say  the above video is an exaggeration, but it really isn’t.  Timothy Noah demonstrates this in The New Republic in a charming article entitled, Romney Cribs from the GOP’s Willie Horton Playbook.  In the article Noah somehow fails to note that in 1988 the first candidate to bring up the fact that Michael Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts defended a furlough policy for prisoners, including convicted first degree murderers serving a life sentence, was Al Gore.  Willie Horton, a first degree murderer serving a life sentence, received a weekend furlough, did not come back, and committed the crimes of rape, assault and auto theft.  Horton was sentenced to two life sentences plus 85 years in Maryland.  The Maryland judge refused to return him to Massachusetts, saying, “I’m not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again.”  Michael Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts thought that such furloughs were a great idea and defended the policy.  Bush is accused by Noah of racism for bringing up these very inconvenient facts against Dukakis.

So much for history.  How is Romney guilty of racism according to Noah?

Edsall sees the Romney campaign using race in two ways. Most overtly, the Romney campaign is accusing President Obama by of gutting welfare reform by dropping the work requirement—a gross distortion of an unexceptional waiver Obama granted several states allowing them to experiment with alternative ways to meet the work requirement. Two of the five governors requesting the waivers were Republicans, and among those who have denounced the workfare accusation as flat-out untrue is the Republican former congressman and current talk-show host Joe Scarborough. The second way Edsall sees the Romney campaign using race is more subtle. According to Edsall, Romney is conveying a racially-charged message in accusing Obama of taking money away from (mainly white recipients of) Medicare to fund (majority non-white recipients of) Obamacare.

According to Edsall, Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, have so far been leaving the race-baiting to ads on TV and the Internet while taking the high road in their own appearances. That isn’t quite right, as TNR’s Alec MacGillis has shown; Romney is not above integrating the welfare-based attack into his speeches. Now Romney has taken the game to a new level in an interview published today in USA Today. Romney tells USA Today’s Susan Page that Obama issued the welfare waivers to “shore up his base.

Yep that is it.  By opposing changes in the welfare regulations by Obama that effectively gut the work requirement under the welfare reform legislation passed with the support of President Bill Clinton, Romney is a racist.  Ok, what else do they have?  Well nothing actually.

Samuel Johnson used to say that patriotism (false patriotism) was the last refuge of a scoundrel.  Racism, true racism, is a very vile thing.  In our political discourse however, for many partisans of the left,  cries of racism have become the first refuge of scoundrels.

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Dante alighieri
Admin
Tuesday, August 28, AD 2012 7:10pm

I believe it was Newt who earlier today said something to the effect that if you can hear a dog whistle, that must mean you are a dog yourself. Res ipsa loquitur, Mr. Noah.

Ivan
Ivan
Wednesday, August 29, AD 2012 10:57pm

The Democrats have to play up race, since that is the only way they’ll win. They cannot run on their record. It is not racist for blacks to break 90% for a supposed black man, but any white voting for Romney is definitely KKK at heart, I mean just look at the man’s family. The Democrat propagandists have mastered the highest art of totalitarianism – how to commit any crime, but make the victims bear the guilt.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, August 30, AD 2012 5:35am

More racism uncovered at the RNC:

“She said America’s narrative has never been one ‘of grievance and entitlement.’”

That “she” is Ms. Condi Rice.

Seems the race card may not trump massive unemployment and expansive poverty.

“For the very first time, the favorable/unfavorable ratios are now higher for the Republican Party than for the Democratic Party. For the first time ever, the Democratic favorability ratio, which has always been within the range of 1.20 to 1.56, is now below 1. It is a stunningly low .83, which is 31% lower than the prior Democratic Party low of 1.20, which was reached in 2004. . . . Under President Obama, there has been an unprecedentedly sharp and first-ever switch to preferring the Republican Party over the Democratic Party. In fact, the damage that has been done to the Democratic brand under the Obama Presidency, going from a historically normal Democratic ratio of 1.38 in 2008, down 39% to the present .83, compares with the Republican fall-offs under George W. Bush’s Presidency, which declined from the Republican ratio of 1.41 in 2000, down 18% to 1.16 in 2004, and then down yet another 31% to .80 in 2008, when the Republican Party hit its all-time (back until 1992) pre-convention low – which virtually doomed the campaign of Presidential candidate John McCain and made Obama’s win almost inevitable. The Democratic brand has thus suffered more (down 39%) under Obama than the Republican brand suffered under either of George W. Bush’s two terms (-16%, then -31%).”

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