Tag Archives: Racism
The Last Willie Horton Election
Sullivan’s Daily Dish collects comments explaining Romney’s complete reliance on mobilizing a near-unprecedented 61%+ of the white vote… and why it won’t every be possible again. The Romney-Republican strategy is the dark side of the older Republican strategy: the Reagan of hardline conservative Pat Buchanan rather than of public relations man Michael Deaver. It could still work […]
Derrick Bell and Andrew Breitbart: the Return of Identity Politics, and Blaming the Victim
Per Andrew Breitbart — who, and this is a rare sentiment for me, I think the world is probably better off without — Michelle Malkin and Sean Hannity attempt to push a Jeremiah Wright for 2012, in the form of the late law professor Derrick Bell. The allegedly incriminating footage shows then-law student Obama embracing […]
Sarah Palin’s Linguistic Trap: or, How to Score Off Your Colleague’s Mistakes
Subtle racism is a funny thing. When Newt Gingrich called Barack Obama the “food stamp president,” I think we all reasonably understood that he meant one of two things, orpossibly both. First, that the economy tanked on Obama’s watch, which isn’t really fair, but a Republican trope nonetheless. And second, we thought he might be […]
President Obama and “Arrogance”
When I see articles spotlighting the President’s “arrogance,” I have to wonder two things: why is this relevant, and why is this something we care about, now, in this politician, but not in others? It takes a type of arrogance to run for office, but an extraordinary arrogance to run for President. Palin’s dismissive promise […]
The New Racism
In two of the Republican Party’s latest projects, both mainstreamed from the fringe — anger over the “Ground Zero Mosque,” and suspicion over whether the fact of one’s birth can suffice to make him “American” — some common threads emerge. First, both are conspicuously racial. Second, both are racist, in that they proceed from a […]
What Substitutes for a Republican Agenda
I’m often upbraided for equating the Republican center with the lunatic fringe, but increasingly, one substitutes for the other. That allegation gained credence yesterday, when John McCain (R-AZ), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) all pledged their support to a nativism-inspired partial repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment. Of course this plan has no real […]
National Popular Vote and What Constitutionalism Is Not
Politico, and everyone else, come late to the story that states are starting to look past the Electoral College, by directing their electors to vote not for the state’s favorite, but for the winner of the national popular vote. This plan has actually been in the works for a while. Under the initiative, led by […]
Was Jeremiah Wright Relevant?
I think, no; but because Sarah Palin’s dredging up this bit of ancient history, in light of recently discovered emails from top journalists hoping to bury the story before it broke, let’s examine. Off the bat, note that it’s not like “liberals” and “media elites” were the only ones who wanted to move past Wright, […]
Diversity: How the Other Half Lives
Ross Douthat — who isn’t a moderate common-sense conservative but plays one in the NYT opinion pages — yesterday penned his latest overwrought defense of his party’s fringe, this time hoping to mainstream the right’s worrying rediscovery of reverse racism. For those just joining us, one of the right’s dominant narratives in the time since […]
The “Other” on Our Soil
In disappointingly predictable fashion, America’s favorite half-term governor, Sarah Palin, offers her thoughts on the New York mosque “controversy”: Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing Triggering the only reply she seems capable of generating: Twitter snark. Politico calls this “fully master[ing] […]
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