Race-Baiting
By the Obama camp. Shocking, I know.* Spanish campaign ads twist Rush Limbaugh’s words to P.O. Hispanics:
The commercial, to air in Limbaugh’s home state of Florida as well as Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, features a picture of the conservative talk show host and shows his words on the screen: “Mexicans are stupid and unqualified” and “Shut your mouth or get out.” It was first reported by the Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe.
“Obama is now stoking racism in the country,” Limbaugh wrote in an email. “Obama is a disgrace - he wants the public to think he is Mr. Nice Guy while his thugs are in Alaska looking for dirt on Palin and he runs race-baiting ads and lies about what he has done and what McCain has done.”
As for the quotes, Limbaugh said they were taken out of context.
Stock response, right? They always say its out of context.
The first, “stupid and unqualified,” was from the NAFTA debate of the mid-90s, he recalled. Limbaugh, a NAFTA proponent, said in the fall of 1993 he got a call from a listener who was upset at the potential loss of American jobs.
In response he said, “If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people–I’m serious, let the unskilled jobs, let the kinds of jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do–let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”
Hey, that doesn’t say “Mexicans are stupid and unqualified.” It just says the ones that are should be entitled to jobs, too.
On “shut your mouth,” Limbaugh produced an April 2006 transcript from what he described as a parody of Mexican immigration laws.
The talk show host read a list of stringent rules, adding “shut your mouth and get out,” before revealing to listeners that the guidelines were those set by the Mexican government for immigrants.
So it turns out the ad is a big fat sleazy lie. Vile and stupid, too, says Surber, noting absurdity of trying to paint amnesty-backer McCain as anti-immigrant.
Awaiting widespread outrage and condemnation. Don’t worry, I won’t be staying up too late.
But is this what Obamists mean when they say they want their guy to get tougher? Now, when he says he’s “a leap for the American people” …
“We always knew this was going to be hard, and this is a leap for the American people,” Obama said. “And we’re running against somebody who has a formidable biography, a compelling biography. He’s a genuine American hero, somebody who served in uniform and suffered through some things that very few of us can imagine.”
… Does he mean because he’s a black guy and the American people are bigots, or does he mean the experience thing, the long history of hanging out with weird radicals, and all the dangerously bad ideas?
* Re race-baiting, usually the campaign relies on other people to do it for them.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:26 pm on Wednesday, September 17, 2008
3 Responses to “Race-Baiting”
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September 18th, 2008 at 10:21 am
For a guy who is “post-racial” he sure talks a lot about race. Don’t he, Bubba?
Obama is probably not counting on the exasperation of millions of Americans of Palor who, sick and tired of being told they are racists for 4 decades, no longer accept the argument. In fact, they now embrace the term “racist” with a roll of the eyes and a weary tone of voice.
“Yeah, I’m a racist. Sue me. Whatever.”
The race-hustlers have lost all moral authority because they have hammered racism so hard over the years that they have leached both the word and the concept of any moral authority it once held. Obama, true to form, is late to the game in realizing it. He had a winning argument with the “post racial candidate” but he panicked and abandoned it. Note that decision coincides with the slips in the polls.
You can talk to dozens of white people on any given day who will give you some variation of the argument “Just because I think Obama is unqualified doesn’t make me a racist. It makes Obama the affirmative action candidate.”
The corollary to that is, “If it were a white guy with a resume that thin he would not have survived the primaries.”
The former argument is unquestionably true, the latter is debatable.
Yet, all you hear from the Barackolytes is that ANY opposition to him is de facto racism. It cannot be you don’t like his economic policy - it’s racism. It can’t be that you think he lacks experience - it’s racism. It can’t be that you’re a little queasy about his past affiliations - it’s racism. It can’t be you think he’s wrong on foreign policy almost across the board - no, it’s racism pure and simple.
What a winning argument that is. “Vote for me or you’re a racist!”
If everything is racism, then nothing is. In that sense, Obama has done a public service here. Only people who are clearly delusional now think everything is racism. The rest of the proles hear that and think, “I’m not signing up for that.”
If Obama thinks he’s going to ride the racial moral high ground into office then he has already written off West Virginia, Virginia, most of the South, and probably Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s a lousy strategy but he’s welcome to it.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I was enthusiastic for Obama — until I found out all the baggage he’s carrying. I’m pretty sure a lot of other white people were too, and lost it for the same reason. Nothing would please me more than to see a man of color (or half-color) win the presidency and lay to rest for all time the untruth that people of color are oppressed in an America that:
1. has outlawed institutional racism, provides free schooling to every child (even those who aren’t citizens);
2. manages to provide some kind of health care for almost everybody, despite not being nationalized;
3. and provides a free market economy that offers opportunities galore if only you’re willing to work hard and take chances.
Therefore, the biggest reason not to vote for His Hopiness is the fact that he refuses to recognize any of that, insisting instead that America needs to be “changed”.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
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