As you may have noticed, I finally had to cut a winger commenter loose yesterday, because he just couldn’t understand why calling the President a “food stamp President” was racist, but my very correct observations about the vicious racist anti-Hispanic rants of Michelle Malkin were not racist. This one is so simple you’d think even a Klanbagger would understand, wouldn’t you?

It’s real easy; the Rushpubliscum Party has been trying to tie Americans of African heritage to laziness (via welfare programs) since Saint Ronnie decried the “strapping young buck” who was supposedly buying high-end steaks with food stamps. And, of course, there is the fat dope addict’s entirely-invented “Welfare Queen,” supposedly riding around in a Bentley while she collects those huge welfare payments for her shoe full of kids. The connection in Rushpubliscum lingo is there, and it’s been there for a long time, and the stupid attempts to accuse someone of racism because he happens to hear a brown-skinned woman (and anchor baby to boot) spew vile racist diatribes against Hispanic immigrants (legal and otherwise) doesn’t change one fact.

Juan Williams, who certainly isn’t amenable to any liberal thought, understands the Rushpubliscum dog whistles all too well. And he’s one of the few on the right side of things who call the Rushpubliscums out on their blatant racism. Sooner or later, they’ll deal with him, no doubt, but in the meantime he is educating us about what the Rushpubliscum Party is all about.

As Juan Williams shows us, the underbelly of the Rushpubliscum Party is white, uneducated, and thoroughly ugly.

 

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans. 

But the code sometimes breaks down.

Last week a passionate Republican told GOP candidate Rick Santorum: “I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not [president]. He constantly says that our Constitution is passé and he ignores it. … He is an avowed Muslim and my question is, why isn’t something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president.”

Santorum did not blink. The man who recently said he meant “blah people” — when the world heard him say “black people” — as  he spoke about parasitic Americans who get better lives by taking “somebody else’s money,” did not correct the assault on the truth. Instead he agreed that Obama is attacking the Constitution and said: “Well, look, I’m trying my best to get him out of office.”

Santorum did not follow Sen. John McCain’s example in 2008 when a Republican called Obama an “Arab.” McCain responded that while he had policy differences with Obama he is a “decent, family man [and] citizen.”

At the Myrtle Beach debate the question I asked Rick Perry was about the GOP push for a new voter identification law in South Carolina, a state with a history of denying black people the right to vote.

I asked Romney about his vocal opposition to parts of the DREAM Act, which would give the children of illegal immigrants an earned pathway to citizenship. I asked Ron Paul about the racial disparity in our legal system with respect to enforcement of drug laws.

But the question that caused the most controversy was the one I posed to Gingrich.

The former Speaker has declared that black people should demand jobs instead of food stamps. And he has proposed having poor students work as janitors in their high schools. Regardless of how they were intended, poor people and minorities sense that with those comments Gingrich is winking — some call it “dog whistling” — at certain white audiences by intimating that black people are lazy, happy to live off the government and lacking any intellect.

Gingrich did not answer my question but rather threw red meat to Republicans in South Carolina, a state with a long history of racial politics.

He used the same rhetorical technique of the segregationist politicians of the past: rejecting the premise of the question, attacking the media and playing to the American people’s resentment of liberal elites, minorities and poor people.

In the days since the debate, people have asked if I regretted the way I phrased the question. I do not. I do not know anyone on food stamps who would prefer them to gainful employment.

Just last week, the Labor Department reported that while the national unemployment rate fell slightly, black unemployment rose again from 15.5 percent to 15.8 percent and from 39.6 percent to 42.1 percent among young black people. The same report showed 11 percent of Hispanics are unemployed.

The problem is not a lack of work ethic on the part of the poor, who are disproportionately minorities. The problem is there are few good jobs for blue-collar people with the best work ethic.

Let’s have an honest debate about why this is the case and what we can do to fix it.

Forget about that, Mr. Williams. Your buddies certainly cannot run on their competence, or their accomplishments, so getting ignorant bigots to the polls to vote their hate is about all the Rushpubliscums can do these days.

Unless and until the Rushpubliscums actually formulate policies that make sense for someone other than the filthy-rich, they will continue to flounder, no matter how many crosses they burn. I have been a harsh critic of some of the present President’s policies (another inconvenient fact ignored by my former delusional commenter,) but this President stands head and shoulders above the vile racists who are now running for President on the Rushpubliscum ticket.

Until they change that, it isn’t going to be terribly hard for any Democrat to look good in comparison.