The 2012 campaign season is trudging along, dragging America through yet another endless campaign cycle. Once we hit November 2012, we’ll move on to the 2014 elections and forget about all the attack ads, the unbridled money spent by PACs, the endless debates, and the rhetoric.
But what people won’t forget is that the GOP has quickly turned into the party with a thin veneer over racism. Retooling the 60′s Southern Strategy for 2012, this campaign season has pushed and pushed the limits of outright racism and has fooled nobody. The endless debates give the candidates so many opportunities to stick their foot in their mouth to call Obama a “food stamp president” to cheers (between booing gay service men and cheering the death of the uninsured) and argue that South Carolina is in “a war with the Federal Government.” Better pull out those Bars and Stars.
The latest has been a call from Gingrich to give black and brown kids brooms and mops to clean up the schools they go to. Utilizing old racist thoughts that non-whites are lazy, that they need to buck up and help their families out and learn a work ethic that is apparently born into white kids like Gingrich’s own daughter. America isn’t in-equal enough – we need the children of the poor in workhouses and complete the return to the Gilded Age. Maybe later for arts and crafts time, they could sew Gucci wallets since their little hands make such nice work. That is, unless they self-deport themselves like Romney’s estate gardeners did when they had a Moronic revelation.
Next up is Rick Santorum who, when asked at a campaign stop about foreign influence in the US, decided to instead expound on entitlement programs by saying “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” Questions of “What the fuck does that have to do with foreign influences in the US” went unanswered. Here Santorum is picking up on Reagan’s “welfare queens driving Cadillacs” line of attack, because apparently only black people are the ones who need welfare. Ignore for a moment that nearly the same percentage of people who receive TANF are white (31.5%) vs black (34.2%) and that there are more than twice as many blacks under the poverty line as there are whites (25.8% vs 9.4%). So if any “group” is abusing the system, it would appear to be whites. People that, once Santorum has their soul vote, is all to happy to ignore.
Ron Paul is too easy. Look at his racist newsletters. He claims he didn’t write them, but he signed his name to them. So he was happy to take credit for them until it became a campaign issue. He was also the only congress person to complain about commemorating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. More recently in an interview with CNN he slammed the legislation, saying it was a broach of privacy because it forced you to, you know, be a decent human being and not a racist shithead. At least in public.
Complaints about Obama during the debates have been abundant. He’s not from here, he’s giving the country away to X*, he’s attacking religion (which is acceptable in this country if you’re attacking Islam), he’s somehow both a Socialist and a Fascist (again, when fascism is ok if you’re looking to establish a Christian Theocracy in the US). But demonstrated racism has been rampant beyond the presidency in this campaign. Santorum thinks we should profile for terrorist Muslims at the airport. Perry thought it was no big deal to have a family retreat commonly known as Niggerhead. Surveys of the tea party have revealed that they commonly believe they are the victims of reverse-racism, that they believe Muslims are trying to impose Sharia law (again, why they think Christian law is OK in the guidelines of their beloved Constitution is beyond me), and that they believe immigration threatens the fabric of America (where did your family come from then, tea party member? Pretty sure you’re not Native American).
The GOP has worn out the trope of “scary gays are here to destroy you” to bring out the electorate, so they’ve returned to their old classic “scary brown/black people are here to destroy you” mantra. Too bad demographics will bite them in the ass on this one. The largest growing group in America are Hispanics. Telling that group you don’t trust them and that they should go get jobs as janitors is a fast way to piss them off. In time, progress will steamroll them into history. It’s just a shame we have to endure them as a serious candidates for the time being.
*Insert your own particular brand of xenophobia here.