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Monday, January 16, 2012

Republicans on the Civil Rights Movement (A Brilliant @ Breakfast Exclusive)
Posted by jurassicpork | 12:50 PM

"Did you see them? I mean, they looked like guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club." - David Letterman on the 2008 GOP presidential field.

If there's any one consistent failure plaguing liberals, it's the inability to hold the jackbooted feet of Republicans to the fire of their consistent shunning and skeeving of minorities even on Martin Luther King Day.

It wasn't too long ago that the NAACP, bizarrely, agreed to host a Republican debate during their annual meeting and the turnout (Professional Xenophobe Rep. Steve King, of all people) was even more pathetic than the proposed clown show that would've taken place if Donald Trump had followed through on his promise to hold his own debate. A lot of hemming, hawing and throat-clearing had ensued about "scheduling conflicts" and the like.

But the fact is, Republicans are barely smart enough to know they have nothing to offer the most august assemblage of African Americans (Aside from Michael Moore loitering outside their offices or George Soros giving even a dime to a Democrat, do Republicans fear anything more than educated African Americans?). This was exactly the reason why George W. Bush waited until near the end of his "presidency" to address the NAACP and his boilerplate speech reminded everyone in attendance why he'd skeeved the NAACP all those years.

This year, they have even less to offer minorities and it's obvious that they've regressed. Not too long ago, Rick Santorum said to an all white audience in Iowa that he had no intention of making black peoples' lives easier while speaking of welfare reform (and don't even get me started on Santorum's risible insistence that he said "plives" and "blah people."). And yet Santorum finished just 8 votes behind Romney in the caucus despite not knowing that in Iowa, nine out of ten people on welfare are white and that the percentage nationwide isn't much different.

Both Rand and Ron Paul would love nothing more than to see the 1964 Civil Rights Act repealed under the equally risible rubric of fairness toward businesses and Ron Paul's old racist newsletters from the 80's and 90's are now pursuing him like the Hounds of the Baskervilles. And the closest any Republican has gotten to embracing the Civil Rights movement was in 2008 when Romney disingenuously insisted that he and his father marched with Dr. King when Mitt was more likely in France living in a palace on a Mormon missionary deferment during Vietnam.

And, in a direct subversion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there's a resurgent movement in the GOP machine to cage votes under the, once again, risible rubric of voter fraud, despite the fact that James O'Keefe in NH had committed more acts of voter fraud by accepting ballots under false names than all other cases of vote fraud combined that'd been prosecuted in the last several decades.

The Republican Party would love to forget that the Civil Rights Movement ever existed. Republicans seem to be as clueless as Ronald Reagan, who tactlessly kicked off his "states' rights"/racist dog whistle candidacy in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers were murdered just 16 years prior.

The Southern Strategy engineered by Nixon and his CREEP creeps was based as much on racism as economic hardship, a strategy that was completely predicated on tearing down the record and credibility of the Other Guys without even coming close to offering real solutions to alleviate Appalachian misery (and it's safe to say they still haven't).

So when Republicans like Romney start mealy-mouthing Dr. King's legacy while others openly shun and target minorities while making racist statements, we really ought to be holding their cloven hooves to the fire and ripping the invisible hoods off their heads.
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