It’s the Racism, Stupid
The GOP establishment can’t freak out about Trump now.
It’s been playing his game for decades, just more artfully.
by Gary Younge | February 12, 2016 | http://www.thenation.com/article/its-the-racism-stupid
Three years ago, as the Republican-led House of Representatives engineered a brief government shutdown, Congressman Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) explained the strategy underpinning the protest. “We have to get something out of this,” he said. “And I don’t know what that even is.” The shutdown wasn’t a tactic so much as a tantrum, an act of collective petulance posing as politics — inexplicable to the outside world, incoherent in its aims and incandescent in its rage.
The bizarre circus that the GOP presidential primary has become is not a freak occurrence. Regardless of the eventual nominee, the rise of Donald Trump (“I would bomb the shit out of [ISIS]”), the ascent of Ted Cruz (“To God be the glory”) and the endurance of Ben Carson (“Putin is a one-horse country: oil and energy”) do not contradict the general trajectory of the party, but rather confirm it. This fact-free, bigoted populism awash in money and drowning in misanthropy may illustrate the GOP at its most brazen, but it’s hardly in any way aberrant.
In this regard, Trump is the party’s most obvious emissary. His blatant xenophobia emerges from the GOP’s half-century of race-baiting since Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy was first conceived. The initial idea was to woo Southern whites, who were angry about the advances of the civil-rights movement, with coded racial messaging that wouldn’t alienate the party’s Northern supporters.
“You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks,” Nixon once explained to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. “The key is to devise a system that recognizes that while not appearing to.” This method was once very effective. Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, not far from where three civil-rights activists had been murdered in 1964, by talking about states’ rights.
George H.W. Bush had his infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988,
while BuShit Jr. spoke at Bob Jones University in 2000, where interracial dating was banned at the time.
But with white people heading toward minority status and becoming a lower percentage of the voting public every cycle, the message necessarily gets cruder — particularly with the presence of a black president. In the 2012 GOP primaries, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum told a crowd in Iowa that “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” while Newt Gingrich branded Obama the “food-stamp president.”
So by the time Trump came on the scene, the party had done away with the dog whistle in favor of a police whistle — no codes necessary. The Mexicans are sending us “rapists”; the Chinese are “cheating”; America needs “a total and complete shutdown” on Muslims coming into the country.
Elements of the Republican establishment bristled, of course. Back in 2012, Senator Lindsey Graham was already warning that when it came to “the demographics race,” the GOP was “losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
But that was the business they were in: For a generation, the party had galvanized its base on precisely this kind of message, only more artfully put and more plausibly denied. So when Trump rails against political correctness — which always goes down well on the stump — he’s really just calling for a return to unbridled hate speech. No wonder he comes first in a crowded pack for those Republican voters who want a candidate who “tells it like it is.”
Trump’s rallies are also unburdened by either actual policies or tangible facts. He just says stuff — whatever comes into his head, it seems — and people cheer or laugh, but rarely call him on it. Whether it’s true or consistent really doesn’t matter. The fact that Trump was previously pro-choice and pro-single-payer, or that he’s donated money to Hillary Clinton’s senatorial campaigns and had the Clintons at his wedding, is shrugged off. Nobody cares that there’s a net flow of Mexicans leaving America: “We’re gonna build a big wall,” Trump says. “It’s gonna be a beautiful wall. It’s gonna be a great big beautiful wall.” His healthcare policy? He’s going to replace Obamacare with something “super-terrific.”
Any mystery as to why this is working vanishes once one realizes that he’s talking to the Republican base, 43 percent of whom still believe that Obama is a Muslim — roughly the same percentage who believe that he was born in America.
This is the same party that swift-boated John Kerry and insisted that the Clintons were bumping people off and running drugs into Arkansas. They really don’t care about the facts.
This is the same party that swift-boated John Kerry and insisted that the Clintons were bumping people off and running drugs into Arkansas. They really don’t care about the facts.
Nor did Trump invent this trend. In 2011, GOP primary contender Herman Cain proudly announced that he did not know the name of the president of “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan.” More than one in four Republicans in Mississippi, and one in five in Alabama, believed that interracial marriage should be illegal, while closer to two-thirds in both states didn’t believe in evolution. Trump is just the most ostentatious and successful manifestation of this trend, and the Republican hierarchy is stumped on what to do about it.
In 2008, Senator John McCain, the GOP nominee, memorably took the mic from campaign volunteer Gayle Quinnell, who said she couldn’t trust Obama because “he’s an Arab.” “No, ma’am,” McCain said. “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.”
Yet without millions of people like Quinnell, McCain would have suffered not just a defeat but a rout. Now the GOP’s leaders have ceded the mic once again, and they’re struggling to seize it back.
Of course, the Republican establishment never openly embraced such statements. Nonetheless, it was this mixture of racially charged messaging and a tacit acceptance of falsehoods that underpinned the Tea Party’s rise. This is the wave of sewage that the GOP surfed all the way to majorities in both houses of Congress. Now they’re up to their necks in it....................the end
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By muckraker10021
As former President of the U.S. Jimmy Carter has stated just a few months ago, — he said that the United States is:
"Just An Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery"
Speaking about the SCOTUS 2010 Citizens United decision and 2014 McCutcheon decision and their impact on the United States of America's, One Man, One Woman = ONE VOTE application of U.S. Democracy, President Carter correctly and unambiguously said:
""It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for President or being elected President. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over...At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.""
In other words the United States of America is a:
PORNOCRACY
Read more HERE
This PORNOCRACY is not hidden, it is operating in public view right before our eyes. You could not say 'Out-Of-Sight-Out-Of-Mind', in fact the Koch brothers have told the world that they will spend $900,000,000 ($900 million) in bribes toward their goal of corporate fascism. Just as in medieval days, like harem concubines auditioning for the sexual attentions and favors of the sultan that owns their bodies, we see RepubliKlan presidential candidates prostrating themselves before the Koch brothers and 450 other $$$$$$$$$$$$$ .01 percent consiglieres, all of them willing and hoping to sell their ass and possibly become the chosen whore who could be POTUS.
Given the irrefutable, unimpeachable truth uttered by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter — How???? should the 99% of eligible American voters who contributed NO money, or less than $200 dollars to political campaigns in a year react to the takeover of the American political & economic system by the $$$$$$$$$$$$$ .01 percent consiglieres — 'One hand washes the other, and together they wash the face'
The answer to the question above is multi-faceted. Many Americans have decided that the answer to the imposition of CORPORATISM is to withdraw from the political economy by NOT voting at all. In the most recent mayoral elections in America's largest cities voter turnout reached all time lows; only 26% in New York City and an amazingly low 23% in Los Angeles.
The corporate television “media-of-mass-distraction” controlled by six white men has successfully conned their somnolent viewers into believing that their vote is meaningless since these viewers have been successfully propagandized into concluding that their is NO difference between politicians regardless of their party affiliation or political ideology.
The American sheeple are more concerned with the ever expanding ass of Kim Kardashian or why Ben Afleck is fucking his childrens nanny, than they are concerned about the RepubliKlan controlled congress voting to remove ingredient and country of origin labels from the meat sold in American supermarkets or that same RepubliKlan carcass voting that it is perfectly legal to dump toxic coal ash that will kill humans into America's rivers and lakes.
In this 2016 election cycle more .01% percent bribery money will be spent than in any other election cycle. Jeb BuShit and Billary Clinton have so far collected the most "shot-callers" cash. The leading Bankster firm Goldman Sachs has placed their $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ bribes on Billary & BuShit; either one works for them and will protect the firms modern 'black box' money changers alchemy franchise.
Again, How???? should the 99% of eligible American voters who contributed NO money, or less than $200 dollars to political campaigns in a year react to the takeover of the American political & economic system by the $$$$$$$$$$$$$ .01 percent consiglieres.
The nightmare of the 'shot-callers' would be a massive voter turnout, this is why they so ardently engage in voter suppression tactics. The lower the voter turnout the easier it is to control the outcome .
The RepubliKlan Party of 2016 is:
• Unapologetically proudly RACIST
• Virulently HOMOPHOBIC
• Anti-Sex Education in schools
• Anti-Birth Control
• Anti- Immigrants (Build a wall, stop ALL Muslims)
• Anti- ANY Minimum Wage increase
• Anti- Student Loans (big cuts in Pell grants; blocked interest rate cut on loans)
• Anti-Abortion Rights (republiklans were silent when Dr. George Tiller was murdered)
• Anti-Consumer Protection (pro-tort reform)
• Anti- Climate Change Science Reality (It's not real it's a communist plot)
• Anti- Environmental Clean-Up (Piyush Jindal of LA blocked law mandating oil corp. clean up of gulf coast)
• Anti- Infrastructure $$$$ Replacement (U.S. bridges & roads are old & crumbling)
• Anti-Regulating The Banksters (want to repeal Dodd-Frank)
• Anti-Social Security Insurance (want to end it & send the existing money to Wall street)
• Anti-Medicare (want to send Grandma into the clutches of the "Health Care Mafia" with a coupon)
• Anti-Unemployment Insurance (want to end it; cut it to a max of 8 weeks))
• Anti- Healthy School Lunch for kids (want to REPEAL Mrs. Obama's healthy lunch reforms)
• Anti-Education Standards (republiklans want to close the Dept. of Education & teach biblical creationism)
• Anti-W.I.C. (republiklan congress recently cut money for Women Infants & Children program)
• Anti- Environmental Conservation Laws (want to close the EPA & burn MORE coal)
• Anti-Food Saftey Inspections (republiklan congress recently cut US food saftey budget)
• Anti- Ingredient Labels on Food (republiklans don't want you to know)
• Anti-Progressive Taxation (republiklans against raising the 15% tax Millionaires & Billionaires pay)
• Anti-Banning the Death Penalty (278 INNOCENT people released from Death Row since 1989)
• Anti- Restoring Habeas corpus (republiklans NOT against "disappearing" people)
• Anti-Separation Of Church & State (republiklans want to mandate Christian prayer ONLY in schools)
• Anti- Government Funding of Scientific Research (republiklans have slashed funding i.e. stem cell research)
• Anti-Feminism (woman should be submissive to men; it's in the bible)
• Anti-Affirmative Action (republiklans say "there is NO racism in AmeriKKKa)
• Anti-Department of Labor (republiklans believe overtime pay should be abolished)
• Anti-Small Business Administration (want to abolish it)
• Anti-Substantially Increasing Foreign Aid (republiklan congress just cut food aid to AFRICA)
• Anti-Government Student College Tuition Grants (republiklans want to dramatically cut PELL grants & other Education programs)
• Anti-ANY Gun Control
• Anti- NON-Christian Religion Tolerance
• Anti- Universal Health Care
• Anti- Ban Against Torture (republiklans support "rectal" feeding & slicing of genitals)
• Anti- ANY Cut In Military Spending
• Anti- Pay Increase For US Soldiers (republiklans consistently vote NO)
• Anti- Increase in Veterans Benefits (republiklans want to convert military pensions into 401K's)
• Anti- Equalizing Penalty for Crack/ Powder Cocaine Conviction
• Anti- Ending Draconian mandatory loooong sentences for drug possession
• Anti- Womens Health/ Well-Women Care (republiklans vote to defund Planned Parenthood)
• Anti- Legislation Banning Outsourcing (republiklans voted AGAINST law prohibiting outsourcing by companies $$$$$ bailed out by U.S. taxpayers)
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