CrazyDrumGuy

If the Sheet Fits

Now that the McCain campaign has descended entirely into panic mode, the Republican base is starting to show their true colors. 

First, a local party treasurer in my home state:

A local newspaper columnist, in a spoof of Obama’s platform, wrote in one recent piece that the Democrat would hire the rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black (a reference to a pro-Obama song by Ludacris), and divert more foreign aid to Africa so “the Obama family there can skim enough to allow them to free their goats and live the American Dream.” He joked that Obama would replace the 50 stars on the U.S. flag “with a star and crescent logo,” an Islamic symbol, and that his policy on drugs would be to “raise taxes to pay for Obama’s inner-city political base.”

The columnist, Bobby May, is also treasurer of the Buchanan County Republican Party and was listed in a July news release as the county’s representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team, though he said his column reflected his views alone, and he denied it was racist.

Then we have the Florida teacher who used a racial slur to describe Obama:

Larry Moore, deputy superintendent for the Jackson County School District, said school officials determined [teacher Greg] Howard wrote an acronym with an explanation on a dry-erase board in his class Sept. 26 at Marianna Middle School.

It said, “C.H.A.N.G.E. — Come Help A (N-word) Get Elected.”

Howard, who’s been teaching in the district for 17 years, wrote the comment during his seventh-grade social-studies class that included 17 white students, six black students and one Asian.

There’s also the increasing sense among right-wing pundits like Ann Coulter that minorities are responsible for the economic crisis:

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

Instead of looking at “outdated criteria,” such as the mortgage applicant’s credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named “Caylee.”

And finally, of course, there’s Sarah Palin and her Barracuda Buddies:

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev.Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more.”

Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

[Update: Greg Sargent says the unmentioned racial epithet was "uppity Negro."]

Republicans have seen the polls and they know that they’re in serious trouble, which means it’s time for the gloves to come off and pointy hoods to go on. 

There are twenty-seven days left until the election. Now is the time to work like crazy to get out the vote for Obama or these racists will have another four years in power.

10/7/08 6:51 am | Comment (2) | Permalink | Tags: 2008, Ann Coulter, Barack Obama, economy, Florida, racism, Sarah Palin, Virginia