R. Emmett Tyrrell: He Let Me Down [Bubba as "our second redneck president"]

The American Spectator ^ | 1/31/2008 | R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

[Aristotelian]

WASHINGTON -- In the acrid aftermath of the South Carolina primary I think it is safe to say that Toni Morrison, the novelist, was dealing in fiction when she pronounced Bill Clinton our first black president. After watching him huff and puff up the issue of race in a way that Americans have not seen since the presidential campaigns of the late George Wallace, the former Boy President, rather than being our first black president, is our second redneck president.

I say Clinton is our second redneck president because first came Jimmy Carter. Jimmy did not play the role of the bigot while in the White House, not exactly. Rather as the historian Betty Glad demonstrated in her fine biography of him, Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House, Jimmy played the racial politics at the beginning of his political career in Georgia while seeking the governorship. That is not to say that as president he did not use race divisively. He was frequently given to transforming policy disagreements into a matter of white voters repressing black voters, that is to say Republicans repressing blacks. He was forever presuming himself to be the champion of black people and Republicans to be anti-black. Any disagreement on domestic issues he was apt to present as part of a Republican "Southern strategy" to win Southern white votes.

Now after the Clintons' treacherous campaign against Senator Barack Obama, we see that some Democrats will practice a Southern strategy too. Yet they do it within their own party, dividing Democrats along racial and even ethnic lines.

[Aristotelian]

some Democrats will practice a Southern strategy too. Yet they do it within their own party, dividing Democrats along racial and even ethnic lines.

This is another example of the liberal tendency to see the world in terms of groups (e.g., poor, minorities, aged), whereas as conservatives tend to think of individuals. Liberals measure success in terms of groups, while conservative look to individual success or failure. Take welfare, for example. Conservatives decried it because it made too many recipients wards of the state and never encouraged them to better themselves. Liberals measured welfare's success by the number of people getting assistance -- the more the better.

[beaversmom]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1959843/posts

From Hitchens’ interview with Hugh Hewitt:

CH: That’s right, but remember, Clinton is the only person, at least I think he’s the only person, who have played what certainly is the race card, and played it twice. And in my little book on Clinton, it was called No One Left To Lie To, it’s still available, I think, in paperback, I have a long section on how he went back to Arkansas from New Hampshire, when he was up against it in ’92, and slipping in the polls, to supervise the execution of a mentally retarded black convict who would have met all the ordinary conditions for clemency. He lobotomized himself by shooting himself in head, didn’t understand the charges against him. He did something that really, by any standards, if you just pictured what would have happened if a Republican had done that, I’ll leave it like that, okay?

HH: Right.

CH: He played that. You might remember the Sister Souljah fight that he artificially picked with Jesse Jackson, all of this, until it comes to impeachment, when suddenly, he’s joined at the hip with Toni Morrison and has Jesse Jackson was well as Billy Graham as one of his confessors, and he’s implicitly saying to people are you attacking me because I’m a friend of the black folks. So he manages to play the race card twice. It’s never been done, I think, twice by the same politician. And now, he’s trying to do it twice again.

[Aristotelian]

mentally retarded black convict

Yes, indeed. Ricky Ray Rector. I actually noticed a short item about his execution at the time. Wire copy that appeared in NY Times. The man had shot a cop and then turned the gun on himself. Since then, PBS Frontline did a show about him and his execution. If a GOPer had done this, the media would have gone berserk. But Bubba got away with it. He has since had blood on his hands.