Posted on 04/04/2008 8:46:28 AM PDT by GVnana
Campaign to Portray McCain as Racist Gets Under Way
Dog-Whistling Dixie
By JAMES TARANTO
April 3, 2008
Dog-Whistling Dixie
With Barack Obama's "postracial" appeal having proved illusory but Democrats likely to nominate him for president anyway, the party faces a difficult problem: how to persuade Americans to vote for the spiritual protégé of a man who espouses crackpot anti-American and antiwhite views.
One response, born less of strategy than of reflex, is to claim that opposition to Obama is racist. A pair of recent posts by prominent Angry Left bloggers show just how intense is the desire to impute racism to the other side, and how far they are willing to depart from logic to do so.
The first post, titled "John McCain's Racist Dogwhistle in Meridian, Mississippi," went up last Friday on the blog of Matt Stoller. He faulted McCain for planning a speech this past Monday in the Mississippi town where, as the candidate said in his speech, "I was once a flight instructor . . . at the air field named for my grandfather during my long past and misspent youth."
According to Stoller, though, that wasn't the real reason McCain went to Meridian: Meridian, MS, is 40 miles from Philadelphia, MS, the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. . . . Meridian itself is significant because one of the civil rights workers was actually from the town.
Stoller was echoing his elders, including former Reagan adviser Paul Krugman, who have spent years smearing Ronald Reagan for giving a speech--a "racist" speech, Stoller baselessly calls it--seven miles from Philadelphia in 1980, when Stoller was 2½ years old. (We wrote about this in November.) McCain's planned speech, Stoller wrote before the fact, "clearly looks like a dogwhistle to racists within the Republican Party."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
If they want to make this election all about race, they might as well bury themselves.
Jeremiah Wright didn’t require a dog whistle to convey his racist message to the initiated. It came through loud and clear and a child could understand it.
But of course, it’s still AmeriKKKa.
While I do disagree with him regarding illegal alien crimmigrants, and what should be done to fix the situation, I do not consider his plans to be racially motivated. Instead I see them as woefully misguided economically motivated plans.
I see John as an idiot. I don't see him as a racist idiot.
Isn’t it a hoot that racism clearly exists, but it is overlooked in order to tarnish the opposition. The democrats who support them and the blacks who are involved in these racist churches should be ashamed of themselves.
It's the under-handed juxtapositions that we should be looking out for.
Let me see if I can do the ‘liberal math’ here. McCain goes to a town 40 miles away from and 40 years after a racial historical event and is labeled a racist. Obama goes to a church for 20 years with a racist preacher and that is not a problem.
I say “go for it.” This will backfire big-time. There will be backlash against it. Despite how much the MSM will lobby for Obama, too many people are tired of being accused of being racist when they are not. They will sympathize with McCain. And if McCain called someone a “gook” I would assume he was speaking of a specific gook at the Hanoi Hilton who was torturing him. I can understand that.
If Obama or his surrogates want to start throwing around the “racist” labels, it will only continue to highlight Obama’s own racism by being a member of a radically racist and bigoted church. Sort of like the pot calling the kettle...I’ll just leave it at that.
So, if I understand correctly, dog-whistle racism is invisible, unquantifiable racism detectable only by its evokation of opposition to socialism?
Would it be racist to call this “dark matter racism?”
And all those Freepers and conservatives who played along with the Obama camp to portray Clinton’s criticism of Obama as racist - what are they going to do when it’s our turn? It’s already starting. If they accused a former democrat president of racism with enthusiasm, how much more brutal are they going to be vs republicans?
Of course. Obama gets caught socializing with racists and McCain is getting the rap!
The media in this country are completely irresponsible.
I’m no racist Republican. I voted for Alan Keyes this time around during the primaries.
I will vote for McCain against either Marxist that the Democrats seat as their presidential candidate.
Race is not a factor in my opposition to Obama.
A black man cannot be racist, so the rhetoric goes, because he doesn’t have the powers of office to be racist. So will all that change if we have a black president? Can a black president also be racist or does he not have the “power” to do anything with his prejudice?
“Is this the part where everyone is to step in and defend the crazy little backstabber?”
No, it’s the part where everybody has to decide if they really want to allow a communist like H. Rotten Clinton or B. Hussein Obama to become commander in chief.
To do so would be stabbing our military in the back and slowly twisting the knife.
Anyone who doesn’t know H. Rotten’s attitude toward our military needs to read Buzz Patterson’s book, “Dereliction of Duty.” Anyone who thinks Obama would be any better should be aware that he has said that the lives of U.S. troops who died in Iraq were “wasted” and that they were “air-raiding villages and killing civilians” over there.
Either one of these commucrats would strip our military with cuts, reductions, retreat and defeat. And that’s just the kind of weakness from Carter that made hostages out of Americans in Iran - and from Clinton that got the World Trade Center attacked twice.
Since when has any d’RAT ever shown an understanding of the meaning of shame?
Conservatives often believe that Democrats in general and liberals in particular get a free pass when it comes to race related remarks. Here are a few quotes that RWN has gathered up. Take a look at them and make up your own mind about the double standard... Ammo - DEM QUOTES ON RACE http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/leftwingracists.php
I think you would be tempting fate. :)
No one is expecting logic in this.
far as I’m concerned those who vote for obama are the racist
they are the ones who must agree with the comments of greedy white folk or typical white people.
agree with his wofes ideas that blacks should come together and fight the white oppressor
or her now proud to be of this country
or agree with the wright comments along with the racist congregation which go to these kind of churches
yep they must agree that you shouldn’t salute the flag of this country nor wear an American pin
fact is they are the racists and fact is racism goes both ways not one way
another thing when they say african americans then it shows just how thick they are
they obviously not know that whites are aficans too and many africans I know who are wnhite object to being classed as black when reffered to as african american
Pffft! They're not ashamed. They've built an entire culture out of this. Sad part is, they're blind to the fact that they promote socialism -- whose end is the very destruction of every right and privilege they now enjoy.
nail on head
those who support obama are the real racists and yes Obama is a racist , so is his wife and so is his associates at the so called black church.
affirmative action is racist too
Now isn’t it irnoic that the left always says they will not tolerate racism, the media denounces racism yet here we have blacks making racist comments, going to a raicst congregation and a racist who is running for president and what does the left and the media do.
they defend racism even chris matthews saying we should listen to this racist and that he gets tingles when he listens to this racist
chris matthews it is you who is the racist and you should be embarrassed that you have shown not to be able to do your job along with making yourself look pretty stupid and dumb
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