Democrats Discover Race Baiting

Townhall.com ^ | November 8, 2014 | John C. Goodman

[Kaslin]

Actually the Democrats have been race baiting for decades. And it’s not going away. Using fear and race-polarizing agitation to drive minority voters to the polls is going to be the increasingly overt face of the Democratic Party. They can’t win any other way.

What’s new is that the mainstream media has suddenly discovered all of this.

Through the years, these same news outlets have wasted no time at all in spotting anything that even hints of Republican race baiting.

Take the presidential campaign of 1988.

Willie Horton was a black murder convict who raped a white woman and stabbed her boyfriend while on weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison at the time Michael Dukakis was governor. In the campaign, supporters of George Bush ran a TV commercial highlighting the event and accusing Dukakis of being soft on crime.

The Maryland Republican Party went further. A fundraising letter warned, ''You, your spouse, your children and your friends can have the opportunity to receive a visit from someone like Willie Horton if Mike Dukakis becomes President.''

The New York Times editorial page was outraged. “The anti-Dukakis TV commercial [is] playing on fears of black criminals,” the paper said. The commercial and “the scurrilous fund-raising letter” were funded by a “flow of sewer money,” the editorial added.

Democrats were convinced that the commercial and another anti-crime ad (the revolving door commercial) were the reason they lost the election. Said Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich:

The symbolism was very powerful...you can't find a stronger metaphor, intended or not, for racial hatred in this country than a black man raping a white woman....I talked to people afterward....Women said they couldn't help it, but it scared the living daylights out of them.

Never mind that the Willie Horton issue was first raised by Dukakis’s Democratic primary opponent Al Gore. Race baiting by Republicans is a sin the liberal medial cannot forgive.

Flash forward to 2014. What do we find? Race baiting by Democrats on a scale never envisioned by the most imaginative Republican ad creators of old. The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Washington Timesreported:

• Harry Reid’s Super PAC ran ads on black radio that accused Republicans of supporting the type of gun law that “caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.”
• A flyer from Democrats in Georgia pictured black toddlers holding signs that read “Don’t Shoot.” Produced by the state Democratic Party, the flyer urged people to vote to “prevent another Ferguson.”
• At a black church in Fayetteville, NC, leaflets with a grainy image of a lynching appeared, warning voters that if Democratic senatorial candidate Kay Hagan lost, President Obama would be impeached.
• In Alabama, campaign materials aimed at getting out the black vote featured references to lynchings, Jim Crow-era signs, racial unrest and the Ku Klux Klan.

Black columnist Jesse Lee Peterson has more examples:

• In battleground states, desperate Democrats shamelessly lied, exploited racial stereotypes and played on the fears of blacks in an attempt to scare them to the polls.
• In Louisiana, Sen. Mary Landrieu accused her own state and the entire South of being against Barack Obama because of his race.
• Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., compared members of the GOP to Confederates from the Civil War era who “believe that slavery isn’t over.”

Even the First Lady was in on the act:

Monday on TV One, a cable channel who's programming is geared for African-American adults, first lady Michelle Obama told Roland Martin the candidate on the ballot and what they say or do should not matter to African-Americans because voting for a straight Democratic ticket best serves their communities. (Breitbart)

So what have liberal commentators had to say about these tactics?

• On Fox News, Geraldo Rivera dismissed any concerns, saying “no one remembers after an election how the candidate got elected.” Earth to Geraldo: the White House race baiting campaign does not just emerge a few days before an election and then vanish. It’s ongoing, year round.
• New York Times columnist, Charles Blowwrote an entire editorial about the desire of Democrats to energize black voters without ever once saying how they have been trying to do that.
• Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinsonsaid both parties were pushing fear and resentment, rather than solutions. Sorry Gene, there is no moral equivalence here.
• And near the tail end of a column about the Japanese economy, New York Times columnistPaul Krugmanonce again managed to slip in the charge that conservatives are racists. Conservatives? Maybe he doesn’t read the rest of his own newspaper.

And what did The New York Times editorial page (the same page that was so outraged at the Willie Horton ads) say about Democratic race baiting that was described so vividly on the paper’s front gage? Not one word. It did find the space to attack Republican campaign tactics, however, under the heading, “Negativity Wins the Senate.” What would their heading have been if the Democrats had won?

If Laura Bush, during her First Lady years, had called on white voters to go to the polls and protect their interests, do you think The New York Times editorial page would have commented on that?

You betcha.

[Diogenesis]

The Democrats favor SLAVERY, including breeding ISIS
to take more slaves.
This is their “cover”.

[Paine in the Neck]

If the ‘Rats want to be the party of the Black Panthers, Muslim Brotherhood and La Raza, I’m OK with that. It’s clarifying. The squishy middle will even be able to see the contrast.

[Maceman]

Black Americans have been taught by self-serving leftists that because there was once slavery in parts of the U.S., there is no such thing as liberty.

The truth is, Progressive Leftists are opposed to individual liberty as defined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The only real complaint they have about chattel slavery in America two hundred years ago is that the slaves were privately owned.

But they get orgasmic over the idea of slavery to the state.

Democrats never pass up on opportunity to tell us why enslavement by the state is for our own protection and our own safety, because life under the anarchy that conservatives want to impose is just too risky and dangerous. We can't have any of that inhumane "on-your-own economics" that conservatives advocate.

Thereby proving that you no longer have to be black to be an Uncle Tom.

[W.]

‘Always accuse your opponent of the very tactic you practice.’ I thought that was one of Alinsky’s, but not in so many words. Some commie, no doubt.

[sr4402]

Race is one of the three legged stool they sit on. Take away the the Race card and the stool can’t stand.

[Lake Living]

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal. 3:28

Here is the solution that neither dems or repubs are preaching. The only source of real freedom.

[skinkinthegrass]

this is satire, isn't it? "right"?
where are the satire "tags"?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Kaslin. Partisan Media Shills dissected.

[Ouderkirk]

Liberals love slavery. Their only real objection to the pre-1865 chattel slavery in America is that those slaves were privately owned.

[Buffalo Head]

Thanks for this excellent post.

[Bluestocking]

It’s a tribute to the intelligence of Black Americans that the majority of them were not taken in by the Democrats’ race-baiting tactics this year.

And it’s an indication of the foolishness of the Democratic party and its donors that they believed Blacks were in fact stupid enough to be fooled by their race-baiting tactics.

[GOPJ]

If Laura Bush, during her First Lady years, had called on white voters to go to the polls and protect their interests, do you think The New York Times editorial page would have commented on that? You betcha.

Odd the people of the New York Times are clueless about why people have stopped trusting the press... (here's a flash - it's NOT because a few facts are muddled in a breaking story - it's not because of inconsistent punctuation - it's not because of spelling errors...LOL - they'll never get it... idiots...)

[B4Ranch]

Imagine if Connie Rice and Col. West ran for Office together. They’d probably get elected and that would cause 50 million instant cranium explosions.

[MrB]

Expired, their race card has.

[GOPJ]

Brings a smile to my face...

[RansomOttawa]

The New York Times editorial page was outraged. “The anti-Dukakis TV commercial [is] playing on fears of black criminals,” the paper said. The commercial and “the scurrilous fund-raising letter” were funded by a “flow of sewer money,” the editorial added.

Democrats were convinced that the commercial and another anti-crime ad (the revolving door commercial) were the reason they lost the election. Said Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich:

The symbolism was very powerful...you can't find a stronger metaphor, intended or not, for racial hatred in this country than a black man raping a white woman....I talked to people afterward....Women said they couldn't help it, but it scared the living daylights out of them.

It has always fascinated me that the (in)famous "revolving door" ad is so closely linked with race baiting. Not only is Horton not named, but of all the convicts walking through the revolving door, none of them is clearly black: they're all Caucasian. (It was actually an earlier ad, produced by a PAC, that named Horton and his crimes and displayed his mug shot.)