Posted on 05/22/2023 5:14:54 PM PDT by Right Wing Vegan
COLUMBIA — A remark Gov. Henry McMaster has been making about Democrats at Republican events for the last three decades ignited outcry over the weekend as Democrats say the comment promotes violence and evokes South Carolina’s sordid history of slavery.
Republicans say critics can’t take a joke.
In a speech May 20 at the Republican Party’s state convention in Lexington, McMaster said he looked forward to a day when Democrats would be so rare that Republicans would have to “hunt them with dogs.”
He then quipped that Democrats are indeed growing rare in the state, in reference to their election losses in recent years.
The high school gymnasium packed with the Republican faithful erupted in applause at the line.
Though dogs are used in fox, raccoon and waterfowl hunting, as well as by police in missing persons searches, Democrats point to police siccing dogs on civil rights protestors and enslavers hunting escaped slaves with dogs.
The governor’s office dismissed the criticism as overblown.
“Governor McMaster has been making this joke at GOP conventions for years, and everyday South Carolinians understand that it’s a joke,” the governor’s spokesman, Brandon Charochak, said in a statement.
McMaster is in his final term as governor, set to end after the 2026 election.
“If South Carolina Democrat partisans can no longer bear light-hearted jokes made at their expense, then maybe they should focus their energy on winning and not whining,” he said.
The governor has used the comment since the 1990s, S.C. Republican Party Chairman Drew McKissick said before using it himself on election night in 2020, The State newspaper of Columbia reported at the time.
Christale Spain, the first Black woman to chair the South Carolina Democratic Party, slammed the comments in a statement May 22.
“The majority of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina is Black and our governor is saying out loud he can’t wait to hunt us down with dogs,” she said. “At this point, can we even call it a dog whistle if everyone can hear it?”
Democrats “aren’t laughing” at a joke that Spain said reminds party members of centuries of oppression.
“Even if you take out the racial elements of it, maybe after Jan. 6 it’s a good time to stop proposing violence against your political opponents,” said Sam Skardon, the chair of the Charleston County Democratic Party.
Skardon called on McMaster to retract the remarks, or for the State Law Enforcement Division to open an investigation into the comments as a threat.
Republicans, meanwhile, say Democrats need to lighten up.
“It is a joke, and they are blowing it completely out of proportion for their own political agenda. It has no reference to slavery, no reference to anything except a joke,” said Steven Wright, the chair of the Dorchester County Republican Party who attended the convention and has heard the governor use the line at other events.
There was no similar outrage in 2021 when social media users, most of them on the left, dubbed U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., “Uncle Tim,” a reference to the exceedingly subservient slave whose story is told in the 1852 abolitionist novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Wright said.
“(Democrats) continue to be rejected because they virtue signal and they don’t focus on the things that are important to the people of South Carolina,” he said.
The use of bloodhounds to keep slaves on plantations and hunt them down when they escaped began in colonial days but expanded and professionalized in the 1800s, said Tyler D. Parry, a professor of African American studies at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who has extensively researched the subject.
“It was a harrowing experience for (slaves),” he told The Post and Courier. “They knew the one thing they could not escape was the dogs.”
In their memoirs, escaped and freed slaves vividly recounted the baying of the bloodhounds, told of scars they still had from being bitten two decades earlier, remembered nightmares of being chased and the sense that they were hunted like animals, said Parry, who received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of South Carolina.
“It’s entirely possible that McMaster and those that think like him might not have known the offense of the joke, but I would actually say that’s part of the problem,” he said.
“Even if you take out the racial elements of it, maybe after Jan. 6 it’s a good time to stop proposing violence against your political opponents,” said Sam Skardon, the chair of the Charleston County Democratic Party.
Pffft. This somewhat silly joke vs. rats openly encouraging street violence across the country. Excuse me for not tearing up, a-hole
The left is so ridiculous. Use of bloodhounds did not start with slavery. 99% of its history is in relation to hunting criminals, so completely appropriate for RATS.
I dream of having Congressional Republican public hearings and the first question asked is, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Democrat Party?”
There are a couple of South Carolina Republicans that should be that rare too.
-PJ
Why demean dogs? They are noble and trustworthy creatures.
Neither description applies to DemocRATs.
Not even trying to be funny...they ARE the enemy, and if we wish to survive as a nation, should treat them as the communist slime that they are.
The Wardogs from ‘Chronicles of Riddick’ come first to mind.
The irony of it is that it was DEMOCRAT SLAVE OWNERS who used dogs to track runaway slaves.
Every South Carolina Republican should answer with that immediately when the dimwits cry “racism”…
My personal favorite “joke”: “Leftists, can’t live with them - can’t hunt them for sport (yet)”.
It never fails to get the desired reaction.
Mitch McConnell used a dogs add against Dee Huddleston when he unseated him back in the 80s. Exact idea as this was stated. https://www.facebook.com/aflcioky/videos/bloodhounds-wheres-missing-in-action-mitch/602259293795678/
Looked forward to a day when Democrats would be so rare that Republicans would have to “hunt them with dogs.”
Amen it’s call making the world a safer place and keeping liberty alive.
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