The Republican Party Is A Racist Organization. Fact, Not Opinion.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Yes the title is pretty strong, but there is no other way to say it, the Republican Party is at the very best a tacitly racist organization. Those of you who read the Dog’s posts on a regular basis (HI! BTW to all six of you!),  know he is not one to say inflammatory things just to be inflammatory. The Dog knows that people who read this and do not agree are going to be very unhappy, but this is not something the Dog has come to all at once, this is based on observation of data.  

There is a saying in the Dog’s work that any occurrence is just one data point. Two occurrences could very easily be coincidence, three points of data are enough for a pattern and four or more make a trend. There is more than enough evidence to provide a trend line for the Republican Party on issues of race and gender.

The Dog wonders if bigoted is not a better description for the Republican Party, as they do seem to be equal opportunity haters and denigrators of anyone one not White, Male and Christian. Racist seems to imply it is all about the descent of genetic traits which would make one look a particular way, say the way our President who came from parents with very different skin colors is identified racially by the characteristics that most probably come from his Kenyan father.

In any case let the Dog lay out why he is ready to say the Republican Party is a racist organization. There is a long history of racist acts and statements in the Republican Party but you can hardly hold an organization liable for the actions of those in history. In fact the founding of the Republican Party and the actions of one of its greatest presidents have long shielded the Party from this accusation, but the Civil War and President Lincoln are now gone more then 150 years so anything that might attach to the current Party in the way of good will has surely gone past its sell-by date.

Instead let’s just look at the past couple of years. It is little surprise that having the top two most likely Democratic nominees being a woman and an African American man has brought out the smoldering racism of the Republican Party and brought it the fore. We had the whispering campaign about Candidate Obama being a closet Muslim. As if there is anything wrong with a Muslim American being our president. There is one point of data.

We had the Barack the Magic Negro song, comparing him to the frankly racist depiction of a wise African American charterer who though downtrodden and ignored gives the hero (always white) the advice they need to succeed. Not only was this not decried by the Republican Party but one of the men who ran for RNC Chairman reissued it on a CD of songs as an election piece. Add the Watermelons on the White House lawn picture and the campaign piece that had Candidate Obama juxtaposed with a noose, neither of which cause more than a lip service condemnation of the purveyors, and we have our second data point.

The election of Michael Steele to head the RNC could be read as a moderation of the Party’s racist tendencies, if it were not so clear it came about in the worst kind of tokenism. He is one of the African Americans the Republicans can point to as theirs. This would be far more convincing if Chairman Steele were not constantly under fire from Boss Limbaugh and other Republicans. It seems to the Dog no matter how bad an RNC Chairman has been in the past none have been threatened with losing the only real power the Chairman has, the deployment of money, yet the Republican Party is on the verge of doing this. It is fair to ask if Mr. Steele were not African American would the Party even consider this move? This is the third data point, and the confirmation of a  pattern .

Now we have the nomination of Judge Sotomayor. While there are no actual Constitutional qualifications for a Supreme Court Justice other than good behavior while they are judges, Judge Sotomayor is comes to the nomination with more experience as a trail lawyer, a district judge and an Applet Court Judge than any other Justice in the last 50 years. Instead of going after her opinions from the bench the Republican Party has allowed their unelected mouth pieces to have free reign to call her racist. All of this based on an out of context quote from eight years ago, a quote which Glen Greenwald has shown to be very similar to what the last nominee for the High Court gave when he was nominated.

The racism here is subtle in that their argument is pride of heritage and overcoming personal adversity is a negative in a woman of color, but a virtue in a white man like Justice Alito.

Tom Tancredo made it explicit when he said the “a brown woman could get away with saying things that a white man never could” . His racism comes out very clear in his failure to understand that Justice Alito has made the same kind of comparison to his own life and status as the child of immigrants and it was seen as virtue. The only difference, that a “brown woman” thought her heritage might inform her positions on the court. He said this on Monday on the Ed Show on MSNBC and no one from the elected branch of the Republican Party has called him out on it. This is the fourth data point that confirms a trend.

You could say, these are the statements and acts of individuals and it is unfair to paint a Party with the broad brush of the assholes at the fringe. After all, the Dog does not like it when others paint him with the less…reasoned of the Left, why should it be okay to do so on the Right? The issue here is the fact the Republican Party is not disavowing these people. They have been completely silent on the actions of their surrogates. It plays to the Southern Strategy of Nixon and Regan to allow this tacit acceptance of racism as a characteristic of their Party.

This is no longer acceptable. If we as Liberals and Democrats fail to point out the very real and very clear pattern of racism inherent in the Republican Party then we are to some small degree complicit. It is time to say it clearly; the Republican Party, as a whole is willing to accept racism as part of their Party. This makes the Republican Party a racist organization. To be clear the Party can not control what individuals say, but they can make it clear it is not acceptable to the over all organization. It is the failure to do so, over and over and over again that taints the Republican Party as a whole.

This is a strong statement, but the Dog is making it and will stand by it. If the Republican Party does not like this characterization based on data, they can change their actions, but in the end this is not an opinion it is a fact based assertion. Until there are new facts that dispute this and in numbers similar to the many the Dog has left out of this analysis, the Dog will continue to say it.

The floor is yours.