Every time I try to watch one of the so-called Republican debates or other media event involving them, I change the channel after about 10 minutes because all their candidates do is see who can sling the most incendiary lies and insults about President Obama, black and brown people, Muslims, gays and immigrants.
More recently, however, it seems that black people have emerged as the favorite whipping boys (pun intended) for this crew of idiots. I've cringed at some of the overtly racist statements these toads continue to make without apology, often to the delight and applause of their supporters.
Here are a few examples:
Rick Santorum: "I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families."
Newt Gingrich: "I'm prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps."
Herman Cain: "A lot of these liberal, leftist folk in this country, that are black, they're more racist than the white people that they're claiming to be racist."
And then there was Michele Bachmann's use of coded language to imply that black farmers who won a judgment against the U.S. government were receiving unfair reparations. Not to mention that she and other GOP candidates signed a petition that claimed black families had it better under slavery than they do now.
I suppose those types of race-baiting remarks and tactics play strongly to the their conservative base, but most citizens of the America I believe in cannot and should not stomach this kind of crap. It's like these Republicans are using racially charged rhetoric to wage a political campaigns more suited to the 1950s and 1960s. The only things missing are Bull Connor, George Wallace and Lester Maddox...perhaps they've been replaced by the likes of Santorum and Gingrich.
A black man confronted Gingrich in New Hampshire at a town hall meeting and asked him to stop using blacks as punching bags and stepping stones in his quest for the nomination. Newt responded by telling the guy he'd worked with Condi Rice and Colin Powell, and that he knows they and other blacks have made solid contributions to America. Say what? That's tatamount to the "some of my best friends are black" defense. Gingrich probably feels like they're among the one percent of blacks in America who aren't lazy criminals. Totally ridiculous.
Newt is among the Republican toads of today who are still running a misguided version of the old Southern Strategy. It's like they haven't realized that voters come in more colors than white, more religions than Christianity, more orientations than heterosexual and more economic levels than upper middle class and rich.
I get the feeling that many of the jokers who run today's GOP see this next election as probably the last hurrah of being able to win by using the "let's scare white people" strategy. MSNBC reportedly fired pundit Pat Buchanan recently for some of the racially-charged material in his new book called "Suicide of a Superpower," where a couple of the chapters are titled "The End of White America" and "The Death of Christian America." Talk about trying to scare and incite white people...but really, that's what the Southern Strategy is all about. And that's a strategy some of the GOP candidates have decided to adopt.
Let's hope Americans have outgrown that sort of foolishness. Sadly, I'm not sure we have.