It's always instructive when Republicans let their true feelings show.
Erika Harold is a Harvard-educated lawyer running in the GOP primary for Illinois CD-13 against incumbent Congressman Rodney Davis. Harold, a former Miss America, is the daughter of an African-American mother and a Caucasian father. On Tuesday, Jim Allen -- the Chairman of the Montgomery County, Illinois, Republican Party and a member of Davis' campaign team -- sent an email attacking Harold in some of the most vile terms imaginable. The full text appears below the orange croissant of doom, and it's not for the faint of heart.
—– Original Message —–
From: Jim Allen
Sent: 06/18/13 10:59 PM
To: dibendahl@mail.com
Subject: 13th Congressional District reply
Rodney Davis will win and the love child of the D.N.C. will be back in Shitcago by May of 2014 working for some law firm that needs to meet their quota for minority hires.
The truth is Nancy Pelosi and the DEMOCRAT party want this seat. So they called RINO Timmy Johnson to be their pack mule and get little queen to run.
Ann Callis gets a free ride through a primary and Rodney Davis has a battle.
The little queen touts her abstinence and she won the crown because she got bullied in school,,,boohoo..kids are cruel, life sucks and you move on..Now, miss queen is being used like a street walker and her pimps are the DEMOCRAT PARTY and RINO REPUBLICANS…These pimps want something they can’t get,,, the seat held by a conservative REPUBLICAN Rodney Davis and Nancy Pelosi can’t stand it..
Little Queenie and Nancy Pelosi have so much in common but the one thing that stands out the most.. both are FORMER QUEENS, their crowns are tarnished and time has run out on the both of them..
On Wednesday, Allen was
forced to recant:
"The words in the commentary I wrote were completely wrong," said Jim Allen, the Republican Party chairman in Montgomery County. "I apologize to Erika Harold, her staff and her supporters."
With that, Allen hung up.
I don't know about you, but when I read his "apology," the mental image I had was of Allen reading a script at gunpoint.
With guys like Allen running the organization, it's not hard to imagine why Republicans consistently lose ground with women and minorities.
8:34 AM PT: This commentary from Tom Levenson at Balloon Juice is right on point:
But the truly amazing thing to me is not that he thought such vile thoughts, but that he was willing to say so in a very public way.
This is what makes this little glimpse of nastiness something more than just an insight into one crappy excuse for a human being. That Allen didn’t have enough sense to realize that what he was saying should have been un-sayable tells you that the environment in which he lives and breathes does not view such sentiments as out of bounds. Calling a young African American woman taking part in the political process a bastard and a whore is OK where Allen lives…
…and, of course, his home is inside the Republican party.
2:46 PM PT: As reported on the front page and here, after the firestorm of negative publicity created by his comments Allen has resigned. H/T also to Railfan for his comment noting the resignation, here.