I read with interest pamindurham's
diary yesterday, in which she journeyed to Freeperville (bless her heart) and returned with a report on their top choices for president in 2008. Surprisingly, Condoleezza Rice was their overwhelming favorite. Many Kossacks were dismissive of such a possibility, and the general consensus was that the GOP would never nominate a black woman for fear of alienating their base. I think such assumptions are mistaken.
I'll explain why below the fold.
Imagine you're a white racist. It's the 21st century. All around you, minorities are succeeding in ways that your cracker ass could have never imagined possible. Something must be done to preserve the natural order of things, at least in your mind. So you mentally divide minorities into two groups: those who "get it" (a very small group) and those who don't, i.e., the masses. There are essentially two criteria for "getting it": these minorities must show no interest in celebrating or advancing their own culture, and instead must act as loyal stewards of white privelege. In other words, they must be black Republicans.
Now it's no secret that Republicans hate it when liberals accuse them of racism. It's also no secret that they're actively courting both minority candidates and minority voters. This is where Condi comes in. If you read the comments pam has bravely reprinted for us, you'll see that the freepers absolutely love her. And why shouldn't they? She "gets it." She's their proof that they're not racist like we lying liberals always say. She's their Get Out of Jail Free card. She's their I'm-rubber-and-you're-glue. They don't love her so much for who she is, but for how she makes them feel about themselves. And they can use her as a hammer against us, so long as Democrats take both minority voters and minority candidates for granted, while assuming the opposition can't see the writing on the wall.
To be clear, I believe that a lot of Republicans are very, very racist. I grew up in the South and I've seen it firsthand. But I think that we on the left tend to oversimplify their racism. We've also assumed for a long time that we would be the first party to put up a minority candidate for president, but right now I'm not sure if that's going to happen. And while Rice may have certain liabilities that will hurt her with their base (she's single, for example, and I don't know how religious she is), I don't think her race is one of them. Because she lets them kill two large birds with one stone: she assuages their guilt (every racist feels guilty deep down, I believe), and at the same time she allows them to call us racist, for a change. It will let them say, "Okay, there's now officially no more racism." It may be too tempting for them to pass up.
Sorry for the long diary. I guess I could have summed up the reason they love Condi in two words: she's black.