If there was any question that the
previous ad campaign against Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. was intended to raise racist themes of the-black-folks-are-coming-for-your-women, Corker himself has managed to settle the issue with an even
more inflammatory -- and this time, clearly, no-two-ways-about-it -- racist ad.
TPMCafe has the next Corker ad, and it manages to be the most overtly racist ad of this season. It has two competing soundtracks, for the two competing candidates. Under the talk about Corker, you hear dramatic, swelling music.
Under the talk about Ford, you hear... jungle drums.
Have a listen.
So we've got Republican George Allen in Virginia, "accidentally" uttering racist smears. We've got Republican candidate Tan Nguyen, in southern California, who's been caught mailing out warnings to Spanish-speaking Americans stating that if they're immigrants (legal or not) it's against the law for them to vote. And we've got Corker and the RNC in Tennessee stepping well over all those shaded boundaries, now, and drawing the black candidate for U.S. Senate as a jungle beast set on making off with your lily-white women.
The Southern Strategy -- appealing to the racist base -- isn't just alive and well in the Republican Party, it seems to be making a sudden resurgence. Jungle drums? Seriously, freakin' jungle drums? Are we back in the goddamn nineteeth century now, or is it just Corker himself in this little GOP time warp? Corker's "jungle drums" ad isn't just "a little bit" racist. It's not something that can be misconstrued. It's flagrant, it's obvious, it's intentional.
What a remarkable bastard. Clearly, Corker thinks the racist vote is big and important, in Tennessee. The Republicans certainly know their base, so maybe he's right.