Crossposted on 43rdStateBlues
Barack Obama’s presidential victory naturally led people to believe that the United States might finally be moving into a post-racial era. Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America paints a dramatically different picture.
Authors Michael Tesler and David O. Sears argue that the 2008 election was more polarized by racial attitudes than any other presidential election on record—and perhaps more significantly, that there were two sides to this racialization: resentful opposition to and racially liberal support for Obama.
Obama’s Race asserts that:
as Obama’s campaign was given a boost in the primaries from racial liberals that extended well beyond that usually offered to ideologically similar white candidates, Hillary Clinton lost much of her longstanding support and instead became the preferred candidate of Democratic racial conservatives.
Time and again, voters’ racial predispositions trumped their ideological preferences as John McCain—seldom described as conservative in matters of race—became the darling of racial conservatives from both parties.
It is racism. It's a deeply-held, core belief that the R party, and individual Rs, refuse to acknowledge, but it is. So many things President Obama has tried to do were more conservative than the presidents mentioned above, and he is opposed with fierce, insulting opposition. Racist signs and public displays of racism are ignored by Republicans. I believe, and I don't mean this insultingly, that it is naive to think it's not about race. - Columnist Jill Kuraitis on the Facebook page of Idaho Rep. Brian Cronin.
Are you having fun yet?
If not, some "FUN FACTS" from the Unreal Americans Facebook page may be in order:
Nixon raised the debt ceiling 9 times for a total increase of 36%. Ford raised the debt ceiling 5 times for a total increase of 41%. Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times for a total increase of 199%. George H.W. Bush raised the debt ceiling 9 times for a total increase of 48%. George W. Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times for a total increase of 90%. That was Ok. They were white republicans.
And Idaho Democratic candidate Leif Skyving pointed out that "Nixon was very dark, but at the same time white."
Finally, a friend on mine summed it up:
Are we really that shocked? Racists on the right have been speaking in code for decades now. Obama's mere presence just gives a new dimension to the coding.