Digby explains the Republican panic

Panic isn't too strong a word, either. Digby deconstructs a new whine from David Frum over at NRO about the huge advantage Democrats have with young voters. Frum points out that young white voters still prefer Republicans by about 2%, but that Hispanic and African-American young voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats. So what is the republican problem? According to Frum, not Bush's social policies. The problem is the failure of the Bush administration is

... the legacy of immigration non-enforcement.

Digby points out that the poll was not of new immigrants. It was of voters, most of whom are American born and educated. But this piece of right-wing Republican ignorance certainly explains why immigration reform and a fence across the border between Mexico and the U.S. are such great right-wing priorities.

Essentially Frum complains that young Hispanics and African-America voters detest the Republicans. Does he ask why? Of course not, because the only answer to that is the fact that the Republican Party is the party of institutionalized Racism in America today. Digby provides the evidence, as well as economic studies that show the reason why America does not have the social support system fitting to a modern industrial nation is that very Racism Frum so studiously ignores.

Essentially Frum is lamenting that the vote is not restricted to White Americans only. Digby points out that this very Racism is something that Bush and Rove have tried to wean the Republicans off of, but failed. So it is very likely that the alternative was the Attorney General's DoJ efforts to suppress likely Democratic votes in key states.

Go read Digby for the full details. As usual, her post is worth reading.

Steve Benen displays Giuliani's racism

Steve Benen at TPM explains that the problem with Rudy Giuliani is not that he was filmed publicly saying "B*llsh*t." It is the extremely racist context in which he said that. It was an effort to get the White NY Police to reject his opponent, David Dinkins, because of his race.

The Iraq War IS the Republican Party.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon (day pass required) makes a really good point. A number of commentators are pushing the idea that McCain's collapse as a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination has occurred because of McCain's support for the Iraq War. That simply doesn't fit with the reality of the Republican Party.

The Republicans will not nominate anyone who opposes the Iraq War.

It is not support for the Iraq war which dooms a GOP presidential candidacy, but the opposite: any real questioning of the wisdom of the war or any agitating for withdrawal or opposition to Bush's commitment would immediately and single-handedly destroy the viability of a GOP candidacy. Ask Ron Paul, or Chuck Hagel, or even Sam Brownback, whose flagging campaign has triggered the wrath of the base despite his radical social conservatism as a result of his ongoing questioning of Bush's Iraq policy.

The war in Iraq remains popular with the GOP base. They want to stay and keep waging war. They would immediately turn against anyone who advocated withdrawal or even questioned the wisdom of staying. The Republican Party continues to be the Party of the Iraq War, and -- directly contrary to the conventional wisdom that is arising -- loyal support for the Iraq War is an absolute pre-requisite for winning the nomination.

The collapse of the McCain campaign has been caused by

his excessive deviation from the Right's mandated views -- on torture, on McCain-Feingold, and especially on immigration. [Snip]

What they (the Republican base) demand, first and foremost, is unwavering loyalty to the Cause, and that Cause is shaped predominantly by Middle East militarism, beginning with Iraq.

The race for the Republican Presidential nomination is coming down to Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and possibly Fred Thompson. All three of those have repeatedly said they support what Bush is doing in Iraq and none have made a significant move towards troop withdrawal.

That is because the Iraq war is the Republican Party today. It encompasses everything they are about. It is fear-based, resulting in an expression of racism, Imperialism, militarism, opposition to the dirty anti-war hippies, redemption for Nixon and for fighting the War in Vietnam; then it is justification for doing away the Rule of Law and with Civil Rights in America, and finally it is all financed by extreme levels of political corruption which pleases the economic conservatives and Libertarian conservative. On top of the other connections to Republicanism the location of the war in the Middle East suffuses it all with a patina of conservative Biblically-based religion. There really is an element of "the Crusader" included with the Imperialism and militarism.

This makes the Iraq War into the base justification for the conservative Republican Party of today. The Republicans will not nominate anyone to run for President in 2008 who opposes the Iraq War. McCain has other problems. He has mismanaged his campaign horribly, and then he has thrown down the gauntlet against the Republican base by supporting the immigration legislation. He won't be back.

Racism isn't a problem in America any more. It's just uppity Blacks. Lynch them, throw them in jail, or send them back to Africa.!

We get this by way of Rick Perlstein:

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree....

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles....

Yep. Illegally tell African American's they can't sit under the "White" tree (it's also Republican, of course) and when they show up, leave nooses hanging from it. This in a country where Blacks have been oppressed for over a century through lynchings and other vicious acts of terrorism.

So the kids who left the nooses get suspended a day or two, get surreptitious pats on the back for their ability to communicate what every damned White Republican in that city wants to say and do, and then the (White) DA gets all terroristic on Blacks for their fully justified reaction to the threat they are under.

All that's missing are dogs and fire hoses.

The full story is found here.

Racism in America is alive, well, and has found a home in the Republican Party and the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Republican dilemma

The fastest growing minority group of voters is that amorphous group called Hispanic. Karl Rove recognizes that, and so does George W. Bush. If the Hispanic voters tend to vote Republican, then the Republicans can covert from a regional Southern Party to a national one. But they cannot become a national majority party without Hispanic voters, who are expected to go from their 5.5% in 2000 to 6% in 2004 to 10% or more in 2008.

But the core block of Republicans is (the polite term) Nativist. They have recently been depending on that to get out Republican voters.

... in the run-up to last year's midterm elections, Republicans chose to make immigration their lead issue. The GOP leadership in Congress encouraged talk radio and cable news shows to inflate the illegal alien problem, and Republican candidates took a hard-line anti-immigration stance in hopes of turning out GOP voters. It didn't work. Not only did the strategy fail to help Republicans hang on to their majorities in Congress, but support from Hispanic voters fell to 29%, the lowest level this decade. [Wall Street Journal via Kos]

Kos points out that the immigration issue, which several short years ago seemed to be a winning issue for the Republicans, now appears to be splitting the Republicans and alienating the Hispanic vote culturally from Republicans as a reaction to the nasty anti-immigrant attitudes Republican politicians and opinion leaders (like Limbaugh) have displayed.

Unlike African-American voters, Hispanic voters can be wooed by the Republican Party, but Hispanics are also very proud of there heritage. The Hispanic voters have been a growing swing block willing to entertain the Republican message, but as the Republicans began running against immigrants and minorities, the previous increases in Hispanic votes has reversed. In essence, it appears that the Republican anti-immigrant message is pushing the Hispanic voters to the Democratic Party.

If you remember Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California a decade or more ago and his strong anti-immigrant message, the result was a heavily Democratic California electorate. Since the Republicans with national with the message, it is highly possible that the result will also be similar for the Democrats nationally.