MSNBC Host: Romney accused of using racist code

[Sdiver]

The Left is really desperate now to come up with a load of Mule Muffins like this.

This is going to be a LONG 2 1/2 months.

.MSNBC Host: Romney Engaging in the “Niggerization” of Obama

On “The Cycle,” MSNBC’s answer to Fox News’s “The Five,” co-host Toure’ accused Mitt Romney of using racist code by claiming President Obama was running an “angry” campaign. After he made his claim, conservative S.E. Cupp destroyed him with logic.

He never knew what hit him:


“I mean, that really bothered me,” Touré said. “You notice he said ‘anger’ twice. He’s really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man. This is part of the playbook against Obama, the ‘otherization’ — ‘he’s not like us.’”

“I know it’s a heavy thing, I don’t say it lightly, but this is niggerization. ‘You are not one of us, you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.’ And the idea of locating anger around Obama just doesn’t fit with who he is and who he trained himself to be going back to high school, training himself to be ‘no-drama Obama.’ They are talking to people who are trained to hate him, who want to hate him so this how we turn out the base to work against him.”

So, in Toure’s world, Romney needs to remind the base that Obama is black, because without that racially charged reminder, they might run out on Election Day and pull the lever for him.

That makes sense.

As if the base of the Republican Party doesn’t have enough reasons to turn out and vote, and as if the racists in both parties are ignorant the President is black.

Toure’s assertion is both feeble and pitiful. It’s another example of how it’s necessary for the left to destroy Mitt Romney as a person because they can’t run on Obama’s record.

Here's the link with the exchange.

http://campaigntrailreport.com/2012/...ation-of-obama

[MR2]

Touré is but a minor Wizard at MS-KKK. The real Grand Wizards to watch out for are Rev Al, Ed Schultz, and Chris 'Tingles' Matthews.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Sdiver

This is going to be a LONG 2 1/2 months.

Especially if there's going to be a separate thread for every instance in which the politics of race and racial identity become an issue.

MOO, telling African Americans how they should/should not interpret electoral politics and political communication is going to be as conducive to Romney's victory as mocking African Americans over how they do/do not interpret electoral politics and political communication.

This "dialog" in which each side says "No, it is the other side that is racist" is the trap that the current administration has been laying for the opposition since the president gave his inaugural address. If the opposition doesn't figure this out, someone in the GOP is going to step on his/her crank and enable the president and his supporters to say "See? Just like we've been saying all along!" for a few news cycles.

If the GOP wants to address the issue constructively, the response should reflect a willingness to engage issues of concern to black Americans in a manner that neither patronizes blacks nor budges on the party's core values, policy preferences, or priorities.

YMMV.

[PRB]

I want to know when I'm going to get my Republican secret racial language handbook.....I'm registered so I should have gotten it...maybe I'll email Al West for his copy.

[Dusty]

Well, I'm not voting for Romney if he's gonna go around indiscriminately "niggerizing" folk.

[Hand]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

Especially if there's going to be a separate thread for every instance in which the politics of race and racial identity become an issue.

MOO, telling African Americans how they should/should not interpret electoral politics and political communication is going to be as conducive to Romney's victory as mocking African Americans over how they do/do not interpret electoral politics and political communication.

This "dialog" in which each side says "No, it is the other side that is racist" is the trap that the current administration has been laying for the opposition since the president gave his inaugural address. If the opposition doesn't figure this out, someone in the GOP is going to step on his/her crank and enable the president and his supporters to say "See? Just like we've been saying all along!" for a few news cycles.

If the GOP wants to address the issue constructively, the response should reflect a willingness to engage issues of concern to black Americans in a manner that neither patronizes blacks nor budges on the party's core values, policy preferences, or priorities.

YMMV.

Sigaba - Does it not bother you, sir, that there are so many examples of people <assumed political persuasion removed> who jump on every single opportunity to turn absolutely anything that anybody says who is on the right side of the aisle into some form of racism, race baiting, bigotry, or woman hating?
I don't disagree with you, its not anyone's place to tell anyone else how to interpret anything, this is a free country. And in that vein, are we not supposed to be marching AWAY from this sort of thing? So that even normal white folks who don't understand the twisted, subjective rules that accompany interacting with or speaking about black people can do so without fear of being slandered for any and everything they said or didn't say?

When can we have THAT United States? I assert that there were many Obama voters who did so hoping that he truly would help erode the racial divide that continues to be propagated not by those who suffer from it, but by those who profit from it. Unfortunately, that change did not come either.

[Richard]

Predictable - both the situation and the responses. Sad it is.

And so it goes...

Richard

[Destrier]

http://video.foxnews.com/v/178982579...e-age-of-obama

Nice to see a Dem, Gov Wilder voicing out against this type of thing.

[Inflexible Six]

"Toure" ... I'm so glad we ask his opinions.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Hand

Entire post.

Here's the thing. Every arena of discourse is going to have a set of rules, stickies, and FAQs. IMO, figuring out the basics of "the twisted, subjective rules" --and there's a charged characterization!--is not terribly difficult to do. That is, if one wants to do so.

And also, it isn't as if the GOP hasn't played racial politics (source is here).

GOP: 'We were wrong' to play racial politics
By Richard Benedetto, USA TODAY
Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman apologized to one of the nation's largest black civil rights groups Thursday, saying Republicans had not done enough to court blacks in the past and had exploited racial strife to court white voters, particularly in the South.
"It's not healthy for the country for our political parties to be so racially polarized," said Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman.
By Morry Gash, AP

"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization," Mehlman said at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

Mehlman's apology to the NAACP at the group's convention in Milwaukee marked the first time a top Republican Party leader has denounced the so-called Southern Strategy employed by Richard Nixon and other Republicans to peel away white voters in what was then the heavily Democratic South. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Republicans encouraged disaffected Southern white voters to vote Republican by blaming pro-civil rights Democrats for racial unrest and other racial problems.

More recently, however, Republicans have been working aggressively to build the party's support among African-Americans, who have long voted overwhelmingly for Democrats. In 2000, President Bush got just 9% of the black vote. He improved slightly to 11% in 2004.

"It's clear the Republicans really are trying to make inroads with black voters," says Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta and co-author of The Rise of Southern Republicans.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush agreed with Mehlman, although the president did not express similar regrets in the speech Thursday to the Indiana Black Expo in Indianapolis.

"Ken (Mehlman) said it was wrong to try and benefit from racial polarization. We agree fully," McClellan said.

Mehlman said Democrats have been taking black votes for granted in recent years.

"It's not healthy for the country for our political parties to be so racially polarized," he said. "Just as the Democrats came to this (black) community in 1964 with something real to offer, today we Republicans have something that should cause you to take another look at the party of Lincoln."

Republican efforts to make amends could pay political dividends, Black says. "White Republican support in the South is so strong that it won't lose whites, and it could gain some blacks," he says.

While Mehlman was speaking to the NAACP, Bush used his speech to an audience of 3,000 at the Indiana Black Expo to back up the GOP outreach. He said his education, housing and economic policies have been good for African-Americans.

He took credit for initiating education programs that are narrowing the gap in test scores between black and white elementary school students. And he noted that black ownership of businesses is at an all-time high and that home ownership among blacks is nearing 50%.

"I see an America where every person of every race has the opportunity to strive for a better future," Bush said.

Bush appeared in Indianapolis instead of attending the NAACP convention, underway at the same time in Milwaukee. It marked the fifth consecutive year he has turned down an NAACP invitation to speak, making him the first sitting president since Warren Harding to not address the group.

The White House said he couldn't attend because of a scheduling conflict. Bush and NAACP leaders have been on the outs since the 2000 presidential campaign. Bush, then governor of Texas, was angered by NAACP ads accusing him of being unsympathetic to the dragging death of a black Texan.

Source is here.

Can the GOP Speak to Blacks?

By Kathleen Parker
Thursday, September 3, 2009

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- When people think of South Carolina, they think of . . . I know, Comedy Central. Given the state's generosity in providing punch lines, Jon Stewart really ought to consider taking a pay cut.

What people do not typically think of is black Republicans, a perception that could change soon if a young man named Marvin Rogers has his way. This 33-year-old, Spanish-speaking former aide to South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis has a plan for the GOP: He wants to change its complexion.

Until 2008, when he ran unsuccessfully for the state House of Representatives, Rogers may have been better known in Latin America, where he was an itinerant preacher for several years, than in North America. "Unsuccessfully" in this case should be qualified. Rogers won 32 percent of the vote in a blue stronghold, running as a black Republican in the year of Obama.

All things considered, not bad.

Rogers's story is, shall we say, unorthodox. Born in the tiny town of Boiling Springs, S.C., he was raised by working-class parents with values rather than ideology. "So I was largely removed from the acrimony between the African American race and the Republican Party."

Without preconceptions about where his race placed him politically, Rogers began examining issues on paper and recognized that he was philosophically more aligned with Republicans than Democrats. But then a funny thing happened. When he began attending political meetings, he noticed, "Oh, my, I'm the only black guy here. What's up with that?"

That question led Rogers on a quest that has resulted in a book nearing completion, "Silence Is the Loudest Sound," in which he attempts to explain how the party of Lincoln lost its black soul.

Through five years of study and interviews, Rogers reached the conclusion that the chasm between the black community and the Republican Party is more emotional than philosophical. And, he says, that chasm is more a media template than reflective of reality.

The best explanation for what's gone wrong, he says, was articulated by Jack Kemp, who told him during an interview: "The Republican Party has had a great history with African Americans and they turned away from it. The Democratic Party has had a terrible history, but they overcame it."

Part of the turning away followed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," which tried to harness votes by cultivating white resentment toward blacks. Rogers is no Pollyanna and recognizes this period for what it was -- a "bruise" on the GOP. But he insists that Democrats use the Southern strategy when it suits them.

The biggest problem for today's Republican Party, he says, is tone-deafness, as manifested by conservative talk radio and TV. Rogers says he and most blacks can't listen to Rush Limbaugh because all they hear is anger.

"They might agree with Rush on the issues, but they can't hear him because he sounds mad. People don't follow fussers. People don't follow angry men. They follow articulators."

What about Michael Steele, the Republican Party chairman? Is he changing the perception of the GOP as a party of whites?

Rogers takes a moment to consider, and answers carefully.

"Let's say I think that when he ran for the Maryland Senate seat, and when he was lieutenant governor, that was when he was most effective in changing this perception."

Another reason the GOP limits itself among African Americans, says Rogers, is because Republicans don't talk about issues that have currency in the black community -- poverty, the challenges of single-parent homes, social justice, recidivism, black capitalism and crime. Studying Republican speeches through the decades was how Rogers came up with his book title.

The way for Republicans to attract black voters is pretty simple, says Rogers: Show up and solve problems.

When he moved to Rock Hill, where he currently lives, Rogers made his home in the inner city rather than in the suburbs. When a local basketball team needed money for jerseys, Rogers helped them. Thus, when this inner-city team hit the court, the players' jerseys said, "York County GOP."

"People don't care what [political affiliation] comes after your name," says Rogers. "They just want the jersey."

With Rogers on the hustings, Democrats have cause for concern. Among other things, he's telling African Americans that they have rendered themselves politically impotent by voting monolithically. "If one party can count on our vote, then they can take us for granted. Predictability is suicidal."

Predictability would seem not to be a problem for a Spanish-speaking, black Republican wonk who just might make South Carolina less of a joke.

FWIW, a rebuttal to the notion that Nixon crafted the Southern Strategy is available here. Unfortunately, that rebuttal does not make use of any of Harry S. Dent's papers in the Nixon Presidential Library. More on Dent here and there.

[PRB]

Originally Posted by Dusty

Well, I'm not voting for Romney if he's gonna go around indiscriminately "niggerizing" folk.

Im with you Dusty...could lead to lots of other serious 'izations'....

[SF-TX]

Kira Davis responds to Toure:

Link

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by SF-TX

Kira Davis responds to Toure:

Link

Nicely done young lady.

[mcmac61]

Great Response Young Woman and Gov. Romney should place you on his staff.

Pres. Obama uses his own code as well. His claim to be a descendant of the first American slave is something that African Americans may admire him for.

So slavery is bad, unless you are a descendant of the first slave, in which case that is good?

The roots of heritage in African Americans run deep, but when brought to the front, only the African American community can speak freely about it, even though there haven't been slaves (in the sense of enslavement of African Americans) for a thousand+ years, yet some talk as though they were enslaved themselves during the abolition of slavery.

The more the African Americans want to rely on their approach to isolating theirselves, the more they distance theirselves from the very dreams and freedoms of equality MLK had envisioned.