11.15.12
The Stench that lingers
WhiteManistan’s King couldn’t match the gifting to non-whites.
From today’s Los Angeles Times:
Mitt Romney said Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was due in large part to his rival’s strategy of giving “gifts” during his first term to three groups that were pivotal in the results of last week’s election: African Americans, Latinos and young voters.
“The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people,” Romney told hundreds of donors during a telephone town hall Wednesday …
The Los Angeles Times listened in to the Wednesday call, but Romney did not appear to be aware of the presence of reporters.
Oops.
It was the gifts — free stuff they did not deserve — to those 47 percent in the national moochers club, apparently:
“With regards to African American voters, ‘Obamacare’ was a huge plus — and was highly motivational to African American voters. You can imagine for somebody making $25—, or $30—, or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free healthcare — particularly if you don’t have it, getting free healthcare worth, what, $10,000 a family, in perpetuity, I mean this is huge. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free healthcare was a big plus.”
A leading Republican governor sharply rebuked Mitt Romney for his view that President Obama owed his reelection to “gifts??? his administration gave to various demographic groups, saying the sentiment was not representative of what the Republican Party believes.
At a post-election gathering of the Republican Governors Assn., Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Romney’s comments just hours earlier in a conference call with top donors were “absolutely wrong.???
“We have got to stop dividing the American voters …”
Can’t we all get away from The Stench? Not so fast, it would seem.
Lee Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.??? By 1968 you can’t say “nigger???—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.…
What Mitt Romney is now complaining about is the horrifying reality that many people who aren’t black see themselves as victims of those “economic things??? — and as a result anti-government rhetoric is turning into a way to lose elections rather than win them.
And I don’t think the Republican party as currently constituted can change this: after 45 years of the Southern strategy, this stuff is what defines the party’s soul.
A few years ago Atwater was the subject of a documentary called Boogie Man.
It was a comprehensive dissection, exposing the famous dead man’s tactics during the elder Bush’s first campaign.
Wholly bizarre and sickening, Lee Atwater was a bigot like Ted Nugent in that he and his pals insisted he wasn’t one while simultaneously exploiting race division.
He also played guitar and chummed around with old black blues artists who seemed to tolerate him even though they knew what he was about. Atwater apparently felt that such associations, like many so afflicted, proved he couldn’t possibly be a racist.
Then Atwater came down with an aggressive brain tumor. In a losing struggle for life portrayed in Boogie Man, he goes on a piteous self-examination trip, coming to the agonized conclusion that he was a horrible human being, one of the real bad men.
Atwater begs and talks as if he’s afraid of what’s in store. When I was watching it I was glad he perished. That seemed fair.
Atwater made a mockery of decency. From the venomous political propaganda that was his invention and the antic little white man clown guitar playing routines at GOP victory parties to the leeching on to famous blues musicians by offering them opportunity to rub elbows with famous politicians, Boogie Man continually makes you vaguely nauseous. It is the biography of slime. And the cruel animal atavism shown in it is the backbone of the crazy Republican Party.
Atwater, briefly discussing how to use racism in political campaigns, here at Pine View Farm.
The trailer for Boogie Man is here.
The inexplicable and frankly stupefying all-star blues record “featuring” Lee Atwater, from 1990.