Race Bait And Switch (GOP uses race to get nominated far right folks)

[papau]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6387-2005Feb7.html

Race Bait And Switch

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, February 8, 2005; Page A23


"Every Hispanic in America is watching," Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch declared ominously as most Senate Democrats voted last week to oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.

What was the senator from Utah implying? Hatch and everyone else knew perfectly well that Democrats voted against the new attorney general not because of his ethnicity but because they wanted to hold Gonzales and the White House he served accountable for appalling policies that led to the mistreatment of prisoners. But playing ethnic politics is more profitable for Republicans than arguing about torture, so Hatch let it rip.

Among the many double standards in U.S. politics is the contradictory attitude of many conservatives toward "political correctness" and the matter of "playing the race card."

Conservatives profess to be horrified by political correctness, which is roughly defined as the habit of stamping out frank discussion about matters related even tangentially to race, class, gender and ethnicity. Whenever a liberal raises concerns over whether a conservative initiative might damage the rights or interests of, say, African Americans or Latinos, that liberal is accused of being "politically correct" and playing the race card -- usually, just to make the sin sound really awful, off "the bottom of the deck."

But increasingly, it is conservatives who are using political correctness to sidestep hard issues. Consider the bait-and-switch in the Gonzales case: Democrats thought it appropriate to use Gonzales's nomination to launch a debate about torture policy. Gonzales is Latino. Therefore, Republicans insisted, Democrats who wanted to debate torture policy were anti-Latino.<snip>


No political camp in our country can claim utter innocence when it comes to racial politics. But is it too much to ask that those who constantly accuse their opponents of using "political correctness" as a bludgeon at least be a trifle embarrassed over how often they wield it themselves?