Republican Attacks on 14th Amendment Exposes Insecurity About November

[pampango]

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Republican_Attacks_on_14th_Amendment_Exposes_Insecurity_About_November_8387.html


I have a question for political junkies analyzing the November elections: if Republican enthusiasm is sky-high, and the right-wing is chomping at the bit to get to the polls, why do Party leaders feel the need to keep throwing out racial red meat to its base – including this week’s call to reconsider the 14th Amendment? Is it that the Republican base is a hungry beast that falls asleep if not continually fed? Or are rabid Republican Teabaggers too small in number, so the GOP feels it must escalate its racist appeals to attract enough votes from political independents to oust incumbent Democrats? Both may be true, but a racist strategy that brought Republicans success for decades is likely to backfire in 2010.

When I began asking people about Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s public support for changing the 14th Amendment’s granting of citizenship to all those born in the United States, the universal response was disbelief. I was told that I had to have heard the news wrong, because even the Republican Party would not go so far as to attempt to reaffirm the notorious Dred Scott decision and the nation’s sorry legacy of racial discrimination.

The pundits reviving Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” Ronald Reagan’s launching his 1980 campaign from Philadelphia, Mississippi (where whites killed three civil rights workers), the racially charged ads of the 1990 Helms-Gantt North Carolina Senate race and other racist lowlights ignore recent electoral trends. These trends overwhelmingly show that Latinos are increasingly voting Democratic, are voting in larger numbers, and that candidates perceived as anti-immigrant or anti-Latino are losing races in swing districts.

African-American voter turnout will also be spurred by GOP plans to revoke the 14th Amendment. Blacks remain the constituency most favorable toward Barack Obama, and know the risks of turning citizenship into a political football. Many ethnic voters will see the Republican’s willingness to revoke the 14th Amendment as a flashing danger sign. The Republican Party’s willingness to revoke the 14th Amendment is a wake-up call to many who believed there were limits to how far the GOP will go. Republicans may well find after the November elections that they have badly miscalculated in shifting the debate from economic issues, where incumbent Democrats are vulnerable, to racial attacks.

[MajorChode]

1. It's the same election year bullshit we always see from them

In the 90's it was gay marriage ballot initiatives designed to get the bigots to the voting booth. Now it's immigration bullshit. They are also using the "Ground Zero Mosque" bullshit to raise money.

[Bitwit1234]

2. Correct...they pick something, Rush and Fox play it up trying

to get a controversy going to help republicans get elected.

[Wounded Bear]

3. The dirty little secret is that the economic issues are racial issues...

Historically, repubs have had success blaming economic problems on racial minorities. We have to fight this. In the 1930's, too many white people were affected by the Depression for that to succeed. The current "Super Recession"/Depression is very similar, if not in it's causes (a theory I do NOT support), at least in its effects.

Hopefully, we can break through the thick layers of denial and make people realize that "they" (those white Repubs) are not being treated any better than "them" (whatever ethnic/racial minority is the current whipping boy for the RW media). Do that and the Repubs will reclaim their place in the wilderness for another generation or two. It really is necessary to convince a majority of Americans of all races that we are all in this together.

Improving the economy overall will help ALL races. Current policies only help those at the top.