McCain Has Done Nothing To Fuel Racism

National Review Online: Why Is It Suddenly Racist To Treat Obama Just Like The Four White Guys Who Preceded Him?

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Jonah Goldberg.

The Democratic nominee scorned the “prejudice and bigotry and hatred and division” on display in the Arizona senator’s campaign. As for his own platform, he said that “we will do all these things because we love people instead of hate them. . . . Beware of those who fear and doubt and those who rave and rant about the dangers of progress.”

This wasn’t last week, but 44 years ago. The Republican from Arizona - demonized by the Democratic and journalistic establishment - was Sen. Barry Goldwater. The Democrat, of course, was LBJ.

There are differences between then and now, to be sure. For starters, there was still a great deal of work left to be done on civil rights in 1964 (and John McCain is no libertarian). But even then, the attempt to paint Goldwater as a hatemonger was idiotic and dishonorable. It was almost as dishonorable as Harry Truman’s attempt 16 years earlier to cast his opponent, businessman Thomas Dewey, as an American Hitler.

Liberal Democrats have a long tradition of tarring opponents as the monolithic forces of hatred and prejudice while casting themselves as the enlightened proponents of peace, love, and decency. And this election shows that tradition is alive and well.

Over the weekend, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights hero, sold off another chunk of his reputation by coughing up some absurd partisan talking point about how the McCain-Palin campaign reminds him of that of Dixiecrat segregationist George Wallace. And over the last week, a host of reporters - not just liberal pundits - ominously fretted that the McCain campaign’s use of former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers as an issue is a racist ploy. The Washington Post’s Anne Kornblut, for instance, wrote that Sarah Palin’s comment that Barack Obama was “palling around with terrorists” is “a turn of phrase that critics said was racially loaded.”

The most laughable evidence that McCain is sowing hatred stems from the shouts of “terrorist!” and “kill him!” from a few hothead buffoons at McCain rallies. Of course, rather than foment this sort of thing, McCain went out of his way to chastise his own supporters personally and publicly.

McCain has done nothing to fuel racism. Or, put another way, the McCain campaign has done as much to promote prejudice as the Obama campaign has to inflame the vile passions behind the “Abort Sarah Palin” bumper sticker, Madonna’s stage video lumping McCain in with Hitler, the eugenic snobbery aimed at Palin’s son with Down syndrome, or the column in the Philadelphia Daily News that predicted a “race war” if McCain wins.

Wait a second, shout Obama supporters. What about attempts to paint Obama as “the other,” as “different”? Peter Beinart writes in Time that the Republican campaign is trying to cast Obama as not “American enough.” Obama is cosmopolitan and represents a changing world. To cast that in a negative light, insists Beinart (a friend and frequent debate opponent), amounts to “shocking” racism.

Beinart recounts how Palin said at one rally, “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way that you and I see America.” Beinart makes it sound as if she said this through a Klan hood. Please. Every single presidential campaign boils down to an argument about how the candidates “see America.” Suddenly that question is out of bounds because Obama is black?

According to the liberal history books, in 1988 the GOP cast Michael Dukakis as too elitist, cosmopolitan, and not American enough. In 1992, it ran a similar attack against Bill Clinton - remember the hullabaloo about draft dodging and that trip to Russia? In 2000, ditto with Al Gore, though the emphasis was less on foreignness and more on extraterrestrialness. And in 2004, there was John Kerry’s “global test” for U.S. national security. Lack of originality notwithstanding, why is it suddenly racist to treat Obama just like the four white guys who preceded him? Talk about racial double standards.

Obama holds mega-campaign rallies in Berlin, touts his global appeal, and says a top foreign policy goal is to get other countries to like us. But it’s racist to call him cosmopolitan?

He has nontrivial ties to an unrepentant (and white) former leader of the Weather Underground, a radical leftist organization that sought to kill American soldiers, policemen and politicians. But it’s “racist” to bring that up? (If anything, by not attacking Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other politically unsavory nonwhite associates, McCain is self-censoring for fear of seeming racist.)

If Obama were a white Democratic nominee named Barry O’Malley, the GOP would be going after him twice as hard. But liberal Democrats would still caterwaul about fomenting hatred and racism, because that’s what they always do.

[c-mo6]

No your''e a racist if you dont vote for him because he''s black. But i''m sure that isn''t the case right?

[c-mo6]

republicans are the Racist party maybe you should check out this site, www.nationalblackrepublicans.com/index.c
fm?fusea

here is just a tidbit

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S''''s: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.

It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860''''s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950''''s and 1960''''s.

During the civil rights era of the 1960''''s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs


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Posted by pegpond at 06:42 PM : Oct 17, 2008

And yet mcCain voted against a MLK holiday go figure.

[pegpond]

I find it funny that people think the republicans are the Racist party maybe you should check out this site, www.nationalblackrepublicans.com/index.cfm?fusea

here is just a tidbit

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S''s: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.

It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860''s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950''s and 1960''s.

During the civil rights era of the 1960''s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs

[realist13]

John McCain and Sarah Palin are the biggest white supremist racists since Hitler, and anyone who says otherwise supports their biggitry. McCain''s campaign is identical to the Nazi propaganda spewed by Hitler that started WW1 and WW2... I''d rather leave this country than see either of them with access to that big red nuclear war button in the White House!

[longdogg2]

McCain allowed days to go by before speaking out. Only after the media, and even members of his own party demanded that he put a stop to it.

This on-going half truths in American politics must come to an end. Most Americans today are saying enough is enough. Talk about the issues that matter, not petty distractions.

[longdogg2]

Mr. Goldberg, et al.

Were you there?

[walt1944-2009]

The neocon Fascist Nazi propoganda machine, the NRO, has come out in defense of John McBush McCain and is labeling all those Whimpo-crats out there as the bad guys while McBush is as guiltless as Sarah Palin was in Troopergate???!!!

Naturally, Adolph Hitler felt this way when he incited the Stormtroopers to beat up Jews, burn down synagogues, burn "unacceptable books" and spy on your family and neighbor. The Nazis claimed that all Hitler was doing was speaking; its the people who got excited about it!!!

Maybe we should play it safe and lock McBush and Palin in seperate rooms so they can talk to the walls and not get anyone "excited"!

SIG HEIL, CORPORATE AMERICA NEEDS MORE TAXPAYER MONEY!!!, BUSH!!!
sig heil, MY FEELINGS ARE HURT BECAUSE THEY CALLED ME A RACIST!!!, McBush!!!!
sig heil, I STILL THINK OBAMA IS A TERRRRRRORIST!!!, Palin!!!

[khhammerle]

Obama thinks that the Presidency is an affirmative action program.

[naturaltwo]

Racism is sending 4,000 middle or lower class Americans to their deaths for a cowardly Ivy league''s personal reasons.

The main force of outright lies and Nazi like propaganda started with Newt Gingrich, a real traitor to America.

This is one veteran that knows less conservatives fight for this country than do more liberal minded folks.

Take your filth and shove it you cowardly morons.

You aren''t Christians and you certainly shouldn''t be called American.

[rdnkchk]

and since i am from virginia and Doug Wilder is the mayor here in richmond, let me just say what a worthless man that is!! he''s racist himself.

[rdnkchk]

yet us white people are racist if we dont vote for him. what a beautiful world we live in :)

[rdnkchk]

oh for god sakes.... white people are always the racist. like someone else said.....blacks will vote for obama just because he''s black. THAT is racist. Im sick and tired of seeing black people wearing their obama shirts but know absolutely nothing about politics when you question them. they just prove the point they are supporting because of his color.

[imnho]

For about a week Sara Palin let racist at politcal events remarks go unchellenged. This was a sly attempt to see if allowing such things would fly with the voters. The verdict is in. That dog did not hunt. Now the Macain/Palin campagin has dug the whole that there in deeper.

Its to early to say for sure, but I have the feeling that on November 4 the hole will be filled in by the voters. I have the feeling that Mcain will not be a happy camper

[Cas2dy]

Actually Obama, in both his book and some of his speeches, has acknowledged that some white complaints have validity. I was in a class once and asked how many white students felt that at some point they had been the victims of anti-white prejudice and a significant majority raised their hands. But the fact remains that whites run into this less frequently (when was the last time a white was pulled over for driving in a black neighborhood) and the impact tends to be substantially less. In my case I got an undeserved low grade in a class from a black TA. Not exactly a life changing event.

Posted by pdchapin
A similar thing happened to me, but the teacher was White; I am Black. I transferred to anew school mid-ear and my new teacher took me aside and showed me the report card that had been sent with my records. It seems the old teacher had already graded my report card for the NEXT marking period, which had only just begun when I transferred. It had staright "F''s" all the way down. I went on in my new school to become salutatorian, win academic scholarships and get accepted to all of the best [private high schoo''s in my city. How''s that for her foiled stragtegy? But it was definately and sadly racism and if only my parents were the type of parent I am...she''d have been stripped of her credentials upon discovery.

[karenk479]

of course the NRO won''t condemn or even report racism rampant in this campaign...these are the folks who ousted chris buckley for exercising his american right to choose whoever he feels best qualified to lead....NRO is supposedly the voice of the "fundamentalist american" movement. hypocritical then to pull support from a respected columnist for exercising the right of freedom of speech. i used to check the NRO website each morning for the conservative viewpoint..no longer. they are unworthy of my patronage and a waste of my time.

Overall, it is true that McCain has not said or done anything racist.

That''s what he has Palin "the attack dog with lipstick" for.

[akbwell]

Why does Obama not salute the American flag? We have soldiers FIGHTING to keep u and him free & he won''t even salute the flag. ALOT of people have a problem w/that & if u don''t leave.

[karenk479]

done nothing to fuel racism??? you must be kidding. mccain showed very poor judgment in his vp pick and is ultimately responsible for the hate rhetoric this ill chosen pick is now spewing. if he''s not responsible for what comes out of his campaign, why should we assume he will take responsibility for decisions he might make in the white house ?? palin''s talk of dangerous other-ness reflects poorly on this pair. mccain pretends indignance at the suggestion he is playing the race/hate card while simultaneously by her own admission palin relishes the role for which she has been tapped. the u.s. is a very diverse place..its the premise this country was founded on..how dare you denigrate someone who is a shining example of living the american dream. mccain is a better man than this...sad to see how far he has fallen.

[akbwell]

First of all if u r not from the south u have no right to call anyone a redneck. Number two all i hve to say is 9/11/01 do u not remember? It''s NOT about black & white its about terrorist waiting & ready to attack us at anytime. THAT my friend is the REAL problem.

[pvperson]

Calling Obama a terrorist, Muslim, dangerous, un-American, un-Patriotic are just common everyday slurs I guess. Seems to me that even worse than his racism is that McCain is so hypocritical, he wants to sway voters by using lies and then tries to deign his actions. Dishonorable John, dishonorable.