The GOP runs on race because it apparently works

Not all of the anti-Obama sentiment is race-based. Just most of it.

Look at the Tea party complaints and the lack of truth behind them and then ask yourself, 'if this is a red herring, what's the real reason for the opposition?':
1) Taxes
TRUTH) Obama lowered them for 95% of working families

2) Health care
TRUTH) You can debate a states rights version of government power here (though the right has not), but the truth is that it's ridiculous for most tea partiers to oppose health care because, even by the worst objective numbers, we pay 1% more to cover 34 million more people (via Ezra) and reduce overall health care costs. Many of the beneficiaries of this coverage are tea partiers. Tea partiers who also, by the way, accept government run Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

TRUTH) It's NOT a government takeover. This is being done through private companies and if anyone thinks they're in danger, look at their stock prices post HCR

3) Subverting the Constitution
TRUTH) Where specifically? As the interviews with the Tax Day protesters showed, many cannot articulate their positions beyond "socialism". When questioned about what, exactly, this President is doing to endanger this country, they cannot answer.

Where were the protests when Bush launched an illegal war, based on lies and without a formal declaration of war? Where were the tea partiers when Bush gutted Due Process and the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus? Where were the demonstrations when Bush rolled back posse comitatus, allowing the Federal government to use the military in the streets of America to act as law enforcement?

Where were they then?

Given the lack of answers to these questions, the Tea Partiers inability to articulate their reasons for opposition and their failure to act when their rights were really being taken away, we have to conclude that their are other reasons for their opposition to Obama.

Look at this graph from the Washington Post via The Electoral Map. Look at where McCain's support came from.


In every state that was a part of the Confederacy, McCain won a greater share of white votes than he did nationally.

Given conservatives general dissatisfaction with McCain as a candidate I'd suggest that this is at least partially a referendum on Obama. As a black man.

Michael Steele, the chair of the RNC, acknowledged last week that the Southern Strategy is real. The Southern Strategy, cooked up by Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan, was designed to appeal to southern whites by practicing racially-divisive politics in the post-Civil Rights era to build a reliable Southern bloc for the the Republicans. The GOP has denied this for years. Until Steele:

The Plum Line

“We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans,” Steele said. “This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties. Their parties walk away from them.

“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”

There's nothing illegal about admitting you're voting on race. True, I believe that it makes you an anachronism, but it's not illegal. But it is completely dishonest, intellectually and otherwise, to try to hide your true opposition behind charged code words. Obama is not a socialist. He's not a Muslim. He is black.

Just admit it.