I guess I should stop being surprised by the racism that comes out of the GOP, but rarely does it the top levels of the leadership in an overt way. Sure, a county GOP chair here or state official there, but it seems most in national leadership tend to stay out of overtly racist statements.
Until today, that is. I subscribe to GOP mailing lists so I can hear the other side's chatter. Today, came an email from John Cornyn, the usual fundraising fare from the party of no that I get every few days, but this one came with the subject line:
SUBJECT: "witch doctors (unbelievable)"
I clicked on it thinking, "No, no way this is about Obama. It's just too easy, too overt."
The first three paragraphs say it all:
I just received an unbelievable email from Claire "lean to the left" McCaskill, the DSCC's latest pitchman for failed policies.
In it she calls Republicans "naysayers" for asking hard questions about the higher taxes and runaway federal spending currently before the Senate. She even calls Obama's dangerous plans a "bold prescription" for America.
I and my Republican colleagues think many of Obama's "cures" are worse than the disease. His budget "cure" will cost taxpayers $9,300,000,000,000.00. This irresponsible spending will ail taxpayers for generations to come. It's now time to let our side be heard.
It's pretty clear that Cornyn is making the economic push Obama's "prescription" and comparing that cure to that of a witch doctor. Get it? Because he's black and everything.
I just don't know what to do with the GOP anymore. I grew up in a pretty conservative GOP Evangelical household and am sort of the renegade in the family. I began my drift from the Limbaugh listening, Bible thumping politics shortly after graduating from high school, but I've always respected intellectuals like Buckley even when I disagreed with them. I am a big believer in the "disagree without being disagreeable" way of operating.
I became more activist oriented with Bush in power as he dragged us down with irresponsible policy after irresponsible policy. And I argued more and more about policy with my family. They defend him to this day, even things like his torture policy. I actually still consider myself Evangelical by demographic, but I disagree so much with people from my background I don't know where to begin reconciling it. My family loves Sarah Palin. I think she's a terrible example of Christianity.
What Cornyn has done has taken the innuendo-based racism that was standard fare in the McCain-Palin campaign and replaced it with overt racism. The Freepers and Red Staters have made claims in the past that Obama comes from a line of witch doctors in Kenya, but you don't expect to hear this garbage from national leaders of the GOP. Or at least I didn't (some of you might disagree).
I know the debate raged on here about the NY Post cartoon and the monkey, and honestly I could see both sides there. I thought it was tasteless and crude, but I wasn't sure I could read intent there the way others did. To me, this example from Cornyn is so over the top, I don't know of any other way to read this one.
I'm starting to think the GOP has lost more than its way. I think it has lost its soul as well. To be honest it makes me sad because so many people I love and respect are Republicans, and I just can't deal with watching them defend these sycophants.
I have the full text of the email that I can post, just am not sure if it violates fair use. There's not much else other than the usual fundraising stuff and talking points.
UPDATE: Here's the full email you'd get if I forwarded it to you. It has the subject line and all the body of the email (I x'd out my email address). Maybe I'm missing something, I just don't see how the witch doctor line applies to anything else. Also added some text for the subject line intro to make it clearer, thanks for the input.
From: Sen. John Cornyn <john@gopsenators.com>
To: xxxxxx@YAHOO.COM
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 4:08:48 PM
Subject: witch doctors (unbelievable)
Dear Republican Friend,
I just received an unbelievable email from Claire "lean to the left" McCaskill, the DSCC's latest pitchman for failed policies.
In it she calls Republicans "naysayers" for asking hard questions about the higher taxes and runaway federal spending currently before the Senate. She even calls Obama's dangerous plans a "bold prescription" for America.
I and my Republican colleagues think many of Obama's "cures" are worse than the disease. His budget "cure" will cost taxpayers $9,300,000,000,000.00. This irresponsible spending will ail taxpayers for generations to come. It's now time to let our side be heard.
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John Cornyn
Senator John Cornyn
Chairman
National Republican Senatorial Committee
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