Talking Points Memo has an article today describing a GOP mailer sent out to constituents of AZ state representative Rae Waters (D). The front is pretty standard stuff, Waters voted against the state's racial profiling law SB 1070, which means she wants to shoot up your stop signs, apparently.
This in itself would be bad enough; the AZ GOP hasn't gotten the memo that crime is down in most of Arizona, so it has to insist that crime is out of control and blame the foreigners.
After the jump, you'll see the back, which I find much, much worse:
Before I go all rant-y, let me just say about the kid on the left: awwwww. Adorable. You gotta hand it to the Yuma County Republican Party (who paid for this ad), they wanted a cute kid for this POS mailer, and they found it.
Now back to the ad as a whole. Rae Waters supports reasonable immigration reform. The AZ GOP sees "reasonable immigration reform" as "we want more crime in our neighborhoods!" The only way to protect our neighborhoods is to support SB 1070, and laws that allow the state to question anyone who looks Hispanic, asking if they're REALLY citizens.
Now look at the kid you're protecting again. That adorable, blond haired, blue-eyed kid.
The AZ GOP wants you to protect your Aryan kids against non-Aryan foreigners trying to come into America!
Seriously? Did no one who looked at this ad even consider, just once, that maybe race-baiting in an official mailer was a bad idea? They could have just taken a cue from the Sharron Angle (NV) and David Vitter (LA) campaigns, who used the same "foreigners and crime!!!11" images in their ads.
But no, we had to go to "protecting the white children".
Oh, but the chair of the Yuma County Republican Party, who approved this ad, isn't racist, he has Hispanic friends!
"I've got family that are Hispanic in heritage, I've got friends that I've grown up with all my life," Townsend told me. "A lot of them agree with this."
Because a couple Hispanics have reasonable concerns about immigration, he feels free to approve a Fourteen-Words-inspired "protect white children and women" ad?
Will the people of her district, which includes Ahwatukee, south Tempe and west Chandler, fall for this? I sure hope not. The AZ GOP needs to know that these tactics will not work in the 21st Century.