I have written many critical words about Ron Fournier, the former AP national correspondent, who now edits the National Journal. I have long thought that he displayed a pro-Republican bias in his reporting.
Tonight, I want to celebrate his integrity and courage.
In today's National Journal, Fournier writes one of the most brutally honest analyses of the impact of race in American politics. He goes back to Detroit, where he grew up, to discuss this issue of racial politics with white, middle class voters.
Ron Fournier has stated, unequivocally, that Mitt Romney is playing the race card in his mendacious attacks on President Obama's welfare policy. Please go to the National Journal
Here is an excerpt from his analysis:
Working-class whites, in other words, are already more prosperous and secure than working-class minorities, but they’re less optimistic because they don’t believe they’re climbing anymore. They’re simply trying to hold on to what they’ve got, and see others grabbing at it.
Thanks to Romney, they see minorities grabbing at their way of life every day and all day in the inaccurate welfare ad. It opens with a picture of Bill Clinton (a man obsessed with Macomb County and Reagan Democrats) signing the 1996 welfare reform act, which shifted the benefits from indefinite government assistance to one pushing people into employment and self-reliance.
A leather-gloved white laborer wipes sweat from his forehead. “But on July 12,” the ad intones,” President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements. Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send your welfare check and “welfare to work” goes back to being plain old welfare.”
Fournier has also taken the Romney adviser Ron Kaufman to task in US News.
Though the first few minutes were spent on niceties, Fournier soon brought the conversation around to a hot-button topic: the Romney campaign’s new series of welfare ads. The ads say that the Obama administration ended work requirements for Americans in the welfare program, effectively “gutting welfare reform.”
Fact checkers have largely debunked the premise of the ad, pointing out that the work requirements in fact have not been ended.
But Fournier did not just tell Kaufman the ad was wrong, he also accused the Romney campaign of “playing the race card.” Fournier, who is from Detroit, Mich., said that welfare is a hot button issue in his hometown, and that this ad was “pushing that button … playing to that racial prejudice. And I’m wondering: are you guys doing that on purpose?”
Many thanks to Josh Marshall at TPM
for reporting this. Here is what Josh had to say.
Again, pretty much everyone knows this is true. You’ve either got to be a rube or a jackass not to see it. But it’s … well, it’s indelicate to say it. And once you do, appealing to racism isn’t just one view against another. It’s something our society has decided is simply wrong. Could it be that the Romney campaign is just finally doing it so transparently that at least a few of the biggs will come out and say it?
Who’s next?