Maine Gov. Paul LePage
Oh dear gawd:
Gov. Paul LePage told a group of Republicans last week that President Obama "hates white people," according to two state lawmakers who say they heard the remark directly. […]
Each said LePage talked about how Obama could have been the best president ever if he had highlighted his biracial heritage. LePage said the president hasn't done that because he hates white people.
"Yeah, he said it," said one of the lawmakers. "It was one little thing from a speech, but I think most people there thought it was totally inappropriate."
Could we just have
one damn Republican governor who is not a three-inch oozing sore on the face of the nation? It's beyond obvious now that Obama's mere presence in the White House has driven the full Republican Party batty—like it unhinged the last hinge on the ol' racist toolbox and now every damn tool is out there, doing radio shows and ranting about ethnic plots and getting actually elected to actual state offices by the dozens.
Obama hates white people started as hoary old crap from the Limbaugh wing, a shouting promise that the scary black man was after
reparations for all the black folk and
punishment for all the white folk, a conspiracy theory originally tailored for that class of party adherents too stompingly
stupid to wrap their heads around the complexities of
birth certificates or
secret Muslim plot "urban" voter fraud or
secret Obama police force or any of the even Vaguely Goddamn Fucking Subtle race-based stuff. No, this one is for the people too stupid to figure out the blazing racial connotations of all of those other things—the people who need "white vs. black, grr" tattooed on the palm of their hands so that they remember who it is they're supposed to be afraid of every evening when they take their pills, and that is apparently such a large contingent of the party that it's impossible to throw a shoe in a Republican convention without hitting five of them at once.
More on LePage below the fold.
There is not one damn thing Barack Obama has ever done in his life that might convince anyone he hates white people, but there are still a small subset of extremely pasty people who are convinced of it, and the Republican Party seems to have elected most of the dumbest ones they could find to office. I don't even think LePage is just playing to the base here—I don't see any past evidence that would suggest the world give him that much credit. No, he apparently seriously, honestly believes Barack Obama goes through life figuring out how he can hurt good white pasty stupid people like Paul LePage unless people like Paul LePage figure out how to hurt him first, because that belief, expressed 20 different ways, an emotion so primitive and non-subtle that even dogs have evolved above it, is the only remaining Republican Party position on anything.
To hell with managing the affairs of the nation or making the trains run on time, or at all, or even knowing what a train might be: The only supposed core party belief that survived the Bush-to-Obama transition without spinning into a ditch was the same racial/ethnic/religious paranoias that have driven the worst of the base since the civil rights movement made all of them sad. And, since 2008, it's been boiling over because the worst of the base has to look at Obama every day and the mere presence of one of "them" in a position of power proves, to them, every conspiracy theory anyone ever muttered about how giving other people any rights at all will mean that now it's the good white folks turn to be oppressed; the rights of citizenship played out as zero-sum game. It's not a question of ensuring basic rights to all Americans: if those other Americans are given rights, they will use it to hurt us. It's not a question of giving Muslim Americans the same basic right to religious freedom and a place of worship that everyone else is entitled to: if we allow them to meet in our neighborhoods, soon we will be under their law. A trash conspiracy opinion, to be sure, and yet one that multiple states and lawmakers cannot move quickly or often enough to wallow in. Surely, that should be proof enough of where the heart of the party lies.
What Paul LePage said was based on racism. Terribly sorry to break it to you, old sports of the more polite media venues, but you really can't have it any other way. Whether Paul LePage is a racist, directly, I don't give a damn, but the only way you can ever get to the theory that "Obama hates white people" is through a thicket of racial conspiracy theories in your own head. That makes LePage no different from the vast swath of Everyone Else in his entire damn party, none of whom have any idea as to what they're doing other than the urgent belief that everything non-white-upper-class America wants is, de facto, a plot against them, and that the Republican Party is still not only electing these people but making them the models of the party ought to be proof enough that the party is an intellectual wasteland, a big loud megaphone for spouting obscene nothings that dwindling group of people too angry and dumb and bitter to figure out how to leave.