In a week's time the wide
range of what was once considered routine GOP bigotry was on full display. Dave Agema, a former West Michigan state representative,
and Republican National Committeeman called gays "filthy homosexuals.
Next, Alaska Rep. Don Young blurted out the epitaph "wetbacks" in discussing
the immigration issue. T hen
23 members of the so-called White Student Union attended the Conservative
Political Action Conference where its leader tacitly endorsed segregation and
even slavery.
In times past, the silence from the GOP officials and rank and file would have
been deafening. It would have reconfirmed the standard knock against the GOP as
a party of Kooks, cranks misanthropes, and, of course, bigots. But in each of
the three cases, there was an outcry from local GOP officials, bloggers, and
GOP campus groups. They publicly denounced the bigotry, and in the case of
Young, House Speaker John Boehner, Arizona and Texas Senators John McCain, and
John Cornyn, and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus blasted
Young's remarks.
At first glance, this seems a signal that the GOP recognizes that it's
widely considered the party of bigotry, and that it's willing to do something
about it. But the sea change may be much less than meets the eye. Many top GOP
officials are still mute on its party's bigots. The official record still stands
that no top GOP official aggressively and consistently denounces the bigoted
remarks or acts by a GOP operative, representative, or senator.
The RNC in its near 100 page blueprint for reaching out to minorities, gays
and young people did raise faint hope that the GOP may indeed have finally woke
up that America is changing, and it can't win national offices anymore solely with
conservative white male Heartland and Deep South voters, or through the use of the crude race baiting. But t his hope ignores the GOP's horrible history of
dealing with its blatant bigots and bigotry. The pattern was on ugly display in
2002 when then-Senate Majority Leader Trent
Lott touched off a furor seemingly touting the one time pro-segregation battles
fought by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. It took nearly a week for then
President George W. Bush to make a stumbling, tepid disavowal of Lott.
In the
next decade, a legion of Republican state and local officials, conservative
talk show jocks and even some Republican bigwigs made foot-in-mouth racist
cracks that invariably got them in hot water. Their response when called on the
carpet was always the same: They make a duck and dodge denial, claim that they
were misquoted or issue a weak, half-hearted apology. Each time, the response
from top Republicans was either silence, or if the firestorm was great enough, to
give the offender a much-delayed mild verbal hand slap. Lott was dumped from
his Senate Majority Leader post, but soon got a top post back as Senate
Minority Whip after a kind of, sort of mea culpa.
The
bigger dilemma for the GOP when the bigots of their party pop off is that they
remain prisoners of their party's racist past. It's a past in which Republican
presidents set the tone with their own verbal race bashing. President
Eisenhower never got out of the Old South habit of calling blacks
"nigras."
In an
infamous and well-documented outburst at a White House dinner party in 1954,
Ike winked, nodded and whispered to Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren that he
understood why white Southerners wouldn't want to "see their sweet little
girls required to sit in school alongside some big black buck."
President
Nixon routinely peppered his talks with his confidants with derogatory quips
about blacks. He enshrined in popular language racially tinged code words such
as, "law and order, "permissive society," "welfare
cheats," "crime in the streets," "subculture of
violence," "subculture of poverty," "culturally
deprived" and "lack of family values." And President Reagan once
told a black reporter how he would treat black leaders, saying, "I said to
hell with 'em."
In 1988,
President Bush, Sr. made escaped black convict Willie Horton the poster boy for
black crime and violence and turned the presidential campaign against his
Democrat opponent, Michael Dukakis into a rout. He branded a bill by Senator
Ted Kennedy to make it easier to bring employment discrimination suits a
"quotas bill" and vetoed it.
The
sentiment that underlay the casual, and sometimes blatant, racist trash talk of
top Republicans, even Republican presidents, inevitably percolated down to the
troops. If GOP minor players feel that they can say whatever they want about
blacks, Latinos, gays and women and get away with it, it's because other
Republicans have done the same, and there were no real consequences for their
vile remarks.
There
are many Republicans who don't utter racist or homophobic epithets, use code
speak, or publicly denigrate minorities, gays and women. Yet Colin Powell recently
took much heat from many Republicans when he called the GOP racist. This still makes
it a good bet that the next public official or personality hammered for a bigoted
outburst will be a Republican. It's also an equally good bet that few top
Republicans will immediately rush to condemn their GOP compatriot for it.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst.
He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network.
He is the author of How Obama Governed:
The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America
Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los
Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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