Hey there Macaca, welcome to America (George Allen, our next President)

The BBQ Pit
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/blog/2006/08/political_video_of_the_day_ii_3.html

Oh George Allen, we hardly new ye.

Macaca, as it turns out, happens to be an obscure racial slur that somehow popped into the head of this guy who’s had several problems with race in the past. In this video, it’s being directed at an Indian kid who is doing “tracking” for Allen’s current Senate opponent, James Webb.

It seems like no matter how you spin this, Allen comes off looking terrible. Even if you completely buy the explanation that he was trying to say that the kid had a mohawk (which he sort of did), the whole “welcome to america, welcome to the real virginia” bit just doesn’t work when you are talking to a NATIVE VIRGINIAN. Especially when you yourself are NOT a native Virginian. It’s the same sort of red-state superiority complex that’s just become vile, and is vile especially when Allen is singling out a 20 year old minority Democrat in a crowd of white heavily partisan Republicans. That’s it at best. At worst, it’s him seeing a minority Democrat and basically implying that he and his are foriegners, unamerican, etc.

But unfortunately, the macaca thing isn’t so easy to write off. Allen might be okay with the “obscurity” of the term if and only if it didn’t work against him. You see, George Allen, who just happens to be half French Tunisian and speaks French fluently, just so happens to be one of the very few people who WOULD be likely to know the term macaca, given that it is obscurely used in that culture as a racial slur, and its hard to imagine him NOT having heard it growing up (especially given his questionable past on race issues) It’s also a very common code term amongst white supremacists, but we’ll give George the benefit of the doubt that THIS is not where it slipped out of his brain from.

Of course, Virginia’s Republican blogosphere is frantically trying to find the right angle on this: Webb is desperate, it’s just the libruls trying to put the white Southern man down as racist, yadda yadda yadda. My favorite is the claim that Allen was BAITED into it: I suppose the color of the kid’s skin was so outrageous that it tricked Allen into a Freudian slip.

Unfortunately, for a guy who was once the front-runner for the Republican nod for President, this does not bode well for Allen. From a fumbling response to a too slow non-apology, he’s proving even to other Republicans that he’s something of a lightweight.

So, today, I pit George Allen. Right or wrong, racist or just really really really unlucky: you DOOFUS.

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Poor bastard never should have given up coaching the Rams…

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I have no way of knowing if this is true, but even if you’re trying too hard, on some level I’m impressed. And that said, I have no idea if you’re trying too hard. Allen’s other choice of words (“welcome to America” in particular) are so dumb that it’s hard to rule it out.

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I’m not the person that figured that out, to be fair to me. But I do think it is an awful big coincidence that he pulled this totally random word that meant nothing to anyone there out of his head, and it just so happened to be a nasty racial slur that’s extremely particular to his upbringing.

The other problem is that the most plausible excuse: that this kid had a hairstyle that his campaign thought looked like a mohawk, is just too laughable to stand up to media scrutiny. A word with two sylables “MoH Hawk” doesn’t just magically morph into a three sylable word “MaH KaH KaH” without explanation.

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Yes, a slip like this could really cost Conservative Republicans a lot of votes in the Black community.

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Actually, the Indian community is more relevant here, because they are generally more economically and socially conservative and have less connection to the traditional Democratic alliances.

But while the black community certainly isn’t a major voting bloc for Republicans, Republicans do need to peel enough of them away or keep enough of them from the polls to avoid uran blowouts, especially in Virginia.

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Not to sound too cynical, but many a white man has been elected to office after a bit of race-bating, subtle or otherwise.

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That’s definately too cynical. The Virginia conservative blogosphere is, I have to admit, much more nuanced than I had originally stated. While the big guns are still trying to spin this as all Webb’s fault and “just another sign that liberals are evil and we should kick their teeth in” ™, others have criticized Allen pretty harshly. This is really quite interesting. I wonder if Bricker has any insight on this, given that he is apparently sometimes an active mover and shaker in Virginian politics when it comes to money and Republican candidates.

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He’s a dolt all right, but I’d rather have a guy with admitted prejudices than the ones that preach equality but then turn around and give speeches at Bob Jones University.

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My first thought was, it’s a Republican crowd; why would he call the guy a macaque, when he could have just called him a monkey? Was he showing off his fancy book-learnin’?

Allen’s brother Bruce, aka the Gen. Manager of your mighty mighty Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is also a right wing idiot and a Limbaughfascist tool.

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  • Bricker pulls a 10-foot pole out of his golf bag, shakes his head at it, and puts it back. Pulls a 50-foot pole out, says “Naaaaah!”, puts it back and then walks off the golf course. *
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Saw this on Jon Stewart. Amazing.

Well, Hell, not only is he a dirtbag, he’s a stupid dirtbag. Sometimes American voters like continuity, so this is a big plus.

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One of George’s first campaign stops on his way to President was with first Robertson (who just a few days earlier had declared that Muslims should not be allowed in public office or something likwe that in his latest litany of assinine statements) and then the Conservative leadership council organization, which includes, surprise surprise, the president of Bob Jones U. Whether he’ll speak there like Republican primary candidates generally are invited to do, remains up for grabs.

I’m guessing that it would probably be in his best interests at this point to turn them down. I think they’d understand.

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I’m not sure this will hurt Allen that much, because;

This incident hasn’t gotten too much publicity yet. In fact, I don’t think most voters have even heard of Allen at this point. The election is still a long ways off so the whole thing can blow over well before that.

The term “macaca” does not have the emotional connectedness some other terms do. I had never heard the term ever before this.

The offended people would be unlikely to vote Republican anyway. This is particularly true in the primaries. In fact, some voters might like him more for this. It could help him a little in the South Carolina Primary (remember John McCain’s black kids) which I figure will be a must-win for him in 2008.

If George Bush can embrace the overtly racist BJU during the Presidential campaign and still win the Catholic vote I think Allen could weather this storm. Besides, his main conservative rival Bill Frist is a kitty killer. I think that would resonate with voters a lot more than this.

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Not much publicity? It’s been in the Post for days now. It’s been all over the national media: cable news, Daily Show, etc. Virtually every paper in Virginia has written about it.

I think you’re wrong. As the daily show clip says “I don’t know what it means, but it sure SOUNDS racist.” The fact that it is a codeword in the whitepower movement doesn’t come off too good. The fact that its an obscure term hurts Allen, because it draws attention to the fact that he has exactly the rare sort of background that WOULD know the term. And so on.

That might have been true a decade ago, but it’s no longer the case.

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It seems to me the real question is how badly does this hurt him in his current re-election campaign. Because, face it, if he loses to Webb in 2006, there is no 2008 for Allen.

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Webb, despite a seemingly helpful profile as a Democratized Republican, has so far just not demonstrated the ability to really raise enough funds to compete, especially with a well known incumbent. Allen dwarfs Webb’s campaign funds, and when you have one of the most expensive media markets in the country to run ads on, that really, really matters. All this free media negatives may hurt Allen, but that doesn’t make people necessarily go out and vote for Webb. If he can’t raise enough money to get people to go out and vote for him, then it doesn’t matter if Allen calls Condi a gorilla: the partisan math just isn’t there for a Webb victory.

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Insiders in the Republican party admitted, to writers for Newsweek and Slate, that they have been reaching out to blacks not to get black votes, but to get votes from white suburban moderates, who need to feel comfortable that they’re not voting for a racist.

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Glowing character witness from Allen’s sister Jennifer.

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I’ve never heard this term before. And he says it three times I think (two for sure)with the intonation that it was the guy’s name or something. But according to the link you provided, that’s not his name. So, I guess it is, as you say, a slur of some kind. But there might be more to this, just based on watching the video you linked to.

Then there is this, which brings your bias to the fore, not to mention questions your credibility:

Uh, did you watch the video you linked to? Here’s what he actually said. I bolded the parts that are pertinent to your claim. There were only a few words that I couldn’t make out, but I serioulsy doubt they would change the meaning. I suggest you watch the video and judge for yourself.

Based on this, it is not as you have portrayed. He was using the young kid as a stand-in for his opponent, highlighting the fact (rhetoric, yes) that his opponent is not a man of the Virginian people. That he likes to ensconce himself inside the beltway and hobnob with Hollywood types. This should be obvious to all watching the video, even the honest partisan.

So wrong or right, you pit him. Okay…