Why can’t it be both racism and a more general sense that Democratic policies must be obstructed? Because those two motives were entirely sympatico for Republican leadership in the Obama era.
Seriously? You think a Republican-controlled congress would have gone along with a lot of Obama’s stuff, had he only been white?
You’re living in some sort of fantasy world if that’s the case. They’d have opposed that agenda just as strenuously if the Democrats had managed to get Bill Clinton elected for a third term.
I think Obama’s color was just a convenient point for them to rally their base around; I don’t think it was a real factor in why his policies were opposed.
That was Petty.
Well, you just admitted that Obama’s color was important to their base. If it is important to their base, then it is important to them. They relied on that racism, and that their base would rally around that racism, in order to better obstruct the democratic agendas.
If they were not able to rally their base around the president’s color, then the base may have actually take a look at the policies that they were rallying against. They may have noted that they actually did want healthcare, a safety net, and even a robust economy.
But, because they didn’t have to actually talk about policy, just rally their base based on his color, they were far more effective at obstructing the business of the government.
You’re wrong.
Cite: The Gregg Reference Manual, Seventh Edition (1992), ¶314.
I agree with bump. The people who run the Republican party don’t really care about personal issues. Their concern are things like tax rates and government regulations. But those issues aren’t going to motivate enough voters (especially when their position on those issues would harm most voters). So they find other issues than can be motivate people and adopt those to win elections.
And fear’s always a strong motivator; it can be fear of black people or Mexicans or women or teenagers or gay people or Jews or Catholics or communists or terrorists or criminals. You just want to make people afraid and then tell them you can protect them from the thing you’ve made them afraid of.
So the Republican party made an issue out of race when Obama was President not because the leaders of the party really cared about Obama being black. They just opposed Obama because of his policies and race was a useful tool to rally widespread opposition to him. If a different Democrat had been elected, they’d have picked a different tool.
You do know that admitted white supremacist Steve King is currently an elected member of the Republican party right? You can say that race played a part but also say that it wasn’t the only reason they opposed him. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
No. But the opposition would have been a little less unhinged.
I do.
I disagree. Not that the base’s reaction wasn’t a factor, but I think a lot of Republican members of Congress are, themselves, racist fucks.
I agree with bump as well, and with you. I do not think that the majority of elected GOP congresscritters are concerned, personally, about race.
However, that actually makes it worse when they ply racist policies to their base. It is one thing to advocate racist positions because that is what you believe, it is, IMHO, much worse to advocate racists positions that you do not believe in an effort to manipulate or appease those who are racist.
Just as I don’t think that Trump is a racist because he was discriminating against people in his real estate, but was actually worse, as he was discriminating in order to appease his racist tenants and investors.
Agreed, and using fear of real things as a motivator to protect people against those real things is actually useful, and kinda the point of fear. For instance, my parents instilled a pretty massive amount of fear in my about road safety, so I always look both ways before crossing.
But using fear to get people to fall in line behind policies that will actually harm them, obth in the short term and long term, and not do anything to protect them from a fear that doesn’t exist is not the same thing. For instance, using the fact of a black president to get the base to rally against the “unknown” to get them to give you power because of their fear of the “other.”
Does that somehow make them better? IMHO, it makes them far, far worse. They are not racists, but they will enable and encourage racism for personal gain. That’s worse than just being racist, once again, IMHO.
Sure they would have. They always pick something about the opposition to gin up fear in their based. But, the fact that he didn’t look quite like “one of us” was a very, very effective tool for them to rally their racist base. I don’t think that they would have been nearly as effective at it had 44 been another white guy.
No, these current crop of Republican pols aren’t necessarily racist. But they’re often willing to act that way.
Their voters aren’t necessarily racist, either - but it isn’t a deal-breaker for them.
I think you’re right- Obama being black just made it easier. And it’s wholly reprehensible that either side is willing to play race like they do. (just watch local races if you want to see Democrats doing that sort of thing just as bad as Republicans).
But even had the Democratic President been Geezer McWhiteman from Alabama, they’d have resisted the ACA and other Obama policies just as hard. I suspect they’d have played him as some combination of senile, addled and in league with poor minorities and fringe groups in that case- a race and social group traitor if you will.
No idea what you mean here. I don’t just watch, I am involved in local races. Can you please show me an example of what you are talking about?
Also, local races, how many of those are there, with how many different people? I mean, I’m sure that the democrat running for county dog warden of nonwheresville, arkansas said something stupid and maybe even racist, but when you are talking about literally tens of thousands of races, it’s hard to police them all.
To say that dems do it just as bad, then you would have to show that dems are doing it, well, just as bad. Not a local city council person saying something stupid, not someone running in the primaries with no chance of seeing the general, but actual democrats with actual backing of actual numbers of people.
I can point to the head of the republican party for examples. How far down do you have to go to come up with equivalents in the democratic party?
Sure, they’d have resisted. That’s what they do. Progressives have a vision of how we should move forward, and conservatives resist it. That’s the basic nature of politics, and it’s not a bad thing. There are actually many things that I agree with conservatives on, and disagree with the democratic party, but I cannot agree with the republican party on its not only acceptance of, but encouragement of, racism, and that is more than enough to make me lean even further to the left.
I do fear that the republicans are going to implode their party, leaving the dems unchecked. That may be great at first, but they do have some ideas that I’d rather be tempered with caution by a reasonable and responsible opposition party. By becoming simply the party of “NO!”, the conservatives are no longer brakes on progress, to make sure we don’t go too far too fast, but are actual an impediment to the basic functioning of our country.
The Republican members of Congress work for the people who actually run the Republican party.
Glad to see you back. I don’t know you or your views, so I’m not endorsing or not endorsing those. I just don’t like seeing people leave because of personal animus with other members. If you didn’t leave for that, still glad to see you back.
I don’t doubt those are also mostly racist fucks.
Nor do I.
It’s easy to dismiss Republican obstructionism as procedural warfare and political tactics, but what policies are motivating Republican voters? What motivates Republican activists who canvass and who fund the party’s campaigns? There’s an inextricable relationship between economics, religion, and race in this country. American capitalism is traditionally highly exploitative, and historically, the people who have been the easiest to exploit are people of other races. American capitalism has been race-based capitalism. American conservatives won’t come out and say it, and perhaps some aren’t even aware of their own biases, but they want to maintain a society in which whites are the first ones in the lunch line.
Beyond that, Republicans know that people are tribal, which doesn’t mean that people are inherently racist, but in America, tribalism is racism. In other countries, tribalism might be less about race and more about religion or something else, but in America, it’s racism. Sure, America gets credit for electing a man who’s half black. It’s worth pointing out that they did so because they assumed that, like Martin Luther King, Obama was a ‘safe’ black man, who wouldn’t try to go too far in pushing for deeper, more substantive transformation. The few times that Barack Obama attempted to move in that direction were when conservatives protested the loudest, like when he said “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin” or when he said that Officer Crowley acted “stupidly” for arresting Professor Gates in his own home. That’s why conservatives labeled Obama a race-baiter and argued that he had no business talking about matters of race or social issues. “Stop talkin’ about race, boy.”
So you’re saying that local or state level Democrats don’t count? Keep in mind that some “local” Democrats in larger cities have more constituents than in smaller states, so you can’t really say that they don’t count.
And in Houston and Dallas in particular, the Democratic politicians have a habit of playing race-based political games- much more from where I sit than the other way around.
Ultimately, ALL members of a political party are the public face of that party when it comes to forming people’s opinions, and likely in some relationship between proximity and span- in other words, a prominent local politician will have as much bearing on how his party is perceived as a natonal one.
People aren’t going to go “Oh, that Democrat from the other side of the tracks- he’s just an asshole. The *real *Democrats have our backs.” They’re going to judge the whole party by the actions of that local asshole.