Crazy Woman in Pittsburgh? Republican Problems Run Deeper

[DogPoundPup]

By Joseph Palermo

On October 24, 2008, John McCain's communications director for Pennsylvania, Peter Feldman, fanned the flames of racial bigotry to score political points. Feldman peddled the story to at least two Pittsburgh TV news outlets (KDKA and WPXI) that a 6' 4" "dark skinned" African-American man assaulted, robbed, and carved a "B" into the cheek of a 20-year-old white woman "volunteer" from the Young Republicans named Ashley Todd. McCain's communications wizard embellished the story for maximum political effect, telling reporters that the "B" obviously stood for "Barack," and that her attacker had yelled at her: "Oh you're with McCain . . . you're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson!" Feldman said the man had become enraged when he saw a McCain-Palin bumper sticker on Todd's car. The episode prompted statements from both the McCain and Obama campaigns, as well as sympathy telephone calls to the "victim" from John McCain and Sarah Palin. "We're shaken up by this. It's sick and disgusting," the McCain campaign officially stated. Naturally, such a juicy story with its racial overtones was the delight of the Drudge Report, Fox News, and right-wing talk radio. But the Republicans' dream of exploiting the incident to scare white people in Pennsylvania (and nationally) quickly unraveled when the whole thing was exposed as a pathetic hoax perpetrated by a disturbed young woman and an equally disturbed presidential campaign.

Matt Drudge, Mark Noonans, and Brent Bozell's "Newsbusters" were among the most vociferous purveyors of this racist hoax. The phony attack story revealed just how willing and eager are the denizens of the right-wing blogosphere and Republican echo chamber to fan the flames of racial hatred if they think it will benefit their candidate. Meanwhile, Youtube is overflowing with damning videos of McCain supporters at rallies in the "real America" happy to share their racist views, yelling things like: "Vote McCain, Not Hussein!" and "His education was paid for by Arabs!"

But what's happening to the Republican party today runs much deeper than this election. The current crisis has been brewing for 44 years. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Right Act in 1964 he said that he believed he had just delivered the South to the Republicans for a generation. Johnson knew that the vestiges of the Jim Crow system were so entrenched that white voters in the South would change their party affiliations once it became clear the Democratic party favored black civil rights. The 1968 presidential campaign offered the GOP the first opportunity to run the "Southern Strategy." Subsequent elections proved Johnson right: the South turned Republican. And this "Southernizing" of the Republican party became complete over the course of the last 14 years. In 1994, Newt Gingrich of Georgia ushered in his "Revolution." By 2000, Southern Republicans controlled the House of Representatives with an iron hand under Tom DeLay of Texas. From 2003 to 2007, Southern Republican rule was complete: DeLay in the House, Bill Frist of Tennessee in the Senate, and George W. Bush of Texas in the driver's seat. Yee Haw!

By the end of two miserable terms of George W. Bush the Republican moderates (sometimes called RINOS, for "Republicans in Name Only") were driven out of the party (just ask Lincoln Chafee). Today, the sorry spectacle of the McCain campaign has driven out many of the shining-light intellectuals -- people like Andrew Sullivan, George Will, David Brooks and Christopher Buckley. But the coup de grace was the total collapse of the tenets of market fundamentalism that are at the core of conservative ideology. What do conservatives have left of their ideology if their economic prognostications have been proven to be fallacies? The answer is: Sarah Palin. Without a coherent economic narrative all the Republicans have left is the culture war. The Republican party has exploited race and hot-button social issues for so long that it has whittled away its numbers down to becoming a regional party. If the Obama campaign can turn Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada to the Democratic column it might be able to lock in the Republican party into being a permanent backwater and Electoral College minority. Once a state turns "blue" it will be very difficult to flip it back to "red" again.

More at http://hnn.us/articles/56189.html

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Excellent article...except for one thing. There is no way I could label David Brooks as one of the

shining-light intellectuals of the repukes. EVER!!!!

[progressivebydesign]

2. Oh.. " Brent Bozell's "Newsbusters" Now I get it! He is pushing that BS hidden audio story!

Now I understand the Newsbusters thing... that is Poppy's best pal, and all around scary m.f. Bozell is one of those wild-eyed religious zealots masquerading as a journalist. And I'm not shocked that he'd have his slimy hands all over that BS story in Pittsburgh.

[47of74]

3. 40 years from now

If Ashley Todd ever has children - I know, yuck - 40 years from now I could see one of her grandchildren asking her if she really carved a backwards B into her face, and why on Earth she did something so stupid.