The GOP's Young Hatemonger

[marmar]

from The Daily Beast:



The GOP's Young Hatemonger
by John Avlon


Audra Shay, accused of endorsing racism on Facebook, is favored to become the head of the Young Republicans tomorrow. John Avlon uncovers new details about her disturbing online comments.

Thirty-eight-year-old Audra Shay’s campaign to become the next chairman of the Young Republicans went from obscure to infamous over the past week, after The Daily Beast revealed details of posts of her Facebook account. Specifically, a thread where one of her friends posts that ““Obama Bin Lauden (sic) is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side … need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals,” and Shay responds eight minutes later with: “You tell em Eric! lol.”

“This is an outrage and I CAN NOT believe this nation has him as our leader! It makes me sick!” She posted a few minutes later: “My disdain for Obama is directly proportionate for his disdain of this country.”

Following those revelations, several Young Republican colleagues urged Shay to remove herself from tomorrow’s election at the group’s convention in Indianapolis—a request Shay, the favorite going in to the vote, has pointedly refused. Instead, she said that she was responding to an earlier post from her friend, and labeled criticism against her “political attacks” which “proves that my opponents will stoop to the lowest levels to steal this election from the jaws of victory.”

Now, The Daily Beast has obtained more troubling details about her online musings—despite clear attempts by Shay to scrub her social-networking pages clean. Specifically:

* In October 2008, in the wake of news that an effigy of Sarah Palin was being hung outside an affluent Hollywood home as an offensive Halloween decoration, Shay replied, returning to the “LOL” style that she employed after the “coons” comment: “What no ‘Obama in a noose? Come on now, its just freedome (sic) of speech, no one in Atlanta would take that wrong! Lol.”

.....(snip).....

“There is a culture war going on inside the Republican Party,” says one of the attendees, Lenny McAllister, a co-founder of HipHopRepubicans.com. “For example, you've got the Christian right—including some from the Jimmy Swaggart crowd that have judged others publicly on family values only to cry 'I have sinned' themselves somewhere down the road—and then you have the folks that understand that you can have strong conservative principles but you can't create a time portal to take us culturally back to the 1950s.... At some point, we will see one of two things from my party: either a decline that comes from our inability to move away from the image of an older, exclusive, white-males-only party or to a party that befits the Party of Lincoln, one of more diversity that reflects America today.”

A spokesman for Shay’s most important supporter, the governor of her home state, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, said his boss was traveling and couldn’t comment on these new details about Shay. But one of her better-known Facebook friends, conservative activist Grover Norquist, was keeping his distance. “Grover's aware of the two candidates, but he doesn't really have a dog in a race,” said a spokesman. “He's friends with Audra on Facebook like he's friends with everybody else. He accepts all friendships."

Shay’s most recent post on her Facebook quotes the 23rd Psalm (“Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…”)—she’s apparently in full victim/martyr mode, a far cry from the jaunty confidence she just displayed a few days ago in the face of the “coons” controversy (“amazed at all the fuss so here is what you need to know. The 6th song on the new Billy Currington CD is the most awesome song!”). Tomorrow’s vote will resonate beyond its usual dimensions. At a time when the GOP is increasingly old and regionally isolated, it is up to young Republicans to modernize the party. This requires confronting the mistakes of the past—and turning the page.


John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.


The complete piece is at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-10/the-gops-young-hatemonger/

[Democrats_win]

1. Great article! Too bad she didn't post the verse about thinking positive.

"whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." (Philippians 4:8)

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=57&chapter=4

After Republicans gave us 8 years of bush, you would think that they would be happy. I look around and see church after church either remodeling or building a new building. Honestly, what do Republicans, especially "religious" Republicans, have to complain about? It's not as if Obama stole the election like bush did. Or as if we stood outside praying that Obama would steal the election like Republicans did with bush. Maybe they all read that book by Jim Cramer: how to stay angry. But that's not what Jesus would do.

[left coaster]

2. Only in the Party of ANCIENT White Folks..

..would someone who is 38 years old be considered to lead the YOUNG Repubs.

[marmar]

3. Very true....I suspect they have a difficult time recruiting actual young people.

nt