Romney plays to the crazy birthers

[_moksha]

by the way, why won't Obama release his birth certificate like anyone else? Is it lost now?

Maybe the certificate is hiding out with the Romney tax returns, Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhardt.

[_beastie]

lol

I thought that ldsfaq was a birther for sure, but held out hope for bcspace, who occasionally, albeit rarely, shows some common sense. I should have known better.

This election really is putting the republican party out there in all its nutter glory for the whole world to see.

And of course Romney claims it was all a joke. And yet seven birthers are speaking at the convention.

[_Dr. Shades]

And of course Romney claims it was all a joke. And yet seven birthers are speaking at the convention.

Does Romney decide who speaks at the convention?

[_beastie]

And of course Romney claims it was all a joke. And yet seven birthers are speaking at the convention.

Does Romney decide who speaks at the convention?

I'm certain he is, at the very least, very influential. If he didn't want birthers speaking, I doubt they would be speaking.

[_beastie]

I believe Romney is trafficking in "dog whistle" racially coded messages, which the modern republican party has a history of doing. Obama is the "welfare king" who wants to just hand money to welfare recipients without even asking them to work! (insert old image of black hand taking money from a white person) Obama isn't a real American. Obama acts foreign. Heck, he isn't even a real citizen.

While those who aren't comfortable with overt racism may work hard to convince themselves that the republicans aren't doing this in a deliberately racist fashion, there are those who understand the message loud and clear, like the white supremacist cited in this essay:

http://open.salon.com/blog/chauncey_dev ... sts_online

Here is a featured essay on Mitt Romney's candidacy and his welfare queen meme from one of the more "respectable" White Nationalist Neo-Confederate websites (I will not directly link to it, but you can do a simple online search to confirm these quotes):

Mitt Romney was in a Chicago suburb today speaking to White voters blasting the Obama campaign for dismantling welfare reform...
So Mitt Romney is speaking to our people, promoting popular issues with subtle and not so subtle racial themes.

Again, I note that Mitt Romney is a racial “pussy-footer” – very similar to George HW Bush Sr (US President 1988-92). Pussy-footers are the most common American racial renegades. Pussy-footers look and act White.

They marry White, they don’t have any real hatred towards our/their White American people. But, they rarely if ever defend our people and in live or die racial conflicts, racially charged political campaigns they pussy-foot around; they try to pretend that there aren’t any racial conflicts and any racial problems are some misunderstanding. Pussy-footers like to be liked and they tend to agree with whoever is in the room with them.

So today, please pass the word on to all of your contacts that you approve of the Romney campaign’s new direction:

Targeting our people, our voters – “hunting where the ducks are”. The Romney campaign is no longer pandering to NW voters who will never vote for White Republicans. Instead, the Romney campaign is connecting with the voters he/we need to win and the Romney campaign is standing up for the legitimate rights of our people.

There is no super conspiracy controlling the Romney campaign. Mitt Romney doesn’t hate our people. He doesn’t want to destroy the Whites in the South. He’s not trying to bring back Black Reconstruction or incite Blacks to riot and murder in you town.

There is no reason to hate Mitt Romney because he is rich, was the governor of a Northeastern state or hate all the beautiful White people associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Mitt Romney is a solid White guy with a large, very beautiful White family.

But he is a…..Pussy-footer. Please understand the situation and act accordingly.

I think Romney knows that there is no way for him to gain more votes from minorities. (0% with African Americans. Wow.) So I think he has made a calculated decision to reach out to the extremists wing of racists who may not be motivated to vote at all without the dog whistles. Which is why I say he's selling his soul for power.

[_beastie]

In other words, he's channeling Lee Atwater:

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater

What makes this all the more tragic is the fact that George Romney really was a profile in courage. He stood up to Mormon leadership and really did support MLK.

How did his son fall so far?

[_moksha]

Does Romney decide who speaks at the convention?

I am pretty sure he selected the former LDS Stake President who will give the invocation prayer on the last day of the convention. Don't think he selected Gov. Christie, but Palin refused to take the ordered tranquilizers.

[_beastie]

I think this essay has some sound ideas in explaining why Romney is embracing the Lee Atwater race-baiting card.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/20 ... -base.html

A Republican strategist said something interesting and revealing on Friday, though it largely escaped attention in the howling gusts of punditry over Mitt Romney’s birth certificate crack and a potential convention-altering hurricane. The subject was a Ron Brownstein story outlining the demographic hit rates each party requires to win in November. To squeak out a majority, Mitt Romney probably needs to win at least 61 percent of the white vote — a figure exceeding what George H.W. Bush commanded over Michael Dukakis in 1988. The Republican strategist told Brownstein, “This is the last time anyone will try to do this” — “this” being a near total reliance on white votes to win a presidential election.

I wrote a long story last February arguing that the Republican Party had grown intensely conscious of both the inescapable gravity of the long-term relative decline of the white population, and the short-term window of opportunity opened for the party by the economic crisis. I think we’re continuing to see the GOP operate under an integrated political and policy strategy constructed on this premise. This is their last, best chance to win an election in the party’s current demographic and ideological form. Future generations of GOP politicians will have to appeal to nonwhite voters who hold far more liberal views about the role of government than does the party’s current base.

[_EAllusion]

I think the Hispanic vote is still very winnable on social conservative issues for Republicans in the long term. That was Rove's longterm strategy, undone by the xenophobia in the base. But political memories are very, very short and it would only take a Rubio and some shifting on immigration issues to rapidly reverse course on that front. Why not win with whites now and something more ethnically diverse later? The hard part is going to be pivoting away from all the people offended by lack of race-baiting effectively enough to hold together a coalition.

[_Jason Bourne]

George Romney was a profile in courage.

His son is a profile in craven lust for power, for which he is willing to sell his soul.

Where did he play to the crazy birthers? I must have missed that.