Politics has a tendency to devolve into juvenile playground taunts and smears. This election cycle has been no different — with one of the Democrats’ most coveted insults this year being calling the opposing candidate a racist.
As comedian Dennis Miller has said, “Racism is the new ‘doody-head.’”
Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul’s plight arguably has been the most visible. Since May, Democrats and some in the media have accused the Republican of being a racist after he questioned sections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on MSNBC while advocating for limited government.
While Paul says his intent was not to support segregation, his Democratic opponent, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, seized on the opportunity to allege just that .
“Let me be clear: I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws,” Paul said in a statement.
And Rand Paul is not the only Republican who has been accused of racism by his critics this election cycle. In Washington State, opponents have tarred Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dino Rossi as a racist for issuing what they labeled as “misleading and racially charged” advertisements saying that the Native American Spokano Tribe made a “backroom deal” with the state over casino gambling.
Then there was the case of Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson. Johnson’s faux pas was inviting American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray to speak at an education event in the state in March.
Critics jumped on the Republican for his choice in speaker, labeling Murray a controversial, racially charged figure for his best selling book “The Bell Curve” — which argues that disparities in intelligence are tied to genetic differences between the races.
When Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed the new Arizona immigration law, SB 1070, and spoke out against illegal immigration, she too was labeled a racist. While critics of Brewer continue to charge her with being racist, the law remains popular in the state and throughout the country.
In early October, ABC-7 Chicago released a “secret recording” of Illinois Republican Senate nominee Mark Kirk discussing the need to prevent voter fraud in largely black communities.
“These are lawyers and other people that will be deployed in key, vulnerable precincts, for example, South and West sides of Chicago, Rockford, Metro East, where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat,” Kirk said. For this seemingly innocuous statement, Kirk too came under fire for perceived racism.
His detractors were especially unhappy with his use of the word “jigger.” “The problem I had is that it sounds so much like another word,” Rev. Albert Tyson said. The Kirk campaign has brushed off the racism allegation as “desperation” on the part of his opponents.
In Nevada, critics have also torn into Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle, calling her a racist for her hard-line stance on immigration and her anti-illegal immigration advertisements — Rachel Maddow went so far as to call one of her commercials the “most overtly racist ad of this campaign season.” She also came under fire for some poorly chosen words in which she said that Latinos at times look Asian to her.
Like some of the other candidates accused of racism this cycle, Angle too attributed the charge to desperation by her opponents. “Desperate politicians say despicable things when they are losing the political battle, including playing the race card, and Sharron finds that shameful,” Angle spokesman Jerry Stacy told The Daily Caller last week.
Ron Miller, executive director of Regular Folks United, told TheDC that the racism charge is the last refuge of candidates who have nothing else to run on. “These are desperate attempts on their part to stir up their base to vote on November 2nd. They can’t run on their records, so they turn to the last refuge of scoundrels, the race card,” Miller said.
Continuing in that vein, after the NAACP labeled the Tea Party racist, some have alleged that it is reasonable to assume that that description extends to all Tea Party-backed candidates, such as Republican U.S. Senate candidates Joe Miller in Alaska, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Christine O’Donnell Delaware, among many others.
The NAACP declined to comment to TheDC about any one candidate, however, given the NAACP’s 501 c-3’s tax status which prohibits the organization from participating in electioneering.
Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, told TheDC that the reason for all the charges of racism is that the American left cannot compete in the arena of ideas and so it relies instead on ad hominem attacks — the most convenient attack being the charge of racism.
“They can’t debate the right in the marketplace,” Bozell said. “So the only bullet they have left, and which I have been warning people about for years, is character assassination. And their message is very simple, ‘You may hate us, but the alternative is much worse.’ That is the best they can do.”
Charges of racism against Republicans have been effective in certain instances in the past. During the midterm elections of 2006, Republican Virginia Sen. George Allen’s use of the word “macaca” opened a Pandora’s Box of racism allegations which many speculated lead to his defeat to Democrat Jim Webb.
“This is bigger than the candidates. Anyone who supports the conservative movement is a racist and it just doesn’t matter that they have zero evidence,” Bozell continued. “Mark my words they are not going to let up and it will get even worst.”
