2012 Presidential Election

On the debut of the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC on Saturday, after starting the show with a discussion of why she believes it is a good thing for the Republican Party to be a strong party – for the sake of having a competitive, multi-party system to give voters choices – the show soon predictably moved toward talk of alleged racism in the Republican Party. (Video clips below) At one point, she showed video footage of liberal Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller from the 1964 Republican National Convention condemning “extremists” in the party. After a clip of a black audience member applauding the speech, Harris-Perry cracked: I love the last black Republican left in the party just clapping, “Yes, please repudiate them,” right? A bit later in the show, guest Dorian Warren – an assistant professor at Columbia University – charged that the Republican Party's strategy is to be a “white Southern party,” with Harris-Perry, apparently agreeing, then adding, “And apparently an all-male party.” After she complained about the recent talk of social issues like birth control as being irrelevant to the creation of jobs, Warren jumped back in to claim that “the vast majority of women disagree with the Republican party's position on reproductive rights and reproductive justice.” Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Saturday, February 18, Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC: MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: I want to play Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 Republican National Convention giving a speech that was very unpopular because he was actually attacking the far right wing of his party, and we'll see the response here. NELSON ROCKEFELLER: These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror. They encourage disunity. These are people who have nothing in common with Americanism. The Republican Party must repudiate these people. HARRIS-PERRY: I love the last black Republican left in the party just clapping, “Yes, please repudiate them,” right? … ASSISTANT PROFESSOR DORIAN WARREN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: But here's the second thing. This is what I don't understand. The Republican strategy is basically to be a white party, and a white Southern party. And the time is, the clock is ticking on that demographic in this country. HARRIS-PERRY: And apparently an all-male party. I mean, what I kept feeling this week is, I hear you, when I first heard the discourse of the Tea Party, you know, as much as I wasn't in agreement with it, I kind of like populist movements that are asking for jobs and asking and worrying about, you know, about the effects of big government. But the shift now has moved more toward the so-called moral, ethical, racially problematic and now this contraception language? You know, jobs are simply not located in my uterus. Like, wherever they are, wherever they might be, you know, created, that's just not where they are. So why is so much policy language around that? WARREN: The vast majority of women disagree with the Republican Party's position on reproductive rights and reproductive justice. Three out of four women disagree with the Republican Party. And, again it's a short-term strategy, the Republican Party has decided to go all in for 2012 on getting as many old and white male voters as they can; 2016, 2020, this country looks very, very different. And I'm not sure what the strategy is, medium and long-term, to actually be a viable party, a competitive party.

“'Jim Crow' Voting Legislation Passes in Virginia Senate,” a CBS news headline on a Washington D.C. CBS news website alarmed readers tonight. The AP/CBSDC story, filed at 10:33 p.m. Eastern on the website for CBS Radio's new all-news station WNEW, reports on the passage of a strict voter ID law in the Virginia State Senate. As we've noted previously, the Washington Post has reported, uncritically, Virginia Democratic legislators' Jim Crow comparisons , but it appears that CBS News is taking the Washington Post's bias even further (see screen capture below page break): RICHMOND, Va. (CBSDC/AP) — A controversial bill that has drawn likeness to Jim Crow-era politics in Virginia has taken another big step forward. The legislation that will force voters to bring identification to Virginia polling places on election day won Senate passage Monday after Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling broke a 20-20 partisan deadlock. Monday’s vote in the 40-member Senate marked what opponents felt was the last chance to stop the legislation. Opponents claim it would suppress votes of minorities, the elderly or disabled and students. Passage into law is largely thought to be a formality at this point.

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CBS News D.C. Station Slams Voter ID Bill in Va. As ‘"Jim Crow" Voting Legislation’

There's been a heap of criticism placed upon President Barack Obama's domestic policies that have promoted government intrusion and prolonged our fiscal crisis and his foreign policies that have emboldened our enemies. Any criticism of Obama pales in comparison with what might be said about the American people who voted him in to the nation's highest office. Obama's presidency represents the first time in our history that a person could have been elected to that office who had long-standing close associations with people who hate our nation. I'm speaking of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 20 years, who preached that blacks should sing not “God Bless America,” but “God damn America.” Then there's William Ayers, now professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago but formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Although Ayers was never convicted of any crime, he told a New York Times reporter, in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attack, “I don't regret setting bombs. … I feel we didn't do enough.” Obama has served on a foundation board, appeared on panels, and even held campaign events in Ayers' home, joined by Ayers' former-fugitive wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bill Ayers' close association with Obama is reflected by his admission that he helped write Obama's memoirs, “Dreams from My Father.” Many Americans thought that with Obama's presidency, we were moving to a “post-racial society.” Little can be further from the truth. Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, in a National Review (1/18/2012) article titled “Obama's Racial Politics,” says that Obama's message about race and his charges of racial bigotry are “usually coded and subtle.” Criticizing Republicans, before a Mexican-American audience, Obama said that he ran for office because “America should be a place where you can always make it if you try — a place where every child, no matter what they look like (or) where they come from, should have a chance to succeed.” If you don't get it, “no matter what they look like” is code for nonwhite. Hanson says that Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, has “found race a convenient refuge from criticism — most recently accusing his congressional auditors of racism, for their grilling him over government sales of firearms to Mexican cartel hitmen.” Obama's racial politics are aided and abetted by a dishonest news media. When Republican candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry referred to “a big black cloud that hangs over America, that debt that is so monstrous,” he was dishonestly accused of racism by MSNBC's Ed Schultz, who said, “That black cloud Perry is talking about is President Barack Obama.” Schultz omitted the second half of Perry's quote. Chris Matthews referred to Perry's vision of federalism as “Bull Connor with a smile.” The media have help from black congressmen in stirring up racial dissent. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said white presidents must be “pushed a great deal more” to address black unemployment than would a black president. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said that argument over the debt ceiling is proof of racial animosity toward Obama. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said that Republicans are trying to deny blacks the vote. Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., said the tea party wishes to lynch blacks and hang them from trees. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Perry's job creation in Texas is “one stage away from slavery.” All of this places a heavy burden on people who care about our nation. We must ensure that the 2012 elections are the most open and honest elections in U.S. history. Should Obama lose, I wouldn't put it past leftists, progressives, the news media and their race-hustling allies, as well as the president, to fan the fires of hate and dissension by charging that racists somehow stole the election, thereby giving support and excuses for the kind of violence and lawlessness that we've witnessed in flash mobs and Occupy Wall Street riots. Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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Obama’s Racial Politics

So a guy whose contract was terminated by NPR on a phony pretext for not toeing the liberal line enough, including writing a book (” Enough : The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It”) which indicted the modern civil-rights movement for, well, undermining Black America, now appears to want eliminate “Constitution” and “Founding Fathers” from the lexicon of Republican candidates — and possibly, it would appear, from political discussion in general — because, well, they're racial code words. How ironic. That is what Juan Williams outrageously claims in his latest column at the Hill today (bold is mine): Two weeks ago at the Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., I asked each GOP presidential candidate some pointed questions about the racial politics that will play a big role in the presidential campaign. Race is always a trigger in politics, but now a third of the nation are people of color — and their numbers are growing. With those minorities solidly in the Democratic camp and behind the first black president, the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics. The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.” The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans. Well, I guess this explains why so many on the left like Williams breezily assume that anyone associated with the Tea Party or having Tea Party-sympathetic beliefs must be a racist. If you guys would just stop talking about the Constitution and our Founding Fathers, this would all go away — not. Williams et al would find other “code words” which in their fevered imaginations still connote racism. It's all about the limiting the range of acceptable speech to protect liberal and leftist interests. With all due respect, Juan — pound sand. This afternoon, Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web noted another potential target of Williams's ire: Accusing someone of not respecting “the 'Constitution' ” is a racial code word? If that were true, the American Civil Liberties Union would be the biggest racist organization around. Indeed. When are we going to hear from you, Juan, about the ACLU's obviousl and pervasive racism? Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Juan Williams Finds Racism in Candidates’ (and Others’?) Use of ‘Constitution’ and ‘Founding Fathers’

The unhinged hysteria being displayed by the liberal media over a picture of President Obama and Arizona's Republican governor Jan Brewer supposedly in a heated exchange has become laughable. On Thursday's The Last Word , newly promoted MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry told host Lawrence O'Donnell that this photo reminded her of “the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas” (video follows with transcript and commentary): O’Donnell began the segment by showing a video clip of President Obama’s interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer wherein he said of the incident with Brewer, “This was really not a big deal.” But that’s not how Harris-Perry saw it: MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: The fact is, when I see that still, I cannot help but to be reminded of the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. And the reason I bring up that image is because what we’ve come to know about Hazel in the years later is that as a young woman, Hazel, the young woman who was screaming at Elizabeth Eckford, was not herself sort of particularly, you know, full of racial animus or anything like that. But she was, she was caught up in this moment of racial anxiety, of making this point against these people who were coming in and trying to force their way into the school, and she sort of enjoyed the show or being able to yell at Elizabeth Eckford in this moment. But that image captured all of the ugliness, all of the nastiness of the larger political milieu, and I feel that this picture does as well. This picture does as well? For those that aren't familiar, here's the 1957 picture in question: This is a classic moment in the Civil Rights era when after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, Central High was integrated. Elizabeth Eckford, fifteen, was part of a group of nine black students trying to enter the school surrounded by an angry mob that included Hazel Massery who was also a teenager. And Harris-Perry had the nerve to compare this iconic moment to a 67-year-old governor and a 50-year-old president having a disagreement that the latter has now publicly stated “was really not a big deal?” Nevermind that footage of the Brewer-Obama meeting showed that it was actually far more cordial than the press are depicting, or that the racial tensions today can not in anyway be compared to what was happening in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. On top of this, it's astonishingly disgusting to claim that any disagreement between Brewer and Obama is at all related to the color his skin. But that's the knee-jerk reaction liberal media members have to anything involving this president who they promised in 2008 was going to end racism and unite our nation like never before. I would say that Harris-Perry should be ashamed of herself for making this statement, but her hiring by MSNBC makes it unlikely she possesses anything akin to shame. She clearly is going to fit in nicely at this abomination of a so-called “news” network. (H/T NB reader Jane Perzyk) Associate Editor’s note: As you are likely aware, since the financial collapse of 2008, charities and non-profit organizations have seen a sharp reduction in donations. Although the environment has improved, contributions are still nowhere near where they were prior to the recession. Unfortunately, the Media Research Center has not been immune. With this in mind, your support has become more important than ever. With a critical election approaching, the liberal media needs to be monitored 24/7. As we have been predicting for months, the press are willing to do anything to get their beloved politicians elected and/or reelected. As such, we need your help to fight this fight. Any contribution, even $10, is greatly appreciated. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to the Media Research Center to help us battle the liberal media. Thank you.

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New MSNBC Anchor Likens Brewer-Obama Face Off to 1957 Integration Confrontation in Little Rock

Salon's Joan Walsh stooped to an even further low Monday when she said on MSNBC's pre-debate show, “Newt is the face of the politics of resentment and racism and angry white male rage.” Yes, she was talking about Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (video follows with transcript and commentary): JOAN WALSH: We have a really interesting case study in the Republican Party in these two candidates because Mitt is the candidate of vulture capitalism that hollowed out the middle class and represented and enriched the top one percent. But Newt is the face of the politics of resentment and racism and angry white male rage that let guys like Mitt do that to the economy. As NewsBusters has been reporting, accusations of racism have been frequently tossed at Republicans by MSNBC anchors, commentators, and contributors of late so much so that it's becoming less and less possible to turn on this network without hearing such claims. For the record, Gingrich won the female vote in South Carolina Saturday, not that facts matter to a shill like this. Associate Editor’s note: As you are likely aware, since the financial collapse of 2008, charities and non-profit organizations have seen a sharp reduction in donations. Although the environment has improved, contributions are still nowhere near where they were prior to the recession. Unfortunately, the Media Research Center has not been immune. With this in mind, your support has become more important than ever. With a critical election approaching, the liberal media needs to be monitored 24/7. As we have been predicting for months, the press are willing to do anything to get their beloved politicians elected and/or reelected. As such, we need your help to fight this fight. Any contribution, even $10, is greatly appreciated. Please consider a tax-deductible gift to the Media Research Center to help us battle the liberal media. Thank you.

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Joan Walsh: ‘Newt Is the Face of the Politics’ of ‘Racism and Angry White Male Rage’

Borrowing from a liberal Daily Beast column, CNN's Jack Cafferty set about asking if Newt Gingrich was ignorant and “clueless” about the African-American community, on Tuesday's The Situation Room. Cafferty dropped the bomb right at the start as he matter-of-factly stated that “Newt Gingrich is clueless when it comes to African-Americans” before backing away and attributing the argument to the Daily Beast's Peter Beinart. Beinart has also been the editor of the liberal New Republic magazine, so Cafferty was not doing his credibility any favors by quoting someone who very well might have a liberal agenda in attacking the Republican candidate. While scolding Gingrich's conduct at Monday's GOP debate in South Carolina, Cafferty made sure to emphasize that Gingrich was a “native Georgian” speaking on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to a “mostly-white crowd.” Race-baiting, anyone? And during the segment, the smears grew progressively more blatant. The CNN commentator quoted Beinart that the GOP is a “cultural and intellectual bubble” and adding that such words are “not very encouraging for the Republican Party when it comes to trying to get blacks to vote for them” – as if Beinart's liberal opinion is a credible key voice in the matter. [Video below.]

While various liberal media outlets have been busy trying to smear former senator Rick Santorum as a racist for supposedly saying, “I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money,” at a campaign event, other intellectually honest liberals have rendered a different verdict. One of them, Mediaite writer Tommy Christopher, noted today how “Young Turks” co-host Jayar Jackson thinks the Santorum is unfairly being criticized for what, in context, seems to have been a candidate tripping over a verbal tic (emphases mine): On Monday, we reported on Rick Santorum‘s supposed use of the words “black people” during a campaign event in Iowa Sunday, and I was apparently the only person in the non-conservative world who thought he hadn’t said it. I faced a fair amount of pushback on the issue, which was, thankfully, mostly polite. I discussed the issue on Twitter with Salon‘s Joan Walsh, who asked, in good faith, if anyone else agreed with me. Few did. Since then, I’ve been joined on this lonely island by The Plumline‘s Greg Sargent, and now, The Young Turks‘ Jayar Jackson, who explained, last night, that he didn’t think Santorum said “black people,” but more importantly, that the issue is somewhat moot. Host Cenk Uygur, for his part, still wasn’t buying it. “I remember…when this first came out, it seemed like it was a bit of a stumble,” Jayar said, adding, “I feel like you didn’t hear the full word.” “You’re crazy, man, you’re crazy!” Cenk exclaimed. “You just saw the tape!” On Monday, we reported on Rick Santorum‘s supposed use of the words “black people” during a campaign event in Iowa Sunday, and I was apparently the only person in the non-conservative world who thought he hadn’t said it. I faced a fair amount of pushback on the issue, which was, thankfully, mostly polite. I discussed the issue on Twitter with Salon‘s Joan Walsh, who asked, in good faith, if anyone else agreed with me. Few did. Since then, I’ve been joined on this lonely island by The Plumline‘s Greg Sargent, and now, The Young Turks‘ Jayar Jackson, who explained, last night, that he didn’t think Santorum said “black people,” but more importantly, that the issue is somewhat moot. Host Cenk Uygur, for his part, still wasn’t buying it. “I remember…when this first came out, it seemed like it was a bit of a stumble,” Jayar said, adding, “I feel like you didn’t hear the full word.” “You’re crazy, man, you’re crazy!” Cenk exclaimed. “You just saw the tape!” Now, hopefully, this is the last time I have to get inside Rick Santorum’s head, but it seems clear to me that he did stumble, that he got ahead of himself and started to say “make lives better,” but in mid-word, tried to correct it to “make people’s lives better,” and it came out as “make mmbligh people’s lives better.” Here’s the TYT clip, which loops Santorum’s remarks together a few times. I’m hearing a long “I” sound, and no hard “K” sound: It doesn’t really matter how many, or few, people agree with me, I’m either right or I’m wrong. I mention Jayar and Greg Sargent simply as a way to dispel, for anyone who doesn’t know me, the notion that I have any interest in defending Rick Santorum for any reason other than the merits. By the same token, I don’t think Joan Walsh, or Keith Olbermann, or CBS News and NPR, are acting in bad faith when they report Santorum’s remark as “black people,” because yeah, that’s what it sounds like. Additionally, Santorum really didn’t help matters by waiting three days to explain himself. I contacted his campaign multiple times over that period with a link to the video, and it is fair to ask why, the first few times he was asked about it, he hadn’t seen the clip yet. Most people, upon being asked about a racist comment they might have made, would immediately check the video. This demonstrates, at best, a disturbing apathy on Santorum’s part, that he didn’t care enough to take 30 seconds to watch the video I sent him four times (and was also forwarded to him by a conservative colleague). Furthermore, I sympathize with liberals who think his days-late explanation sounds like bullshit, exactly because it so closely matches the explanation in the column I sent him four times. That doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t say “black people,” and the fact that he didn’t say “black people” (as Jayar alludes), doesn’t mean that Santorum isn’t a hateful bigot. It matters because it’s the truth.

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Liberal ‘Young Turks’ Co-host: Santorum Didn’t Slam Black People in Speech

Is House Speaker John Boehner an anti-Obama racist? Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal all but accuses him in his Tuesday blog from Des Moines, “ Nobody Likes to Talk About It, but It’s There .” (The web headline is blunter: “Republican Attacks Have Racist Undertones.”) Actually, Rosenthal is all too happy to talk about racist Republicans if it helps Democrats politically, as he did on November 1, in one of his first blog posts : “…it was the Republicans who perfected the art of injecting racial fears into modern-day politics (remember Willie Horton in 1988?) and have conducted an unrelenting personal attack on President Obama that sometimes has not-so-subtle racial overtones.” From Rosenthal’s Tuesday post: Talking about race in American politics is uncomfortable and awkward. But it has to be said: There has been a racist undertone to many of the Republican attacks leveled against President Obama for the last three years, and in this dawning presidential campaign. You can detect this undertone in the level of disrespect for this president that would be unthinkable were he not an African-American. Some earlier examples include: Rep. Joe Wilson shouting “you lie” at one of Mr. Obama’s first appearances before Congress, and House Speaker John Boehner rejecting Mr. Obama’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress – the first such denial in the history of our republic.

At the same time that the nation's leading networks can't call Obama a “liberal” more than about once a year, NPR's religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty on Monday announced Rick Santorum was “very, very conservative” on the social issues, in addition to being “very pro-life.” He even — horrors! — home-schools his seven children. “He's Catholic. He's billed himself very much as the family values candidate,” the reporter announced on NPR's afternoon show Talk of The Nation. “His wife Karen has homeschooled all seven of their children. He's surging in the polls because he's been very, very conservative on these issues.” They also discussed if white conservative Christians dislike Obama because they're racists. Hagerty added that evangelicals aren't too worried about the Catholic thing with Santorum: By the way, I should say that if Catholics and Protestants –evangelicals no longer have a problem with Catholics. That went away back in the 1990s or so, and something like 82 percent of evangelicals have favorable views of Catholics. So that's not a stumbling block for him. And he is very — he — you check the mark on the boxes on all of their big issues. He's very pro-life. He supports a federal marriage amendment. He says he'd work to limit birth control, to ban stem cell research, to reinstate the military's “don't ask, don't tell” policy. He wants to pass a workplace religious freedom act, allow prayer at school events, including graduation, football games, that kind of thing. So he is really playing to evangelicals here. Hagerty then moved to Gingrich and described his wife Callista as a “very devout Catholic,” and then walked that label back by noting the “irony” of the “very devout” woman having an extramarital affair with a very prominent married man in Washington: NEAL CONAN, host: Newt Gingrich is fourth in most of the polls. Previous, a month ago, we would have put him somewhere different, but at this moment fourth, and in some ways the most interesting. He has converted to Catholicism. HAGERTY: That's right. His is a very interesting spiritual journey. He was born Lutheran. He converted to Southern Baptist in graduate school. And then in 2009, he converted to Catholicism. Now, the person who was central to that was his third wife, Callista. She's a very devout Catholic. She sings, actually, in the professional choir at the Basilica of the National Shrine here in Washington, D.C. And what would happen — they got married in 2000, and he began going to Mass with her every week to watch her perform. And he says it just kind of seeped in, this Catholicism, seeped into his psyche, so to speak. Now one — many people would see a little bit of irony to the fact that Callista was the one that really led him to Catholicism, because he was having an affair with Callista for six years before he divorced his second wife. And so there is a little bit of irony in that, and I