Karen Tumulty and Greg Sargent both seem to think it's some kind of a problem for Rudy Giuliani that his new South Carolina campaign co-chair is a huge racist. I'm not so sure. This, after all, is the same world where George Will can publish columns praising George Wallace for "giving an aggrieved minority a voice" without mentioning that the aggrieved minority in question was America's smallish but influential white supremacist minority.
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Since When Does This Matter?
26 Jun 2007 09:46 am
Comments (30)
I guess I don't get it - where was the praise? The column seems fairly straight-forward and factual to me. There WAS a minority of very aggreived Americans - and Wallace did give them a political voice. Not necessarily identifying or condemning that minority now counts as praise??It's not like Will opined that we would all have been better off if Wallace won or anything
Ronald Reagan, Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1980, "I believe in states rights."
Scantily clad racism a problem for Republicans? Since when?
My fellow New Yorkers may remember that Rudy was not exactly a paragon of racial harmony himself.
"Huge racist"
So that makes Barak Obama's campaign, which put out the far more racist "D-Punjab" memo, what, double-hugely racist?
This is pretty bad in my opinion and he should never have been hired, but how does this compare to progressives cheering on Robert Byrd, a former head of the KKK, when he made anti-war speaches?
Y'know sometimes I imagine that it must actually be somewhat pleasant -- in a serene, Zen-like way -- to be so divorced from reality as to think that saying that being late is operating on "black time" and calling (to a cheering crowd of rednecks) the NAACP the "National Association of Retarded People" is "far more racist" than "D-Punjab."
Do you have to take medication to reach that state? Lobotomy, maybe?
wait...strike that, reverse it. Sorry. Maybe I am that blissfully stupid after all.
So that makes Barak Obama's campaign, which put out the far more racist "D-Punjab" memo, what, double-hugely racist?
Well, no. For a couple of reasons. First, the memo was about financial ties to a foreign country not about race.
Second, Obama apologized for it. When you and your elk get around to apologizing for dog-whistle racism, you can talk. Not immediately. Maybe 20 years after that. (There is precedent. A large block of Southern fundamentalist preachers apologized for their past racist attitudes several years ago. There was even a foot-washing ritual they worked up.)
George Will is being dishonest here and should be called out for that (although it's not exactly news). But it's worth noting that Wallace openly changed his views later on in his political career-- a notable and honorable act for anyone, and rare for a politician.
The part of Will's column that Matt quotes can be best explained, I think, by postulating that in Will's mind "aggreived minority" always has a negative connotation, so he doesn't need to specifically note that giving voice to one in Wallace's case was a bad thing. The part I don't like is this:
But we have different parties because people differ, in goals and sensibilities. We have separation of powers because the Founders thought tension and conflict between the political branches would be inevitable, even healthy.which could really use a note about the Framers mistakes in not planning for the existence of political parties, since it could easily be misread as our system being designed with them in mind.
So that makes Barak Obama's campaign, which put out the far more racist "D-Punjab" memo, what, double-hugely racist?
Jeebus, this is getting sad. Al, please don't sully our memories of your old, truly world class hackery with this clapped-out weak tea. There's no shame in hanging it up -- it happens to all the greats. Just retire and let us remember you as you were.
George Will is being dishonest here and should be called out for that (although it's not exactly news).
Agree.
But it's worth noting that Wallace openly changed his views later on in his political career-- a notable and honorable act for anyone, and rare for a politician.
Mmm. I'm not sure it's notable or honorable. Lots of people convert after they've lost. See the patriotism of the South, which I've seen explained as a reaction to its treason (I'm not sure that's convincing), or various Democrats on the war; wait and see Republicans do the same on the war. OTOH, it's good to encourage such conversions, and if acting as if it's notable or honorable helps, we probably ought to do it. I just feel like we see an awful lot of conversions after the size of the electoral base associated with each side is determined. It doesn't seem at all rare.
I agree with the first two commenters that Matt's criticism of Will is unwarranted. Will was commenting (fairly accurately) on the structural politics of certain presidential elections that make 3rd party candidates viable. He wasn't addressing the substantive political positions of the 3rd party candidates. It's not Will's responsibility to provide remedial history lessons for the vanishingly small percentage of political junkies that read presidential horserace columns 17 months before the election and are unfamiliar with the racism George Wallance's supporters.
Matt's point -- that racism is not a liability in southern republican politics -- is perfectly valid and could've been made far more persuasively with a little effort. Instead he seems to have referenced whatever article happened to be on his monitor screen at the moment.
What's the big deal? Giuliani is a racist (as anyone who lived in NYC during his tenure as mayor knows), so he hires racists to work for him. What could be more natural?
This is pretty bad in my opinion and he should never have been hired, but how does this compare to progressives cheering on Robert Byrd, a former head of the KKK, when he made anti-war speaches
While progressives have been known to praise Robert Byrd, a former KKK member, you won't find them praising Robert Byrd for his actions as a KKK member.
Wallace, like Byrd, gave up on racism, but Wills is praising Wallace for his actions as a racist. No progressive would do that.
Are you that dishonest, or simply that stupid?
Three problems for Guiliani here:
1. It forces him to react to the press about his ongoing problems with finding a SC chairman. Anyone from NY will tell you that Rudy is prone to blow a gasket when he is confronted by the press on an issue where he has shown vulnerability. He may say something extremely quote-worthy for the rest of the campaign.
2. It erodes his core message of can-do. Part of Rudy's electoral appeal has been his ability to say that he is the guy who can make government work. His inability to get out of his own way here helps to open the door (in GOP primary voters' minds) for stories about his failures in NY (many of which were the product of extreme loyalty to hacks).
3. It burns free media on a negative story. Even if a paper or magazine has a full-time reporter on Guiliani, that reporter will file one story per cycle. The Ravenel stuff will not take at least two of those stories. Whatever message Guiliani was trying to impart this week has been lost. Of course, Guiliani has had only one message (I am the post 9/11 tough guy you want).
Like many pundits, Will started out as a Republican operative, and he never really stopped being one. His ethics in that regard have been questioned several times.
More to the point, his Republican sugar daddy was Jesse Helms. Will has never made a grossly and overtly racist public statement IIRC, but he's made clear several times that he disapproves of one-man-one-vote and would prefer a restricted franchise. Basically he would support any objective, non-racially written law which had the effect of reducing black voting (e.g. poll taxes, recently tried in Georgia.)
As for his recent statement, it does two things. First, it turns liberal rehtoric back on liberals: the stupid "The only persecuted minority any more is white Christian heterosexual men" kind of thing. And second, he pushes the envelope a smidgen toward rehabilitating the early unreformed race-baiting of George Wallace.race-baiting phase.
Like some other commenters, I think Matt took an unfair cheap shot. Will describes the (limited) success of Wallace, Ross Perot, and Socialist candidate Norman Thomas. Does that mean Will is "praising" all three?
Will was rehabbing Wallace. That's better company than you usually see Wallace put in.
The problem for Rudy is that his base, voters who have held their noses closed to his other offensive vapors, cannot withstand the stench of this last boneheaded move. Conservatives will not vote for Rudy in numbers sufficient to give him the nomination. So how many moderate, white voters do you think are prepared to associate themselves with a candidate that just hired the avowed racist father of an alleged cokehead to publically manage his campaign?
Wallace had far more success than Perot or Thomas. Until he was shot, he was a far more dangerous man.
His change of heart late in life uncannily echoed the sentiments that The Misfit mouthed at the end of A Good Man is Hard to Find: "She would've been a good woman if there'd been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life."
"Wallace, like Byrd, gave up on racism, but Wills is praising Wallace for his actions as a racist. No progressive would do that."
Actually I referring to what Guiliani's choice of co-chair said and not anything George will said about Wallace as is clear from the first sentence of my post "This is pretty bad in my opinion and he should never have been hired."
"Are you that dishonest, or simply that stupid?"
Maybe you should brush up on your reading skills before you start ad hominem attacks that have nothing to do with what I wrote.
"...Robert Byrd, a former head of the KKK, ..."
Wow, Byrd is retroactively moving up in the Klan.
Will is more correct than he knows here.
In addition to his core racist support, Wallace did attract the generic FU voter as well. Contemporary polls had Wallace and RFK as the top two choices of a substantial number of voters.
McCain's chairman in SC in 2000 (Richard Quinn) was a bit of a race man, too. But the press was in love with the world's straightest talker, so they agreed not to notice. (With the exception of TNR.) Instead, they shook their fists at Bush for going to Bob Jones U, where GOP hopefuls had always gone (in prior campaigns) without a peep from the press.
Posted by bob somerby | June 26, 2007 3:25 PM:"McCain's chairman in SC in 2000 (Richard Quinn) was a bit of a race man, too. But the press was in love with the world's straightest talker, so they agreed not to notice."
For that matter Jimmy Carter had a record of sly radio adverts that suggested his opponent might be in favor of integration. Some times these things are more forgiveable than at other times it seems.
As for the man in question, I don't know what he is like or what his views are. But calling him a huge racist because of that "black time" comment seems bizarre. If that is hugely racist what do you call Wallace? He is 80. People of 80 tend to have all sorts of views. The only solution is a biological one. The NAACP comment was worse I'd say. Still if you want offensive comments about minorities, it is hard to go past rappers and no one much cares about them.
As for the central question "since when does this matter", it probably doesn't. However what's unacceptable changes over time and often without warning. Conservatives were correct when they said Imus had said racist things in the past and no punished him.
It could be a ‘threshold effect’ type event.
Posted by ChrisB | June 27, 2007 9:14 AM:"However what's unacceptable changes over time and often without warning. Conservatives were correct when they said Imus had said racist things in the past and no punished him. It could be a ‘threshold effect’ type event."
Or it is a media cycle thing. The perpetually outraged can be relied on to be perpetually outraged all the time. So when it is a quiet news day and someone says something, a journalist hears about it, phones around for a few choice quotes from the usual suspects and before you know it you have a national story. But if a comment comes along in a period of real news, no one notices.
I fail to see how having a racist in a Republican primary campaign staff can hurt one in South Carolina. If anything, it's probably good for a few more points in the vote tally.
Comments closed July 10, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I'm as happy to slag George Will as the next guy, but I'm not sure mentioning Wallace and the aggrieved minority he represented requires mentioning that the minority was full of white racists. I suspect anyone reading a George Will column would kind of know that about American history.
Posted by Joe Strummer | June 26, 2007 10:02 AM