Last week, John Sununu lost his perch as one of the Mitt Romney campaign’s leading cable news talking head surrogates when he surmised that the reason former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed President Obama again this year is because both men are African-American. While, as I wrote, there were other, perhaps more compelling reasons for Powell to back the president, liberals seized on Sununu’s statement as evidence of Republican racism. The race theme resurfaced again yesterday when liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan said on ABC’s “This Week” that the potential return of Virginia and Florida to the Republican column this year (along with likely GOP pickup North Carolina that he failed to mention) would mean the revival of “the Confederacy.”
Sullivan’s rather simplistic thesis was quickly shot down by George Will who pointed out that it was more likely that the whites who voted for Obama in 2008 but who won’t this year are judging the president on his performance in office rather than having become racist in the last four years. That’s obvious, but the willingness to jump on Sununu and to start talking about the Confederacy is no accident. In an election in which the president seems to be losing independents, Democrats desperately need voters to think more about Barack Obama’s historic status as the first African-American president and less about the record that he can’t run on. The president’s difficult electoral predicament is not a function of prejudice but the fact that more Americans are looking beyond race rather than obsessing about it.
Race is the original sin of American history, and anyone who attempted to argue that it no longer plays a role in our society is being disingenuous. But while the 2008 election did not mean it disappeared, it did remove it as an explanation for the voting behavior of the majority of Americans. While it is possible that some people will not vote for the president because of prejudice against his race, it is hardly a sign of bias to notice that there are many Americans — both white and black — who believe the symbolism of his ascendancy to the presidency is an act of historic justice that is an argument in itself for voting for Obama. Indeed, the president has very little to recommend his re-election other than party loyalty on the part of Democrats and lingering good feelings about what happened in 2008.
By contrast, Sununu is not a particularly sympathetic figure, and there are those of us who still bitterly recall that when he was the governor of New Hampshire he was the only U.S. governor who refused to repudiate the United Nations’ infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution. But rehashing his past, including the ethical problems that led the first President Bush to fire him from his post as White House chief of staff, as the New York Times’ Charles Blow did this past weekend during the course of a column that attempted to first brand Sununu a racist and then to smear Romney as one by association, tells us more about the Obama campaign than it does about the GOP. That canard is a disreputable political tactic and nothing more.
The remarkable thing about both the 2008 and the 2012 elections is how unremarkable we have come to see the idea of an African-American running for and then serving as president. The decline in the president’s fortune has nothing to do with the revival of prejudice but is, instead, a result of the sober judgment of a significant portion of white Americans that the man they voted for in 2008 has not merited re-election. Republicans are asking the American people to assess the president on his record, not his race. It is, unfortunately, the Democrats who are the ones who are attempting inject race into the campaign.
There was a wire service article Saturday or Sunday claiming that a national survey "proved" that racial animus against African Americans has increased since 2008 (the actual increase reported was about 2 percentage points of overt and concious, and about 5 or more, I forget) of covert based on questions intended to uncover subconscious bias. According to the wire service article, it is this increase in racism that may tip this year's close election against Obama. n nI'd be interested in know whether proof of bias included such things as being against the Affordable Health Care Act. or referring to the Act as Obama Care. Or using words like "Chcago" or "golf."
The animus against Americans of African decent is there is due to the drive-by media continually stoking the fire. Instead of calling out the true racists, we know who they are, and hammering them into the dirt. Rather they attack groups who could care less what race you are but instead what, as Dr King said, the content of your character is. As to the good General he certainly can't support Obummer for any of his accomplishments so it has to be their shared ethnicity. now all I have to do is find a ½ Irish, ¼ German and 1/8 each French and Swiss to throw my support behind.
If true, it is Obama's divisiveness that has increased racial tensions since he came to power. n nHe and his supporters have been playing the race card since before he was elected, and it was not enough for him to be elected by the citizenry of the USA. He and Holder still believe American is mired in its original sin, or at least find it politically convenient to 'believe' that and promulgate it.
Sure, there are Americans who are racists and Americans who would not vote for Mr. Obama because of his race. Just as there are Americans who would never vote for a Jew. There are always people who hold prejudices and vote accordingly, especially in an electorate as large and diverse as is the United States. n nBut let's face it, Mr. Obama won handily in 2008 so to say that race is the reason for his lack of support now is to ignore the 2008 election as well as the last four years of his presidency. Quite frankly, there were few (any?) shouts of race as people disagreed with Mr. Obama's policies. The fact is that Mr. Obama has pushed policies that most Americans disagree with; witness ObamaCare, severe cuts to defense as another. n nFurther, Mr. Obama has a record that most Americans see as a record of failure and of a country that has wasted the past four years. We have had little to no economic growth and a foreign policy that has left us weaker and less respected among the nations of the world. That's not racism, that's just what our president has done. n nMr. Obama was elected to be the president to all Americans and that's what he is. After the election he had to perform. Our country that has suffered for his failures and now we have a chance to make a correction. That's not racism, that's an election.
Mazeld, there were far too many cries of racism when people opposed Obama’s policies, and too many in of his supporters among cable TV casters, bloggers, the entertainment world and politicians were not ashamed to say that opposition to Obamacare or to this policy or that was simply because people did not want to see a black man in the White House. I have to agree with MainesMichael.
The rationale is anti-white, anti-hetero bigotry, leavened by the usual "patriarchal hegemony" clap trap. AS's shrill inanities on racism, Israel-firsters, or Palin's reproductive system long ago jumped the shark–along with the liberal ruling class that laps up this slop. Sobered, measured responses to the pseudo-journalist, pseudo-academic, and pseudo-intellectual left-wing jacknapes, daily dressing up the regime's emperor's new clothes with accessorized applique and baubles, will have little effect. We need to reconsider the task of breaking their stranglehold not only on the attitudes of bien pensant progressives and "cool"-seeking youth but on *taxpayer subsidies". Delegitimize and defund. n n
Since a large part of Andrew Sullivan's unwavering support for Obama is connected to his deep animus for Israel and Jews, maybe his comments about Sununu are just a reflection of his own racist motivations.
So those 98% of black voters automatically voted for Obama because of his policies? Do tell.
When Romney wins Wisconsin, by winning Outagamie County, then we will never hear the end of division over "racism". n nThere is something wrong with education on racism. Last week, I went to a presentation on how Margaret Mitchell's one year at Smith College (1918-1919) may have influenced "Gone With the Wind". The stunner question was from a black student who asked if Ms. Mitchell had not returned to Smith because of Otelia Cromwell. The answer (from a stunned presenter) was that Ms. Cromwell was, as the first known African-American graduate, class of 1900, so no, she was not present in 1918. n nI just found that such a strange question for 2012. n nbtw, Ms. Mitchell's mother died of the Spanish influenza in 1919, and Margaret was forced to return home to run the household.
Charles "Low" Blow: n n…’ Charles Blow did this past weekend during the course of a column that attempted to first brand Sununu a racist and then to smear Romney as one by association, tells us more about the Obama campaign than it does about the GOP. That canard is a disreputable political tactic and nothing more… n nIt is decidedly not racist to have voted for Obama in 2008 in part symbolically to participate in the breaking of a barrier tied to America's "original sin" and then four years later to vote against him on account of his failed presidency. Sunnunu was substantively right in saying obliquely that Powell's reason in endorsing Obama was Obama's half blackness. But it was politically stupid to do that, recalling Kinsley's definition of a political gaffe, and for that Romney was right to pull Sunnunu's problematic surrogacy out from under him. n nOn another point, I wouldn't give Andrew Sullivan's hysterical caterwauling the time of day, ever, anywhere.
When the demo don't know what to do, they play the race card. They did it many time and initially against Hillary! She was a converted democrat so it worked!