I’ve seen several comparisons of Oklahoma Senate candidate Tom Coburn to former Sen. Jesse Helms, but Coburn has taken the similarities to a new level by using Helms’ race-baiting campaign commercials and making them worse.
Helms, in his 1990 Senate race against Harvey Gantt, ran one of the most vile TV campaign ads ever aired.
Helms closed the campaign with an advertisement showing a pair of white hands crumpling a termination notice, as the announcer somberly explained that a well-deserved job went to someone else because of affirmative action.
Specifically, the ad told viewers, as they looked at white hands, “You needed that job. And you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” It was one of the most racist lawmakers of the 20th century pursuing a race-baiting strategy at its most blatant. It worked; Helms won.
And now Coburn and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are following in Helms’ footsteps. The ad is called “For the Record” and it’s available online. Be forewarned — it’s not pretty.
The ad is anything but subtle. When the commercial accuses Brad Carson (D) of “making it easier for illegal immigrants to cross our borders and take our jobs,” the image is of Hispanic-looking men (the alleged “illegal immigrants”) hurting elderly white men (the ones who are losing “our jobs”).
In the next frame, Carson is accused of allowing immigrants to get on welfare. The screen is split between Hispanic-looking men on one side and African-American hands counting what appear to be food stamps on the other side.
The Dems have denounced the ad and called for the GOP to pull it from the air. So far, no response. That’s not good enough.
When it’s time for the Republican convention, the GOP boasts of minority delegates and prime-time speakers. But before and after the balloons fall, anyone darker than a manila envelope is a pawn to be exploited in campaign commercials. The party that claims to be serious about minority outreach relies on race-baiting whenever necessary, hoping to drive a wedge that divides the electorate. It’s nauseating.
So the next time you hear about the latest effort on the part of Republicans to really reach out to minority communities, and they tell you to overlook Bush’s four-year boycott of the NAACP, Trent Lott praising a segregationist platform, Rep. Barbara Cubin comparing African Americans to drug addicts, Rep. Cass Ballenger admitting to having “segregationist feelings,” Gov. Haley Barbour hanging out with a racist, segregationist group, and the goal of suppressing the “Detroit vote” in Michigan, remind them of the NRSC’s latest ad in Oklahoma.