{"id":8275,"date":"2006-08-23T11:10:17","date_gmt":"2006-08-23T15:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8275.html"},"modified":"2006-08-23T11:10:17","modified_gmt":"2006-08-23T15:10:17","slug":"the-republicans-race-problems-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-republicans-race-problems-continue\/","title":{"rendered":"The Republicans’ race problems continue"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a year ago, when Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said<\/a> his party was finally ready to turn over a new leaf when it came to racial issues. Sure, Mehlman said, the GOP’s record in the 20th century left something to be desired, but that’s the past, and the party is ready to look forward with a progressive attitude.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, reality keeps getting in the way.<\/p>\n

Last week, it was Sen. [tag]George Allen[\/tag]’s (R-Va.) now-infamous racial slur<\/a>. This week, it’s Sen. [tag]Conrad Burns[\/tag]<\/a> (R-Mont.).<\/p>\n

A new video released this week by [Burns’] Democratic challenger, Jon Tester, shows Burns, 71, joking to a crowd in June about how a “nice little [tag]Guatemalan[\/tag] man” fixing up his house might be an illegal [tag]immigrant[\/tag]. “Could I see your green card?” Burns tells the crowd he asked the man. “And Hugo, says, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Oh, gosh.’ ” […]<\/p>\n

Jason Klindt, a spokesman for Burns, said he did not want to respond to the immigrant remarks, other than to say they were accurate and not mean-spirited.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My favorite part of the response was that Burns’ comments were “accurate.” In other words, as long as “Hugo” actually is “nice,” “little,” “Guatemalan,” and possibly an undocumented immigrant, there’s no problem here.<\/p>\n

Like Allen, there’s a track record to consider. Allen didn’t get the benefit of the doubt after the “[tag]macaca[\/tag]” slur because he has a troubled background<\/a> on race relations. Burns, meanwhile, is on record calling Arabs “ragheads” in a speech about high oil prices.<\/p>\n

In the broader context, it seems as if the right just can’t help itself lately.
\n
\nIn addition to Allen and Burns,<\/p>\n

* a leading congressional candidate in Florida said<\/a> he knows, “from my own experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers, and may not even know how to swim”;<\/p>\n

* two congressional candidates and a gubernatorial candidate believe people who “appear” to be Arab or Muslim should be subjected to racial profiling<\/a> at airports;<\/p>\n

* and Pat Buchanan’s new book argues for “an immediate moratorium on all immigration,” in order to preserve the dominance of the white race<\/a> in America.<\/p>\n

And these are just examples from the last eight days<\/i>. If we expand the timeline to include the last few years, the embarrassing examples<\/a> — remember Trent Lott praising a segregationist presidential platform? — really<\/i> begin to pile up.<\/p>\n

A year ago, Mehlman said the party’s problems with [tag]race[\/tag] are a thing of the past. Given what we’ve seen lately, it sound like the problems remain a very big part of the GOP’s present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a year ago, when Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said his party was finally ready to turn over a new leaf when it came to racial issues. Sure, Mehlman said, the GOP’s record in the 20th century left something to be desired, but that’s the past, and the party is ready to look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}