Veiled Charges Of Racism Fly In Race For ... Republican National Committee Chair?

[babylonsister]

Combine this with the music video released, and this will get real interesting. The rethugs are cannibalizing themselves.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4720737&mesg_id=4720737


http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/12/veiled_charges_of_racism_fly_i.php

Veiled Charges Of Racism Fly In Race For ... Republican National Committee Chair?
By Greg Sargent - December 8, 2008, 2:11PM


It's a pretty amusing sign of just how bad the GOP's travails are and of how much the election of the first black president has shifted the political landscape: The race for chair of the Republican National Committee -- the public face of a party that's not known for racial sensitivity -- is shot through with veiled charges of racism.

The latest? A Republican operative supporting one of the candidates sends us some oppo research that, he vows, will be so damaging that it could help finish off one of the candidates, South Carolina GOP chief Katon Dawson. It's a December 2006 report in the Columbia Star saying that Dawson's son -- gasp! -- was at a debuttante ball at a country club that's all-white as a matter of policy.

The fact that Dawson himself was a member of this club, the 80-year-old Forest Lake Club, is not new. But our operative insists to us that the fact that Dawson's son also attended such a ball -- they are basically social coming out parties for the teenage daughters of well-heeled southern families -- makes the charge more damaging.

The operative tells us that the last thing the GOP needs right now is an RNC chair steeped so thoroughly in certain aspects of southern culture, given that the GOP needs to prove that it's not devolving into a regional rump party held hostage by intolerant elements.

Forget for the moment whether this argument has any merit or whether Dawson's attendance at the ball should matter. It's yet another sign of how much the landscape has shifted that being culturally identified with the south is a liability in the race for GOP chair.

Indeed, Dawson's association with the club has become so much of a problem that his camp is now circulating a letter from a black member of the RNC saying Dawson is no racist. No word back to us from the Dawson camp yet on this stuff.

[wryter2000]

1. "being culturally identified with the south is a liability"

No, idiot. It's a matter of being culturally identified with racism, no matter what part of the country the racism is in. And, there's plenty everywhere.

[gratuitous]

2. It's not a bug, it's a feature

Today's Republican party: Fuck it, we aren't even gonna try anymore.

[Bullet1987]

3. The whole GOP playbook is not as complex as some make it out to be

It's based around consolidating the base and scaring everyone else into submission. When Obama took that away from them and ran an outreach message...they were exposed as the frauds they are. The GOP isn't good at reaching out to "different" people. They have too much of a conflicting history.