Race

With Obama heading into his last election, this is the GOP’s last, best chance to truly exploit racial fears among conservatives. Newt Gingrich characteristically is leading the charge, hinting that we should bring back Jim-Crow poll restrictions and playing the Obama-food-stamp-Detroit music on his well-worn dog whistle.

But here's what really bothered me. When Romney formally declared his candidacy, as expected he attacked Obama, and as expected he said rather a lot that wasn’t true. But he also attacked Obama and his ideas as “European”. So somebody sit down with Romney and explain to this donkeynozzle that all of the ideas embodied in the founding of our nation, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights – they’re all European. All came from England, France, Holland, ancient Rome, ancient Greece. Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu. So if he wants to jettison European ideas, the first thing to go is our Constitution – which some Republicans seemingly would want to do. And incidentally, if Romney is slamming Obama as "European", he should remember that his own lineage is much more European than Obama's. In fact almost all of us are Europeans: if America got rid of all the “Europeans”, the only people left, pretty much, would be the native Americans, the blacks, the Muslims, the Chinese and the Koreans.

Just amazing. On his very first day in the campaign, Romney was pulling out his dog whistle and taking the first step on the slippery slope of “European = foreign = scary Kenyan Muslim Marxist who is black black black black black”. And I thought he was the grownup trying to fend off the attacks from the extremists: if he is going to spout this nonsense, what sort of nonsense will the Bachmanns and Palins be yammering about?

Meanwhile, Fox’s new racist-in-residence, Eric Bolling, followed up his slam on Obama “chugging 40s” by criticizing Obama’s meeting with an African head of state “Guess who’s coming to dinner? It’s not the first time he’s had a hood in the big crib.”