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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEditorial: Campaign racial codes like dog whistle for bigots
South Carolina, site of Saturday's potentially pivotal Republican primary, has a long history of elections with ugly racial undertones.
In 1980, a strategist for Ronald Reagan spread anonymous charges that Texas Gov. John Connally was "trying to buy the black vote." In 2000, anonymous "push" pollsters called South Carolina voters to ask what they'd think of candidate John McCain if they knew he had a black child. (The McCains had adopted a baby girl from Bangladesh.) And in 2008, former president Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife, suggested Barack Obama was unelectable in part because of his race.
This year, Newt Gingrich is continuing that sorry tradition. At Monday's debate in Myrtle Beach, Gingrich repeated attacks he has made elsewhere, calling President Obama a "food-stamp president" because the number of recipients is up 43% since he took office and denying that he's insulting black Americans by saying that blacks should prefer work to food stamps. Never mind that about 70% of food-stamp recipients are white or Hispanic.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-01-19/Campaign-racial-codes-like-dog-whistle-for-bigots/52685174/1
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)BiggJawn
(23,051 posts)Naw, I think it's gone beyond that. The only thing they haven't done yet is start using "The N-Word" in public.
This is more like it...
IDemo
(16,926 posts)Zax2me
(2,515 posts)Not selected as was little bush.
Didn't work the first time.
Why would it matter now?
divide_and_rule
(16 posts)but most here do not.
the question is why that is so?