As Professor Jacobson wrote on Saturday, the Herman Cain SuperPAC is running this race-card-playing ad.
Other GOP commentators, especially Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, have also been making statements along these lines. This is wrong, especially coming from solid conservative voices.
To play the race card in this fashion, with such insufficient evidence (liberals/Politico would have sat on this story if it was about a white Republican frontrunner? Or wouldn’t have bothered to dig it up? Really?), is to create a bipartisan, spectrum-spanning consensus that you can’t criticize a black man without being called a racist.
And no, extremists like Harry Belafante, Al Sharpton, and Cornell West saying extreme things about race isn’t evidence that Cain’s critics are motivated by racism. It’s evidence that all is normal with the world. If they stopped saying extreme things about race, that would be news.
Black people make mistakes like everyone else. Our current black president makes quite a lot of them, much to our country’s detriment. And while he has so far damaged only his campaign, any fair-minded observer should notice that Cain himself is quite prone to errors. To hold the threat of the race card over everyone who wants to criticize public figures who happen to be black is both unfair and destructive.
Furthermore, it shifts the frame of the race issue into territory that is bad for conservatives. As seems to be the case with OWS, our desire to hit the left back in kind is making us lose sight of the need to control the narrative. In using this tactic, conservatives make the discussion about racism while conceding that there is a lot of it. The question of just how prevalent racism is in America is key to the differences between liberals and conservatives on the matter of race. By claiming that it is rampant, we concede an important point for the momentary satisfaction of a gotcha soundbite.
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Comments
Good post Matthew.
Ditto.
Yes Politico and other libmedia outlets would have sat on the story if it affected a white liberal, cases in point, Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton-Newsweek sat on the story for a year because they didn’t feel it was “substantiated” enough; Rep. Weiner, just this year, libmedia did everything they could to kill the story, attack the accusers, and minimize the misconduct; couple of years ago, white liberal John Edwards, having affair while his wife was battling cancer and fathered a son out of wedlock and used campaign cash, allegedly to hush things up. Media killed story for more than a year, again went into mimimizing mode, attacking those who wanted to get at the facts, and left it to National Enquirer to break story, when it was no longer possible to ignore.
So yes there is a major double standard. There may be an uncertainty as to whether race or conservative values plays the greater role in libs’ crusades against minority conservative “scandals” while excusing minority liberals’ scandals (William Jefferson, John Conyers, Charlie Rangel, ad infinitum). But the fact that there are two causes, does not negate the racial undertow, these minorities were veering off the democrap landscape and they must be punished at all costs, lest other minorities see that conservatives welcome them and that conservative ideals will lead to more improvement for them than democrap welfare state sclerotic “solutions”.
“To play the race card in this fashion, with such insufficient evidence (liberals/Politico would have sat on this story if it was about a white Republican frontrunner? Or wouldn’t have bothered to dig it up? Really”
I seriously doubt that. If Politico had anything remotely like a story about any republican they would print it whether it had any legs at all in the hope that voters would buy it. It is a sad fact of life that we no longer have a fourth estate (if we ever did is questionable) that gives us the true facts. Instead they print biased fairy tales cum editorials hoping to bring down the GOP.
It is not a good idea for us to use the race card even if it is warranted. The left have pretty much tarnished this card and we don’t want to impede them in their efforts to shoot themselves in the foot. I got sick and tired a long time ago someone say “it’s only because I’m black, etc.” We still hear this canard all the time. Didn’t that congresswoman Richardson use it only the other day?
“It is not a good idea for us to use the race card even if it is warranted. The left have pretty much tarnished this card and we don’t want to impede them in their efforts to shoot themselves in the foot.”
Excellent point.
I don’t believe it is ever a good thing to simply lay down and ignore it hoping it goes away.
I have no problem with the advertisement. In fact, I believe it underscores the thoughts that many sober minded people have about the maltreatment of conservative minorities and females.
It was delivered at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner.
Advertisements are managed messages delivered to target audience segments. This particular one reinforced the notion that the race mongers from the grievance industry spew hate towards viable conservative blacks. It was directed towards conservatives, primarily Cain supporters, who demonstrated their support with considerable donations over a short-span.
The longevity of a ad is short. In two weeks many will be hard-pressed to remember it in the fog of the primary season.
By the way, the Sarah Palin movie, “The Undefeated” opened in a similar manner to the way this advertisement laid out the case concerning Herman Cain.
It is never a bad idea to turn the mirror on those who recklessly hurl baseless ad hominems.
I’m not an Ann Ann Coulter enthusiast. Lumping Rush with Ann is really weak.
“As seems to be the case with OWS, our desire to hit the left back in kind is making us lose sight of the need to control the narrative.”
When someone sends a bullet at you, you send back what? Nothing, by choice or because you’re dead? A knife? A speech? A negotiator?
The point of this post presumes to trump Clarence Thomas’ epic statement of truth at his confirmation hearing.
There is no narrative other than the truth. If one fear the truth or obfuscates the truth, say, in the name of controlling a narrative (as if one knows the proper narrative and can control it), one is wringing hands with bullets flying at one’s head. Wussy.
How is one going to respond? What is one prepared to do? If it isn’t send back better bullets with finer aim and more of them to actually stop bullets flying at one, one is wasting food and taking up space. There is no “better way,” a “higher calling,” than fighting a war through to victory in terms the enemy understands. Once he starts shooting – and you better hope he’s not a steady hand – you put bullets in him before he puts one in you. That’s the truth so that’s the narrative and the only way you can control it is to do it.
The Democrat Party is anti-black. In their liberal eyes the only “self-redeeming” black is one who is obedient to their Democrat Party Masters and votes as ordered.
Would Democrats stoop to manufacturing sexual-abuse slander against a conservative black they view as a threat to the collective thinking of blacks they hold on the Democrat Plantation? Yes, without a doubt.
Cain is perceived as a very serious racial threat to their political hold on the black community majority.
It is not an issue to Democrats whether these allegations are false or true or half-truths. To Democrats this is a public whipping of an uppity non-liberal black man.
If the Democrat Party were to lose the majority of the black community they would be destroyed as a political party.
So yes, *Race Is An Issue* where any black politician is involved, be they conservative or liberal.