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Thursday, December 19, 2002
Reader Allan Goldsmith responds to my earlier quick-post referring to TPM on Clinton:While Mr. Marshall can claim something is truth because it is impossible to deny the obvious, the truth is that firstly, the Republican party does not coordinate every campaign from a central base. To blame them for pandering to racism is to claim that the Democrats are anti-homosexual because of Alex Sanders' ridiculous and offensive "light in the loafers" remark about Senator-elect Lindsey Graham. By and large, both parties do not pander to racists, and when Msrahall tries to draw fine lines, all he ends up doing is
looking like an arrogant pseudointellectual who claims that his word is truth because anyone who denies it is blind. No, they don't coordinate every campaign from a central base. But they do with the big ones, and, as was detailed in this past election, with Karl Rove in charge, they did so more thoroughly & effectively than ever before. On the general issues of pandering to racists, it simply is so common and so accepted. W, the one guy not being creamed as a racist in this whole ordeal, spoke at Bob Jones University; John Ashcroft made positive characterizations of Jefferson Davis in Southern Partisan Magazine; the campaigns to which Clinton refers were national issues and did have RNC talking points. Alex Sanders's "light in the loafers" comment I never understood; however, when he talked about Giuliani with "two gays and a shih-tzu", he obviously spoke in a way that obviously hadn't been vetted by anyone -- and got spanked by Barney Frank...and he lost, and will likely never see a DNC dollar again.
For as much as I've been sitting here accepting the claim that conservatives aren't racist, conservatives keep letting me down. The vast majority of conservatives I know personally are, in fact, racist and/or sexist. Andrew Sullivan made a grandiose claim of how Trent Lott, in trading in segregation for affirmative action, went from being a devotee of the "old racism" to being one of the "new racism"...which I think could be justified -- though I'd still disagree -- if you arrange your ideas correctly; he then went on to clarify that his idea of "new racism" was of one directed at whites, the "victims" of affirmative action, and I am left thinking that he simply doesn't care to rectify the wrongs of the past...and given that his investment in this country is incomplete -- he hasn't applied for citizenship -- I think there's good reason to assume that he won't throw his lot in as well as others might (btw: this isn't anti-immigrant; the guy's been here for 20 years and is fully aware of how to become a citizen, he just doesn't want to). The conservative argument against affirmative action, against changing state flags, etc., panders to protection of whites' place in society, on the individual level as well as on the general social level. That isn't entirely equal to racism, but it is white-protectionism, and people who are inclined to be happy with the latter are necessarily less inclined to worry about the former.
Summation: Marshall is right that Clinton's arguments were "truths", and the GOP does necessarily pander to near-racist ideology that often and easily tips over into out and out racism.
Thanks for writing, Allan...
Steven I. Weiss 6:25:00 PM
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