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According to the Rethugnicans, it's not racism unless you're swinging from a tree with a burning cross behind you - and even then, you can only be upset about it for as long as they feel it's okay.
I guess you haven't been paying attention to the DEMOCRAT primaries.
You're beloved dems/libs are the ones who played the race card, including Obama who plays it well.
I love people like you. You say these things out loud, and you actually believe what you're saying (because nobody is that ignorant) and it makes it so much easier to avoid you. I wish everybody with your mindset would speak up.
Please avoid me then in the future, because I choose to debate threads with intelligent people willing to discuss issues with facts.. People with my "mindset".. you mean racist individuals just like me!! Um.. yeah.. whatever..
in EVERY presidential election since 1968, at least! starting with 1968 and nixon's "southern strategy". ronald reagan kicking off his 1980 campaign in philadelphia, miss, infamous place of the slaying of 3 civil rights workers. ditto for 1984. in 1988, lee atwater admittedly played the racial card from the bottom of the deck with willie horton ads. 2004 was the year with all of the anti-gay amendment propositions in battleground states. the republicans are adept at playing the race card b/c they have nothing to brag about except the party's LONG GONE IDEAL of limited government and fiscal restraint
The fact remains that AL GORE Started the Willie Horton ad, not the Republicans, so again, are you accusing the Democrats of being racist? Noo, of course not.. only those Republicans are..
Yep. it was Gore that started the Willie Horton ad, and yet I hear NO Democrats here calling Democrats racists...
Republicans - never ones to let facts get in the way of their arguments.
Gore brought up the furlough program, not Horton. In fact, he didn't even bring up Horton's crimes. He was talking about two other criminals. Dubya Senior brought up Horton after Dukakis clinched the 1988 Democratic nod, invoking the name constantly and played on people's fears of the scary black rapist. Worked like a charm.
I think I'm going to submit this claim to Snopes.com, right along with Obama the Muslim and Whiteygate.
In reviewing this history, it's important to make some crucial distinctions. Gore never mentioned that Horton was black; indeed, he never mentioned Horton by name. He merely drew attention, correctly, to the damaging fact that Dukakis had tolerated a furlough program for especially violent criminals in his state even after a horrific incident strongly suggested this was a bad policy. It's conceivable, of course, that Gore was warming up for more explicit and racially tinged use of Horton's story later in the primary fight. But that would have been uncharacteristic of him. In any event, Gore dropped out of the race shortly after the debate.
Now recall what the Republicans did with Horton's story: An "independent expenditure" group aired an ad for Bush showing a picture of Horton. A Republican fund-raising letter in Maryland showed pictures of Dukakis and Horton alongside the following text: "Is this your pro-family team for 1988?" Horton told Playboy magazine in 1989 that a woman who identified herself as working for "an organization affiliated with the Bush campaign" phoned him and wrote letters to him up in prison trying to get him to endorse Dukakis. The official Bush campaign, of course, kept its distance from such efforts, and claimed to use Horton only in race-neutral ways. But there is plenty of evidence that it was heartily appreciative of the racial subtext. In his book about the 1988 campaign, Pledging Allegiance, Blumenthal quotes an anonymous member of the Bush campaign team as saying, "Willie Horton has star quality. Willie's going to be politically furloughed to terrorize again. It's a wonderful mix of liberalism and a big black rapist." Did Gore Hatch Horton? - Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
_____
But to be fair, it is not true that Gore ''used Willie Horton'' in 1988. In a debate with that year's Democratic presidential hopefuls, Gore noted that the Massachusetts practice of letting first-degree murderers take weekend ''furloughs'' from prison had freed some killers to commit new crimes. He asked whether Governor Michael Dukakis intended to grant similar furloughs to federal prisoners. That was it.
''Al Gore made a legitimate criticism,'' said Dick Gephardt, himself a presidential candidate in 1988, in a statement defending Gore from Bradley's charge. ''He never used Horton's name or image and never resorted to race-baiting.'' Boston.com / Politics / Campaign 2000 / News
____
This column incorrectly stated that Al Gore ran TV spots on Horton in the 1988 Democratic primary against Michael Dukakis.
Willie Horton's legacy (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/12/ED194565.DTL - broken link)
Republicans - never ones to let facts get in the way of their arguments.
Gore brought up the furlough program, not Horton. In fact, he didn't even bring up Horton's crimes. He was talking about two other criminals. Dubya Senior brought up Horton after Dukakis clinched the 1988 Democratic nod, invoking the name constantly and played on people's fears of the scary black rapist. Worked like a charm.
I think I'm going to submit this claim to Snopes.com, right along with Obama the Muslim and Whiteygate.
In reviewing this history, it's important to make some crucial distinctions. Gore never mentioned that Horton was black; indeed, he never mentioned Horton by name. He merely drew attention, correctly, to the damaging fact that Dukakis had tolerated a furlough program for especially violent criminals in his state even after a horrific incident strongly suggested this was a bad policy. It's conceivable, of course, that Gore was warming up for more explicit and racially tinged use of Horton's story later in the primary fight. But that would have been uncharacteristic of him. In any event, Gore dropped out of the race shortly after the debate.
Now recall what the Republicans did with Horton's story: An "independent expenditure" group aired an ad for Bush showing a picture of Horton. A Republican fund-raising letter in Maryland showed pictures of Dukakis and Horton alongside the following text: "Is this your pro-family team for 1988?" Horton told Playboy magazine in 1989 that a woman who identified herself as working for "an organization affiliated with the Bush campaign" phoned him and wrote letters to him up in prison trying to get him to endorse Dukakis. The official Bush campaign, of course, kept its distance from such efforts, and claimed to use Horton only in race-neutral ways. But there is plenty of evidence that it was heartily appreciative of the racial subtext. In his book about the 1988 campaign, Pledging Allegiance, Blumenthal quotes an anonymous member of the Bush campaign team as saying, "Willie Horton has star quality. Willie's going to be politically furloughed to terrorize again. It's a wonderful mix of liberalism and a big black rapist." Did Gore Hatch Horton? - Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
_____
But to be fair, it is not true that Gore ''used Willie Horton'' in 1988. In a debate with that year's Democratic presidential hopefuls, Gore noted that the Massachusetts practice of letting first-degree murderers take weekend ''furloughs'' from prison had freed some killers to commit new crimes. He asked whether Governor Michael Dukakis intended to grant similar furloughs to federal prisoners. That was it.
''Al Gore made a legitimate criticism,'' said Dick Gephardt, himself a presidential candidate in 1988, in a statement defending Gore from Bradley's charge. ''He never used Horton's name or image and never resorted to race-baiting.'' Boston.com / Politics / Campaign 2000 / News
____
This column incorrectly stated that Al Gore ran TV spots on Horton in the 1988 Democratic primary against Michael Dukakis.
Willie Horton's legacy (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/12/ED194565.DTL - broken link)
So lets get this straight.. Gore criticized the furlough programs, and Bush criticized the furlough programs, but its only racism because Bush used his name and photo..
um.. so your saying that displaying a photo of a black man is "racism"? If thats true, MSN seems to be guilty of racism because Obama is on that channel every few minutes..
Ohh, thats not racism because its Obama.. And neither is the op's comment. It only becomes racism if your willing to conceed that simply being black is negative, something many here seem to be trying to argue..
p.s. I never claimed that Gore used Horton in an ad, I claimed that he brought it up.. Which he did..
I have to say that Grover Norquist's comment, while undeniably moronic, is not quite racist, as one would be hard pressed to hear a KKK member say something like "black people are just white people with tans," as such a statement would imply equality in everything besides skin color. However, as I am a resident of Birmingham, formerly known as Bombingham for its centrality to the white racist terrorist cause of the mid-twentieth century, it could be that I am merely an un-self aware racist who therefore fails to disprove your theory.
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