Republicans Running on Race

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It is coming down to RRR: Republicans Running on Race.

Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention was the night for Vice President short-listers, people who were announced as possible picks for Romney’s potential Vice President.

Just as the show was getting terminally boring with the likes of Rob Portman, they brought out the zoo keeper with the red meat, Rev. Mike Huckabee. After attacking DCCC Chair Wasserman-Schultz (for the bigots that’s a two-fer, a Jewish woman, the former governor and Baptist preacher), he played the race card:
“Barack Obama is more intent on giving people food stamps instead of jobs.”

Most of Huckabee’s speech was cheap, lame, racially-tinged shots and re-writing of history. Leave it to the Republican speechwriters to make a Southern Baptist preacher boring.

Huckabee, of course, was expected to support Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin who has said that “legitimate rape” could not produce pregnancy.

Even the use of the term “legitimate rape” is sickening and abhorrent.

Don’t we love it when aging, ignorant white men wax confidently on scientific and medical questions? Remember this is the party whose tent is big enough for those who don’t believe in evolution or even contraception.

I am 57 years old and when I hear “food stamp President,” I well remember all the racial code words and phrases of my entire Southern life: “welfare queens, whites only, no coloreds.” This Republican Party will run a stealth racist campaign on rural radio, leaflets at white evangelical churches.

Paul Ryan, the very earnest Eagle Scout, gave an earnest series of lies in his speech. The P90X stud duck said his music starts with AC-DC and ends with Zeppelin. Is that it man? Makes sense given who he is.

Ironic that they had Paul Ryan attack the Affordable Healthcare Act. It would be awkward for Romney to attack what he has often said is his most important achievement.

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Stewart Acuff is America’s best-known and foremost labor organizer. He is the former organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Acuff has also written two books: Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing, and Getting America Back to Work, coauthored by Dr. Richard Levins.