Thursday, January 10, 2008

For Karl Rove, Race-Baiting Still En Vogue

First, a short memo to Karl Rove: Before you start giving our candidates primers on how to conduct themselves, perhaps you should first tend to your party's disastrous gaggle of fearmongers, bloviators, and racists. That should be enough to keep you occupied.

Sadly, that is the least offensive part of Rove's drivel in today's Wall Street Journal. His commentary smacks of the desperation his party feels in the face of an Obama nomination and, in that solitary desperation, borders on overt racism.

According to Rove, Barack Obama is "often lazy" and, in the New Hampshire primary debate "his trash talking was an unattractive carryover from his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard." What else, Rove? I bet he can't swim, either. Perhaps he talks aloud in the movie theater.

I will let alone for now the host of unfounded assertions in this piece, but the thrust of it is significant for one very important reason: The Republicans cannot beat Obama and they know it. They felt much more secure when they thought they'd be facing Clinton; that is a fight they are used to having. They've memorized that play book.

Obama is different. The Republicans don't know how to deal with his broad appeal and in the groundswell of grassroots momentum that has propelled the senator to front-runner status. So they resort to the caustic, snarky old politics. They throw subtle racist barbs and levy unsubstantiated assertions.

They want nothing more than a Clinton nomination. We must not give them that chance. Their divisiveness is no match for our hope.

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