Shocking New York Times Expose: Republicans Make Racist Ads!

A new 'both sides' battlefront!

The New York Times , waking up like Rip Van Winkle after a long sleep, has seemingly discovered that Republicans resort to outright racist appeals to win elections. Jonathan Weisman reported on this brand-new phenomenon in an article originally titled "As Republican Campaigns Seize on Crime, Racism Becomes A New Battlefront," which is absurd: Racism is hardly "new" to the Republican Party. Later, the headline became slightly less ridiculous though still an insult to anyone in possession of their short-term memory: "With Ads, Imagery and Words, Republicans Inject Race Into Campaigns."

“A "new battlefront"? Am I losing my mind?”

— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins) 1666726086 

The revised headline is a both-sides bromide. Race, after all, is a legitimate topic in the midterms. Democrats can't discuss voter suppression and intimidation efforts without "injecting race" into the conversation. What Republicans are doing, however, is objectively racist. The third-ranking House Republican has unapologetically invoked the white replacement theory. 

 From the Times:  

Running ads portraying Black candidates as soft on crime — or as “different” or “dangerous” — Republicans have shed quiet defenses of such tactics for unabashed defiance.

The Times includes stills from recent ads attacking Senate candidates Cheri Beasley from North Carolina and Mandela Barnes from Wisconsin, as well as US House candidate Michelle Vallejo, a small business owner. The only thing "different" about these three Democrats is their heritage, which you'd only consider remotely "dangerous" if you're a racist.

Barnes is admittedly to the left of the party on public safety (though hardly out of the mainstream). Beasley is a freaking judge. Both Beasley and Vallejo echo moderate Democratic rhetoric about immigration ("secure the border" but "fix the broken system"). Their actual positions don't matter to Republicans, who are particularly dishonest racists.

Here's the Times caption for these racist images: "Recent ads have prompted Democrats and their allies to accuse Republicans of resorting to racist fear tactics to scare Americans into voting Republican."

The Times acts as if it can only report what Democrats accuse Republicans of doing rather than observing with its own journalist eyes that Republicans have gone full George Wallace and Lee Atwater. This is a great scam Republicans have going. They run racist campaigns and the mainstream media collectively shrug. Democrats call out the racism, and it's treated as "he said/Klan said." Who can say who's right?

Appeals to white fears and resentments are an old strategy in American elections, etched into the country’s political consciousness, with ads like George Bush’s ad using the Black convict Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and Jesse Helms’s 1990 commercial showing a white man’s hands to denounce his Black opponent’s support for “quotas.”

Those were both successful Republican campaigns. It's not a generic political strategy. It's what Republicans have done since 1968 when Richard Nixon's presidential campaign struck electoral gold equating "law and order" with "keeping the Black folks in line."

There are eerie similarities to today's political climate. Democrats suffered midterm setbacks in 1966, two years after passing the Civil Rights Act, and an aide for President Lyndon B. Johnson believed things could get even worse for the party in 1968 because of "race rioting and the pace of Negro advances in our society."

In "Nixon Rides The Backlash To Victory: Racial Politics In The 1968 Presidential Campaign," Jeremy D. Mayer, a political science professor, wrote:

Riots had gown to dominate public discourse, as every summer scores of people died and millions of dollars of property were lost. The images of Blacks throwing rocks at the police, carrying goods out of stores, and dancing in front of burning buildings, made a powerful political impression. That most Black were not participating, that riots had complex social roots, and that police brutality was a pervasive practice in American cities were facts television did not often convey.

Republicans no longer have to link a white politician like Mike Dukakis to a scary Black man like Willie Horton. Now, they can cast Democratic candidates of color as their own racial bogeymen. And much like 1968, the media will fail to convey the full story.

[ New York Times ]

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