GOP wants liberals to fold rather than play race card

by: Ted Frier

Wed Oct 19, 2011 at 09:05:27 AM CDT

Charges of "divisiveness" are especially preposterous coming from the leaders of parties that have perfected the tactics of divide and conquer politics.

Yet, in her Washington Post column today, Kathleen Parker says that calls by "some members of the black media" for African Americans to support President Obama out of racial solidarity "is a terrible idea" -- just as it would be, I guess, for Texans to support George Bush or Rick Perry because he's a Texan or Christian conservatives to support Sarah Palin because she was one of them, too.

"If pursued and played by Obama, it would be the worst thing not only for his reelection campaign but also for the country," she says. "The man who was elected on a promise of unity - neither black nor white nor red nor blue - can't now play the race card. Any of his supporters who play that hand will be doing a disservice to themselves and to the nation."

There is something in the DNA of white Southerners like Parker that always causes them to freak out whenever blacks do what conservatives do all the time and get organized. And Parker was engaged in some subtle, or not so subtle, race-signaling of her own when she attached racial overtones to what is nothing more than garden variety coalition building, as when President Obama recently told a mostly African American audience to kick off their bedroom slippers, put on their marching shoes, "stop grumbling, stop cryin, w are going to press on. We've got work to do."

And yes, it's "an ugly fact of life" that there are still white racists out there who would vote against Obama because of his skin color Parker admits, almost reluctantly, at the very end of her piece which she attaches as a kind of CYA closing paragraph to immunize herself against charges she's either oblivious or insensitive to the residual racism that still does exist.

Yet, it's the kind of half-way race acceptance we see displayed by Kentucky's Tea Party Senator, Rand Paul, who says he hates racial discrimination -- just as much as he hates federal laws against it.

But let's unpack what Parker really means here. What separates liberals from conservatives is their vision of community. Liberals want to build larger and more diverse ones and conservatives want to protect the ones they already have. Their politics reflect that.

Parker accepts as an historic fact the superior social position of whites. To her its the status quo, and so while she might admit that racism still does exist she still can't get it out of her head that attempts by blacks to challenge white supremacy through the familiar right wing tactic of sticking together is both "divisive" and a disturbance of a fragile peace.

That is why Republicans are the "Leave me Alone" Party. And so when Parker accuses Obama's supporters of being divisive all she really means is that they are holding up a mirror to those who want to kick their guy out of office. Why for example did Republicans attack Justice Sonia Sotomayor for her "empathy," treating as a disqualifying characteristic in a judge the ability to put oneself in another person's shoes? Empathy means to see things from the perspective of others outside our own particular group or tribe. Yet, obviously from the perspective of right wing Republicans like Senator Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama this is intolerable.

The race card should never be played except as a last resort and when the evidence is overwhelming that it is warranted. Parker is right about that. That is why they call it a "trump."

But her advice that Obama's supporters stay away from ever playing it would be more believable if she did a little more soul-searching of her own to quantify the race-animosity that still exists, beyond that pathetic CYA throw-away line at the end.  

Maybe in South Carolina where Parker is from it is considered bad manners to point out the all too obvious. But I really do think she needs to look more closely in the mirror before lecturing others on the conclusions they draw about why some people find the current President not only just wrong but deeply offensive.

Pundits tell us there is extraordinary eagerness on the right, verging on hysteria, to turn out the vote in order to turn Obama out of office. Yet, nothing Obama has done justifies this extra measure of "enthusiasm."  

Obama has made every good faith effort to reach across the aisle and engage Republicans as constructive governing partners in the effort to dig our way out of the crisis Republicans left him in the first place.

Voters who get all their information from Fox News and so look at the world through a distorted right wing lens will surely disagree, but nothing Obama has done even remotely qualifies as "radical." To any fair-minded observer the President's measures, while you may disagree with them, are thoroughly within the historic mainstream.

And yet Republicans can't wait to vote the bum out. I am sorry, but I refuse to give Republicans a pass that race is not a factor - perhaps an overriding one - in the energy it supplies to fire up the GOP base.

Advice from conservatives like Kathleen Parker that President Obama's supporters forgo appeals to group solidarity would sound a lot more like a call for national unity, instead of a demand for unilateral and unconditional surrender, if it weren't made by a writer from a party that opposes one of its own just because he's got the wrong religion.