It’s curious that a party could have an African-American as its presidential frontrunner for a month and then, after that guy faltered, could dump him and turn instead to a guy who says things like this:
GOP hopeful Newt Gingrich defended his stance against certain child labor laws during a campaign stop in Iowa Thursday, saying that children born into poverty aren’t accustomed to working unless it involves crime.
“Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday,” Gingrich claimed.
“They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal,” he added.
And if the polls are right, this is a direct transference — Herman Cain fans have consistently said that they love Gingrich (and loathe Mitt Romney).
Granted, Gingrich said this after he shot to the top of the charts. But I think it’s a safe bet that the coded racism of the remark won’t hurt him — not even with former Cain fans. (That swipe at Barack Obama as a “Kenyan anti-colonialist” hasn’t exactly impeded Gingrich’s progress.)
Now, maybe Gingrich will say he’s being race-blind. Maybe he’ll say his remarks apply equally to white kids in meth-saturated communities. (Though I doubt he’ll bother.)
Still, this gets back to what something I say at my main blog all the time: the racism on the modern right isn’t pure. It’s weirdly nuanced. That doesn’t mean it’s less virulent — it just means it’s not old-fashioned across-the-board contempt for non-whites.
Cain gets a pass because he’s a black man who tells white people what they want to hear (about liberalism and about race). Cain doesn’t see racism as a problem — liberalism is the only thing holding non-whites back. (Well, that and lack of ego: as Michael Tomasky notes in The New York Review of Books, Cain, in his memoir, repeatedly credits his success to being the “CEO of Self,” and doesn’t even acknowledge that the civil rights movement helped open a single door for him that might otherwise have been closed.)
Cain and Gingrich are alike in saying that, if you’re struggling, it’s your own damn fault. But a purely racist right would reject Cain just because he’s black, and also believe that non-whites fail because, well, they’re non-white, and thus inferior.
On the other hand, if the right really weren’t racist, this barely coded talk by Gingrich would be greatly damaging to him. So it comes down to what it always comes down to: modern right-wingers are enlightened about “their” non-whites, but they respond on cue to racist button-pushing regarding all other non-whites.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
Cain might be a white man tomorrow after his little talk with his wife tonight. She might slap the black right off of him (or threaten to, anyway).
Wanna bet Mrs. Cain changed the locks on the home doors long ago?
Herbie’s key doesn’t even fit the door locks.. much less having access to ‘talk to his wife’ about his so called political future.
Anyone who knows anything ’bout contemporary R&B will understand why I’m dedicating this song to Herman Cain in anticipation of his “announcement” tomorrow.
I imagine it playing as he walked into the house to “reassess his campaign” with his wife!
BTW, it’s the chorus that’s the killer!
Erykay Badu – Tyrone
I was somewhat excited by the prospect of a Cain candidacy because it would invoke the Alan Keyes effect. You’ll remember that he got 27% of the vote against Obama in their Senate race, proving that there really is a significant minority of all humanity that believes in crazy things. Cain appealed to that slice of conservative America, which always gets a special thrill from the more colorful tea party wind-up toys. Remember Lloyd Marcus?
You wanna take from achievers / somehow you think that’s fair / and redistribute to the folks / who won’t get out of their EZ chair
As long as Cain sang that same tune, he had the 27% excited.
Years ago, when Keyes ran for president, there was a smattering of right-wing email with variations on a theme: someone’s racist friend/daddy/grandad/uncle had attended a Keyes event, listened to him speak, and said “now, that man makes sense.” As I keep saying, the culture wars are not solely about race.
I agree that this was a very loud dog whistle by Newt, but it’s not just white GOP who are willing to defend him or give him the “benefit of the doubt”. I just saw Michelle Bernard (who’s both, Black & Republican) on Hardball and she went on to say that she gives Newt “poor people don’t know work” Gingrich the benefit of the doubt and said he was trying to tell “all” people that they should pull themselves up by the bootstraps and some blah, blah, blah BS.
It was up to the other guest (a white guy I might add) to point out that hell yeah not only was it a dog whistle it was also NOT the first time Newt has had disparaging things to say about poor people. They even showed the clip from ’94 where Newt said essentially that the gov’t should stop aiding poor single mothers and instead the money should go to orphanges and the kids should be put in orphanages…
Michelle of course then decided to change her tune a little bit. It was so obvious that she was not even informed about Newt’s crazy past statement was all ready to carry Newt and the GOP water like she usually does, but she was stopped short by the clip and the other guest. So then she was aghast, I guest. Whatevah Michelle!
btw, I would love to someone to ask Newt Gingrich about his time touring inner-city schools with Rev Al and Secretary Duncan and ask him if he thinks those children who he met and talked are the “poor kids who don’t have a work ethic” he’s talking about?
Rev Al’s on his show today showed the video of Gingrich, Duncan and Rev Al at these schools. Sharpton was very upset as can be imagined. Because as he said, he and Newt talked to those “poor kids” and every last one of them had WORKING parents and every last one of them wanted to grow up and work and be something. How does he know that, because they asked them (them = him, Newt and Duncan).
So Newt Gingrich knows exactly what he’s doing and it’s despicable.
What is it with Newt and children? (someone on the tpm thread asked). 3 marriages, but does he have any kids? I don’t recall hearing about any.
the dogwhistles from Newt and his ilk ring loud enough for me.
cain’s appeal goes even a little deeper than that: cain tells white people what they want to hear that white people themselves can’t get away with saying in public. try to imagine romney or gingrich taking the mike and bluntly telling minorities that they’re brainwashed by liberals or that they’re stuck on a plantation or that everything’s their fault because they’re lazy. cain is telling white conservatives what white conservatives have been dying to shout from the rooftops for decades but are now too afraid to. because they believe their own racist propaganda they also believe cain would steal the black vote from obama and clean his clock on election day.
today in freeperville:
“..slavery of the Dem plantation.” is nothing more than a talking point believed by feeble minds. It has no basis in reality.
What seems to be missing from this discussion is the complete blindness to the fact that most poor neighborhoods are instead of being populated by slackers are instead communities of people paid minimum or less wages and working shift work 12-16 hour days.
Laziness is a label meant to plant blame so the real reasons for poor communities never get a voice.
Welcome aboard Steve M. IMHO the GOP has conscienciously maintained an environment which was designed to attract two-bit con-men and other dishonorable dispicable charlatans. This has finally lead to a natural conclusive situation where the entire party is suffering from severe fractures between competing segments within the party.
There are three main groups involved in the struggle for the ideological “soul” of the almost defunct Republican Party.
The first group are the Libertarian/Republicans who are well integrated within the Party and have accumulated a great deal of power since the days of Ronald Reagan, who originally recruited them to join his first presidential campaign.
The second group is a cabal of right wing American oligarchs composed of the super wealthy plutocracy and the Corporate industrialists. This is the group that gave birth to ALEC and is responsible for reams of draconian legislature passed into law in more than 30 states around the country. This group is also responsible for Freedom Works and the Tea Party.
The third group contesting for power in the Republican Party is the southern conservative Christian block. These folks are the descendents of the former southern Dixiecrats of the Democratic Party. The Dixiecrats were those pissed off white Southern Democrats who left the Democratic Party when it unconditionally integrated its national convention; and as part of Ronald Reagan’s “Southern Strategy” were recruited into the Republican Party. This Southern Republican block also have very strong ties to the Southern conservative Christians and hence this is the reason they strongly oppose Mitt Romney’s candidacy for the Republican nomination for President on the basis of his Mormon religion. (In the past Romney served as a Bishop in the LDS.)
Unfortunately for this divided Republican Party there is no “Uniter” around whom all three factions can enthusiastically rally as their presidental choice.
This is the reason why each one of the presidential candidates have been given their own personal “moment in the sun” to audition for the job/task of becoming the Party’s one and only grand “Uniter”.
The reason that Romney remains stuck at the 23% poll level is that he is strongly favored by the Corporate Plutocratic Oligarchal group. This group is not interested in social issues, they are only concerned with issues of power. They are more interested in deregulation than they are with overturning Roe V Wade. However, the Libertarians and the Southern Christians are against Romney and that completes the picture.
Now Newt has been given his unique moment to convince all three groups that he is the holy “Uniter”. I rather expect that Newt will finally wind up taking himself out of his current position as the top polling GOP candidate, simply because of the extreme pressure.
Liberal bloggers have pointed out the racist subtext in such a way as to ignore that it is, after all, SUBTEXT.
And in that way they ignore that the actual remarks – NOT the subtext – are not aimed at voters are all.
There just aren’t enough purist libertarians among even Republican primary voters, not even among the tea-baggers, for it to sound like a good idea to THEM to send kids back into the labor market to take jobs from adults at half the price or less.
These remarks are aimed straight at conservative plutocrats like the Koches and Murdoch and the others like them.
To the really big, really conservative money of the Republican Party, this sounds like choirs of angels.
So for Newt, harping on this theme is a twofer.
The overt sense of such remarks is meant to help him lay hands on the big money he will need for his campaigns.
And he can always count on the inevitable racist construction everyone, especially liberals, will put on it to make such talk palatable, or at least less (!) shocking, to the mass of non-rich, non-plutocrat, and Christian Republican primary voters and even appealing to the outright racist segment of the white working class no Republican candidate can win without.
Very skillful, really.
Dogwhistles aside (you know Newtie was not thinking about his former neighbors and constituents in Northwest Georgia), what Newt says is not true.
There are no neighborhoods, urban or rural, where absolutely no one works, where the unemployment rate is 100 per cent. Where no one sees someone working or notices how they work.
And reduced to its basics the statement is just another version of the “if you’re unemployed, go get a job” nonsense.
And Newt ignores the fact that there are clueless privileged folks as well, who have all those negative attitudes, and yet are not poor. George Walker Bush comes to mind for some reason.