From below:
The NAACP and other civil rights groups condemned Tuberville’s line as
“flat out racist,” but it got a big cheer at the Nevada rally and
Republican lawmakers aren’t condemning it, as the sentiment is not
unpopular among some GOP base voters.
NB: "not unpopular among some GOP base voters"? The reality is popular
among most of the GOP hard-core base, particularly since the Republiklan
Southern Strategy and Strom Thurmond and other overt white supremacist
fellow travelers (if not outright members) of the Ku Klux Klan became
Republiklans. The core of the Republiklan Trumpites is white supremacy,
along with sexism (male supremacy), theocracy (for those religions that
are "Christian" and spew hate, oppression, and beating plowshares into
swords), destruction of the biosphere, and the rest of the agenda --
with white supremacy and theocratic sexism the core.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tuberville-comments-race-crime-reverberate-100000641.html
The Hill
Tuberville’s comments on race, crime reverberate loudly on campaign trail
Alexander Bolton
Thu, October 13, 2022 at 3:00 AM
Democrats are ripping the GOP for staying quiet over Sen. Tommy
Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) declaration at a campaign rally that Democrats are
pro-crime because they favor reparations and think criminals are “owed
that.”
Tuberville’s words at a Nevada campaign rally featuring former President
Trump have put race at center stage in the final weeks of the campaign,
leaving Democrats arguing the GOP’s crime narrative carries nasty racial
overtones.
The NAACP and other civil rights groups condemned Tuberville’s line as
“flat out racist,” but it got a big cheer at the Nevada rally and
Republican lawmakers aren’t condemning it, as the sentiment is not
unpopular among some GOP base voters.
Democrats say Tuberville’s comments reflect the GOP psychology behind
efforts to push the issue of crime into the spotlight of Senate races in
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina.
“Using dog whistles is just not a way to present an argument to the
American public without some serious consequences down the road,” warned
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who said he was disappointed that fellow
Republicans didn’t condemn Tuberville’s comments.
“I would certainly hope and pray, if people on our side start using
racially hostile language or disparage a whole section of America, that
I would say something publicly about how wrong it was,” he said.
Cleaver, who is Black, noted that President Biden and other Democrats
swiftly condemned the disparaging racist remarks that three Los Angeles
city council members made in a leaked recording.
The White House is also pointing out the deafening silence among
Republicans on the subject of Tuberville and other racism-driven attacks
made on the campaign trail.
“Here’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans: When a
Democrat says something racist or antisemitic … we hold Democrats
accountable,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “When
a MAGA Republican says something racist and or antisemitic, they are
embraced by cheering crowds and become celebrated and sought after.”
Democratic strategists say Tuberville articulated the racially charged
subtext of Republican attacks on the issue of crime.
Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist, said language like what
Tuberville leveled in his Saturday attack “is becoming more of a
mainstay in Republican and MAGA talking points.”
She said that several recent polls show that Black voters feel racism is
increasing, a possible reflection of hardening political rhetoric on
topics like “wokeness.”
Finney said the way Republicans “hammer” on urban crime “would make you
believe that Black and Brown families don’t worry about crime.”
“These are racist dog whistles that are front and center in the talking
points that we’re seeing from MAGA Republicans across the country not
being challenged by Republican leadership who recognize they can’t
afford to anger those in their base who may agree,” she added. “They
believe this is an effective message.”
Some Democrats and political experts say attack ads depicting Democrats
as soft on crime are designed to scare white suburban voters and sow
division along racial lines, which they argue was what Tuberville
intended when he declared that Democrats “want to take over what you
got” and “want reparations because they think that people that do the
crime are owed that.”
Nevada Senate Republican candidate Adam Laxalt has hit Sen. Catherine
Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) for being soft on crime and attended the weekend
rally but didn’t comment on Tuberville’s statement. The Laxalt campaign
did not respond to a request for comment.
Brandon Scholz, a Wisconsin-based Republican strategist, rejected the
charge that Republicans are sounding racist dog whistles by hitting
Democrats for being weak on crime.
“It’s not new, it’s been out there since campaigns were putting out
crime-related ads weeks ago, months ago,” he said of the criticism of
GOP tactics. “It’s the kind of response you could expect to hear from
campaigns that are the targets of those ads.”
But he stressed that the GOP ads are based on facts and public statements.
“If it’s based on something somebody has said, that’s a fact. You can’t
get away from that,” he said. “In Wisconsin, at least the ads that I’ve
seen, appear to be based on votes, bills’ introduction, statements,
positions.”
“It’s all fair game,” he added.
Scholz said he didn’t see Tuberville’s comments and argued that
Wisconsin voters aren’t paying much attention to what an Alabama senator
is saying at a campaign rally in another state.
Critics, however, say Tuberville’s attack went well beyond stating the
facts.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson described the rhetoric as “very
dangerous messaging” in an interview on Wednesday, arguing the comments
played into racist stereotypes “that could cause harm against African
Americans.”
“Tuberville knows very well that African Americans are no more prone to
crime than Republicans, as they have demonstrated in this current
atmosphere,” he told The Hill.
Desmond Jagmohan, who teaches political science at the University of
California, Berkeley, also argued Tuberville’s comments were an attempt
to “frame African Americans as a criminal element,” while appealing to
racial fears among his base.
“He’s also pointing out to redistributive politics as itself a form of
crime, basically, stealing from whites and giving to African Americans,
and that’s a kind of enduring racist trope,” Jagmohan argued.
The remarks, Jagmohan and others say, are just the latest example of
Republicans racializing their crime messaging in the current campaign
season.
Republicans have pummeled two Democrats, Wisconsin Senate candidate
Mandela Barnes and Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman,
especially hard on crime.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee is hitting Barnes, who is
Black, as “a dangerous Democrat” for supporting the end of cash bail and
linking his policy views to the Waukesha Christmas parade attack, where
a man released from jail on bail killed six people with his sports
utility vehicle.
In Pennsylvania, Republican candidate Mehmet Oz has criticized Fetterman
for employing two brothers on his campaign, Dennis and Lee Horton, who
were convicted of second-degree murder and later granted clemency.
Another ad paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and
approved by Oz slams Fetterman for expressing support for releasing more
people from prison and eliminating life sentences for murderers.
These advertisements conjure images of the infamous “Willie Horton” ad
ran to help support former President George H.W. Bush’s campaign bid in
1988. The ad sought to take aim at Democrat Michael Dukakis’s record on
crime as governor of Massachusetts by focusing on Horton, a Black man
convicted of murder, who committed crimes while out of prison on furlough.
“They want to divert attention from Roe as much as possible for suburban
women in particular,” said Ray Zaccaro, a Democratic strategist, making
reference to how the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade,
the landmark abortion rights case, has pushed many women voters away
from the GOP.
“The idea of the threat of Black men toward White women is something
that’s been used in racially charged campaigns since Reconstruction,” he
said.
Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the Senate Republican campaign arm, said
the attacks on Barnes and Fetterman are fair because of their statements
on the record.
“We’re using their own words. If Mandela Barnes and John Fetterman don’t
like it, they should go back in time and not embrace stupid ideas that
voters are rejecting,” he said.
A recent advertisement released by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) has been
raising eyebrows this month for its racial undertones.
In the ad, Kennedy addresses violent crime he says is “surging” in
Louisiana, while railing against so-called “woke leaders” that “blame
the police.” The video features a montage of pictures depicting
protesters with signs with phrases like “Black Lives Matter” and “defund
the police,” as well as videos of people in hoodies and ski masks
holding guns.
“I voted against the early release of violent criminals, and I opposed
defunding the police because I know the difference between criminals and
their innocent victims,” Kennedy says at the end of the video. “Look, if
you hate cops just because they’re cops, the next time you’re in
trouble, call a crackhead.”
The video instantly went viral earlier this month and drew criticism
from experts and advocates who have blasted it as racist and say it
perpetuates harmful stereotypes about addiction.
“You can have a debate about crime and it not necessarily be racial,”
Andra Gillespie, an associate political science professor at Emory
University, said on Wednesday. “But when you end with ‘call a
crackhead,’ that’s when I think we have to think about what our cultural
image of a crackhead is.”
In another ad that has gotten attention, Barnes could be seen discussing
reallocation of police funds in a faded clip next to the words “defund
the police” spray-painted on a wall. The shot then pans to another wall
decorated with street art and homicide statistics for Milwaukee.
The video, paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee,
ends right after panning back to Barnes’s photo, before the narrator
reads against ominous music in the backdrop: “Mandela Barnes, a
dangerous Democrat.”
National Urban League President Marc Morial accused the ads of equating
“Black people with crime.”
“This is nothing new,” he told The Hill on Wednesday. “This is the same
type of thing that led to the overreaction during the war on drugs and
mass incarceration, which has damaged the Black community so severely.”
“I think it shocks people, because people thought it ended … But what we
see is people are taking an old suit out of the closet, taking it to the
dry cleaners and putting it on,” he added.