Thanks, Tamika. Forward!

Also, I forgot to ask you one question: If you're supporting Romney, can you give me one specific policy of his that you support. Something specific, other than "because he's a good businessman." I have asked this of Romney supporters for weeks in public and private, and no one could answer yet -- at least no one who doesn't bring home more than $200,000 and wants more tax breaks, and most of them won't admit it.

Gotta fly: press/election day. Let's talk more soon.

Thanks for your response, Tyler. Let's start with this:

> Thanks for responding. I'm referring
> to the times when a Republican leader,
> regardless of who it is (that's the
> key, blanket assumption) says anything
> and it's dissected to find the hidden
> racism or if a regular citizen says
> something, they are accused of
> drinking the Kool-Aid, but they are
> nonetheless of the same mind (racist),
> if not simply ignorant of being
> brain-washed. It comes across as
> assuming I'm unable to think for
> myself.

The problem with this is that very few people actually do this; I don't look for the awful in every Republican statement. In fact, there are ideas and policies that I like -- but they get so buried in crap and, yes, racism. Take voter ID: The problem y'all have on this is that (a) there is no evidence whatsoever that it is needed; (b) it is excessive and expensive (and thus not conservative) regulation that is (c) designed by the strategists to try to limit non-white turnout. They've convinced enough of y'all well-meaning conservatives that it is needed and that it is obvious (and even convince many that it is the same thing thing as showing an ID to get in a bar or whatever -- which is as ignorant and illogical and unpatriotic of an argument as anyone could come up with).

Y'all accept it on its face: yes, of course, voter ID is needed. You refuse to believe that a good number of elderly and poor just don't have the ID that your privileged self thinks everyone must have or they're a loser. Even though the evidence is irrefutable. You don't care that paying for the ID is a poll tax. And you end up sounding like the Citizens Council of the 1960s in arguing that, of course, it makes sense to charge a poll tax or quiz people -- you should be smart enough to vote or get an ID anyway.

It comes across as if y'all weren't taught to think critically in school (I know some people weren't especially at conservative academies that spoonfeed dogma over critical thinking). Or that you weren't taught any history whatsoever about what voter suppression is or basic civics over the difference between showing an ID to vote and other non-basic American rights.

Look, I don't blame you for this. I didn't get a stellar critical-thinking education at my high-school either -- except for a couple amazing teachers/mentors, and from books and my curiosity to know the rest of the story. But I do blame you if you don't redirect what sounds like intelligent discomfort with the current Republican Party into serious questioning about the deal it's made with the devil. You're prime to do it; do it.

Thanks!

Thanks for posting. Here's the problem, Tyler: You didn't read what I wrote. I never once said that every Republican is a racist. Hearing that means you entirely missed the point -- I'm guessing because you saw "GOP" and "racist" and jumped to wild conclusions.

What I did say is fact (see Sen. Lindsay Graham's remarks as well; he agrees.) The *party* has sold out to a racist devil -- as a strategy. This is just true. Atwater admitted it. Graham admits it. Mehlman apologized to the NAACP for it.

What that means to good non-racist Republicans like yourself is that you and others must take responsibility for taking your party back from crazy people. I'm on y our side on this -- but I can tell you that it won't happen if y'all get defensive (and misread) anything that is written about the GOP's nasty little pandering-to-racists habit. It is time to speak out and tell your party to stop it. a good place to start is right here in Mississippi, where some of the folks on the state level are really trying to take us back to the 1960s, both on race and on gender issues. Do something about it.

There is precedent here. In the 1960s, back before the Republicans invited the Dixiecrats in, the Democratic Party had to make a hard choice that meant losing a lot of voters: They had to expel the racists, the segregationists, the Dixiecrats. They chose to let them go and pay the political consequences (which they're still paying in the South) because it was the right thing to do.

One of the saddest things that's happened in 50 years is that the Republican Party invited them in. And it has devastated your party, turning it into a lily-white fraternity where most of y'all seem too afraid to speak up to your leadership and strategists. I swear, Republicans spend more time complaining about people who dare notice and speak up about the racism than doing something about the racism.

This is y'all's burden to bear. It's your moment in history. I'm really not your problem here. Find the courage to speak up and out as the Dems did in the 1960s. Make your party into something the nation can be proud of again. If you don't, it is going to continue to shrink demographically and get meaner and less relevant. I'm rooting for you.

Agreed, Brian, all around. As for Romney and Sununu, though, Romney has also played the "need an American" card on Obama himself. And listen to Ryan yesterday, claiming that Obama's policies are somehow anti the Judeo-Christian tradition, as if Ayn Rand isn't. I swear, these guys are so textbook Orwellian that they routinely accuse their opponents of their own stuff.

They're the ones wanting to stop forcing insurance companies to cover children with pre-existing conditions on day one.

Wow, thanks. ;-)

You're welcome!

Wow, and this. Gingrich is remarkably honest here about the fear of a (non-white) "permanent majority" they fear:

*To some longtime Republicans, the party faces an existential question on immigration.
“Once we deal with the issue, we’ll have a permanent majority for a generation,” said Gingrich. “But until we do, we’re permanently in danger of losing.”
Gingrich’s solution, regardless of whether Romney wins: “It’s going to require Jeb Bush coming to Washington for about six months and working directly with Marco Rubio and building a bipartisan majority. We really need Jeb to live in Washington for six months to get this done.”*

Um, maybe it's time to move beyond race and trying to keep a white majority. THAT will help bridge the racial divide in the country; nothing else will until whites stop trying to protect whiteness and the privilege that has traditionally come with in the U.S. The ball is in our court--and especially white Republicans. Graham knows it; Gingrich might; Barbour not so much, it seems. Sad.

More great quotes today from Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, [quoted by Politico:][1]

> "If we lose this election there is
> only one explanation — demographics."
> ...
>
> “If I hear anybody say it was because
> Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m
> going to go nuts,” said Graham. “We’re
> not losing 95 percent of
> African-Americans and two-thirds of
> Hispanics and voters under 30 because
> we’re not being hard-ass enough.”

Maybe Graham and Christie can help lead this party back out of the ugly, racist wilderness the southern strategists trapped it in. Let's root for them. We need too non-crazy political parties (at least).

[1]: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?…