Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Home to roost

Why is it unsurprising that the latest racist embarrassment in the coming election involves another Republican?
Racism still wins votes in Tennessee

This case involves a 60-year-old real-estate agent named James L. Hart, who claims Republican affiliation, even though the party officially disavows him. He's running for Congress in a district that is safely Democratic; running as an independent in 2002, he garnered only 2.6 percent of the vote.

Here's his platform:
Hart calls himself an "intellectual outlaw."

Hart supports the pseudoscience of eugenics, once used to sterilize people to purify the white race.

If eugenics was practiced, "unfit" people would not have children, thus, making the world a better place. Thirty-three states passed eugenic laws sterilizing about 65,000 people.

As a result, Nazi doctors -- under the auspices of the Third Reich and using America's eugenics example -- wrote eugenic-based textbooks. The terrible textbooks justified sterilization programs for a superior race and millions were killed.

Hitler praised eugenics. Hart does, too.

"Why does Detroit look like it was hit by a nuclear bomb and Hiroshima look like it was on the side that won the war? Everyone knows the answer but is afraid to say so," said Hart. "The reason for Detroit's decline is there are less-favored races in Detroit and more-favored races in Japan.

"The poverty gene of less-favored races, which are spread by welfare and immigration, are destroying our cities no less than if they were hit by a nuclear bomb . . . unless we stop welfare and immigration polices, the U.S. will look like one big Detroit. I will save our cities . . . If an individual demonstrates the ability to produce and contribute to society, he or she would be encouraged to have more children. People on welfare would not."

Hart refers to "less-favored races of sub-Saharan Africa, which Hollywood continues to call black."

Of course, mainstream Republicans are shocked -- Shocked! -- to find that racism is going on in here.

State GOP officials have denounced Hart and urged voters to support his Democratic opponent. So far, we've heard nothing from national Republicans, but it'd be safe to assume they would maintain the same pose. A few conservative commentators in the blogosphere have also weighed in, claiming that "Hart is no more a Republican than Lyndon LaRouche is a Democrat."

This may be somewhat true -- Hart's positions on eugenics and race only dimly, at worst, resemble any recognizable mainstream Republican position. The problem, however, is that Republican voters have put Hart in this position. As the article goes on to explain:
Now, before you spit out your morning coffee and yell, "Who the hell voted for this idiot?"

Well, thousands did.

Bertrand, a former military officer who served in Iraq, received GOP support but not their votes: Hart had 7,913 votes compared to Bertrand's 1,654.

There's a reason that Hart is running as a Republican: He knows the Republican base will cast its votes for him. And he knows that because the GOP, in the South especially, has pandered to sentiments like his without openly embracing them.

One of the places this was pointed out, incidentally, was at American Renaissance, the hate group run by "academic racist" Jared Taylor:
This is so typical of conservative whites--we are scared to death to stand up for what we really believe in. We talk privately about being against one thing or another, but out in public we go along with the "liberal" talk.

It would be much simpler if the GOP made any kind of genuine effort to denounce and discredit the racists who have taken up residence in their ranks. But at best, the party provides only lip service and token gestures.

In the meantime, it continues to play footsie with the neo-Confederate movement. It trades in radical memes that originate on the extremist "Patriot" and even neo-Nazi right. Guys like Jared Taylor show up on nationally broadcast mainstream conservative talk shows and are treated as though they were themselves mainstream authorities.

The Republican base is willing to vote for people like James L. Hart because it constantly receiving signals like these from the "conservative movement" (and only feeble counter-signals, if any at all).

Playing with rotten meat brings the vultures home to roost.

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