Democrats making up racism charges

Jonah Goldberg:

If the GOP wants to win more black votes, it will need to get a lot more “racist.”

The scare quotes are necessary because I don’t think the Republican Party is racist now (and, historically, has a lot less to answer for than the Democratic Party does).

But that hasn’t stopped people from slandering Republicans as racist for one reason or another.

Right now, many in Washington insist that Republican attacks on UN Ambassador Susan Rice are racist and, yawn, sexist. The basis for this claim is that some Republicans are calling Rice unfit for the job of secretary of state.


More specifically, they’re cross with Rice for what they contend to be her dishonest and incompetent handling of the Benghazi scandal.

And, because Rice is a black woman, well, blah, blah, blah. Racism! Sexism!

Never mind that Republicans haven’t had a white secretary of state since Lawrence Eagleburger concluded his term two decades ago. Never mind that Republicans appointed the first black secretary of state ever (Colin Powell) and the first black female secretary of state ever (Condoleezza Rice).

Also, never mind that Susan Rice’s handling of Benghazi — and several other matters — can quite defensibly be dubbed incompetent.

But that doesn’t stop Democrats or liberals from crying racism.

Just consider some recent examples from over the summer. When Mitt Romney visited Michigan, he joked about not needing a birth certificate to prove he was from there.

Not very funny? OK, sure. Poor taste? Eh, maybe, I guess. “The basest and the most despicable bigotry we might be able to imagine”? Errr, no. And yet that’s what one respected “expert” on race, Michael Eric Dyson, called it on MSNBC.

Rather than show some skepticism, MSNBC host Alex Wagner agreed that Romney was “scraping the very bottom of this sort of racist other-ist narrative.”

At the GOP convention, MSNBC host Chris Matthews explained that “Chicago” was a racially loaded code word. Fellow host Lawrence O’Donnell said Republican convention speakers were reaching “for every single possible racial double entendre they can find.” His proof? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made a joke about Obama playing a lot of golf.

Now, the cynical motivations behind this relentless slander are too numerous to count. Such moral bullying makes white liberals feel better about themselves. It scares moderates and centrists away from the Republican Party, and it no doubt helps dissuade wavering blacks from even thinking about giving the GOP an honest look.

It also does wonders to stifle journalists terrified of having their racial bona fides questioned in any way. And it helps a feckless left-wing black political class explain away its own failures. Racial slander is like duct tape: There’s no limit to what you can do with it.

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Liberalism has been teh most damaging factor in the lives of blacks in the last 50 years.  It is as if the Democrats switch ed from overt hostility to the black community to covert hostility that has destroyed the black family and failed to lift many blacks from poverty   It has kept their children trapped in bad schools which portends future generations of poverty and failure.