The 2006 GOP Southern Strategy
24 October 2006 7:15 pm by Taylor Marsh
UPDATE (9:15 a.m.): The RNC's racist anti-Ford ad is finally raising the roof for its racist message. LATimes and NAACP weigh in today.
Harold Ford, Jr. is up against it. The Republican Party's Southern Strategy of 2006, that is. A blonde and an African American, hinting of inter-racial dating in a conservative state. What will Tennessee do? Mehlman and the Republican Party intend to help voters figure it out.
Welcome to “Ken Mehlman's cesspool,” as Matthews stated today. Russert interviewed Mehlman on it, too. Tony Snow joined Matthews later, saying the Harold Ford ad was just fine with him. He and Mehlman are wrong.
The ad is playing “the race card,” said Bob Herbert. He went further stating
that it's what Republicans do.
I'll make it even plainer. The Republican Party is revealing the racist vein
that runs through their political soul. It's scraping the bottom of the barrel
in a tight race Republicans feel they simply have to win. The Republican Party won't pull the ad and they won't disown it. So, it continues
to play in Tennessee, which is the way they like it. It's race baiting, period.
And when they're not race baiting, you have people like Rush Limbaugh attacking Michael J. Fox for having Parkinson's disease. They'll say anything to hold on to power.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh yesterday attacked actor
Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, for inserting his voice
into the U.S. Senate campaign in Missouri.Limbaugh suggested that Fox was “acting” in a commercial where
he's shown shaking while endorsing the importance of stem cell research.“He is exaggerating the effects of the disease,” Limbaugh told
listeners yesterday, encouraging them to go online to watch Fox's commercial,
which first aired Saturday in St. Louis during a World Series game. “He's
moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act.”Later in the same broadcast yesterday, Limbaugh backed away from those comments.
“I stand corrected,” Limbaugh said, according to a transcript of
the show on his Web site. Parkinson's, he added, “is not pleasant in
any way, shape, manner or form. Nor did I mean to implicate that one could
easily act it out for the purposes of a commercial.” He said listeners
sent him e-mails suggesting that Fox might be exhibiting such symptoms because
he had stopped taking his medication.Today, Limbaugh called Fox's video “an attack ad” that is “filled
with disinformation about embryonic stem cell research.”(snip)
But in an interview in Ladies Home Journal's September edition, Fox said
he was taking a medication that causes jerking, fidgeting and other abnormal
involuntary movements, known as dyskinesia. Fox said he was taking another
medication to lessen those side affects.An official of the National Parkinson Foundation said movements like those
exhibited by Fox are the result of taking medication to treat the disease,
which would otherwise result in rigidity.“When you see someone with those movements, it's not because they have
not taken medication but because they probably have taken medication for some
time,” the official said. “If you don't take the medication, then
you freeze.”Limbaugh Says Actor Fox Exaggerates Effects of Disease in Ads
Let's fight this crap. FDL, Howie and C&L are running a campaign and I'm joining in. I'm asking everyone to give $5 to support Democrats. Just $5. Give
if you possibly can. Frankly, Democrats need the money and we don't have any time left.
GIVE $5 BUCKS
This is the last push.
