RNC To Boycott MSNBC After Controversial Tweet

[Jack Rabbit]

89. Maybe the rightwing will hate (the new Cheerios ad featuring a bi-racial family)

It's very interesting that this should offend Mr. Priebus. He is tacitly admitting what I've been saying for years: the Republican Party is nowadays characterized not be sober conservatives, but by the far right.

I was half of a mixed marriage for twenty years and I am the proud father of two half-Korean sons, now both over thirty. I take it personally when someone takes exception the idea of a bi-racial marriage. Such people are just stupid and vicious. They may as well be wearing white sheets when they make such pronouncements.

The MSNBC tweet said "the rightwing will hate it," not the GOP will hate it. A conservative is not a far right loony. He argues for keeping a proper balance between taxes and spending and errs on the side of keeping taxes low. It's hard to argue with that. While I'm left of center, I believe that the taxpayer should be getting some bang for their bucks. If a spending program isn't working, the money is being wasted. There's nothing wrong with admitting that. We on the left, whether we're socialists or liberals, might have a different idea of when the money is being wasted and err on the side of social spending. Too often, political rhetoric descends into sophistry where the two sides of the taxation/spending dialectic don't mean anything more than "vote for members of my party" rather than a serious discussion based on common sense. For example, both Republicans and Democrats have been known to promote spending programs for some military hardware that actual career military don't want. While that seems to be a Republican folly, it was President Clinton who pushed the Seawolf submarine down the Pentagon's throat.

The Republican Party began losing its bearings in this argument in 1980, when ultra-conservative and rightwing factions with the GOP coalesced and successfully nominated and elected Ronald Reagan president. Reagan's rhetoric, if not always his actions, led many to believe that taxes and government spending were evils that America could do without. Even before Reagan's election as president, anti-tax demagogues flexed their muscles by passing Proposition 13 in California, limiting property taxes and making it difficult to raise them. True, it seemed as though whenever the politicians wanted to spend money, they simply increased property taxes. That put a squeeze on the middle class, so the problem was real. However, Proposition 13 was not a good solution. Since it required a 2/3 majority from both houses of the state legislature to enact the budget, California's budget was perennially late. Since the voters had to almost pass a constitutional amendment to raise enough revenue repair the roads, California's infrastructure fell into disrepair and the state eventually fell into debt, especially after the deregulation of the state's energy market allowed speculators like Enron to push Californians' energy bills higher almost overnight in 2001. This is being written at a time when the Republican Party, after decades of cheer leading for lower taxes and deregulation, has been relegated to almost splinter party status in the California.

In spite of its failures, the traditionally conservative Republican position in the taxation/spending dialectic isn't necessarily right wing. To be right wing, the argument must be imbued to rightness of a social hierarchy that is justified either by nature or divine providence. Some people, the right wing holds, are simply better than others and, as a result of their natural superiority or favor with the Lord, have a right to rule over and oppress others, or, in more extreme variations of right wing ideology, even kill them.

The "Southern strategy" adopted by the GOP in the late sixties made the tax-cutting craze in the GOP even more toxic when far right voters were brought into the GOP fold. These voters are politely called "social conservatives" although there is really nothing conservative about racism, misogyny or sectarian bigotry. These voters were, and still are, very receptive to the argument that black Americans are lazy, stupid and violent and that any amount of social spending for their benefit is wasted. The Republicans were elected to office and taxes on the wealthy were cut. The largest tax cuts were passed early in the administration of George W. Bush, who was such a spectacular incompetent (now, guys, who was lazy, stupid and violent?) as to follow such a reduction in federal revenue with two foreign wars, one of which should have lasted only a matter of weeks but will soon end after 12 long years while the other was completely unnecessary in the first place. By the end of Bush's two terms in office, served in spite of his never winning a clean national election, most Americans laid aside the characterization of black people as lazy, stupid and violent long enough to elect one President. The hard core racists, however, were ready by calling Barack Obama a Marxist Nazi Muslim terrorist (as if Marxist Nazi Muslim could make any sense) and asserting that he was born in Kenya.

All of this is to point our that Mr. Priebus' assertion that MSNBC's tweet was anti-Republican is a quite an admission from the chairman of the Republican National Committee that the Republican Party has morphed into a broad faction aligned with the forces of racism rather than the party of traditionally conservative economic positions of free enterprise and personal freedom. Mr. Priebus demands that MSNBC apologize to "not just the RNC, but to all right-of-center Americans" he is including members of the Ku Klux Klan in the big tent of today's Republican Party. In Mr. Priebus' view, the GOP is not the party of Lincoln, but the party of Jesse Helms.

MSNBC need make no apology.