"Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant" (Bob Herbert on Wm Bennett, NYT)

[swag]

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/opinion/06herbert.html?hp

(subscription required)

fair use excerpt:

When I first heard about Mr. Bennett's comments, I wondered why anyone was surprised. I've come to expect racial effrontery from big shots in the Republican Party. The G.O.P. has happily replaced the Democratic Party as a safe haven for bigotry, racially divisive tactics and strategies and outright anti-black policies. That someone who's been a stalwart of that outfit might muse publicly about the potential benefits of exterminating blacks is not surprising to me at all.

Listen to the late Lee Atwater in a 1981 interview explaining the evolution of the G.O.P.'s Southern strategy:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' "

[speedoo]

1. Sickening.

I never saw that quote from Atwater before. Hell is too good for that evil scumbag.

And Rove is his protege.

[Beware the Beast Man]

2. I hope his brain cancer was extremely painful.

[MaineYooper]

3. I always figured that Atwater's brain rebelled

No normal brain should be subjected to or could survive the vile, reprehensible s*** that went through his.

Cancer was his brain's way of finally saying "enough!"

[rasputin1952]

4. Atwater had no scruples at all...he was helbent on gaining power

by any means possible...he was truly an evil individual.

[swag]

5. I regret having ever dined on ribs at Red, Hot & Blue when

I lived in DC.

[yellowcanine]

6. But I understand he did repent on his deathbed. Even apologized to

Michael Dukakis for the 88 campaign. So we ought to cut him a little slack.