Great article by Eleanor Clift about Ford race

[dajoki]

Coming Out
Race has been a subliminal factor in the elections. The Ford ad is an important wake-up call.

Web-Exclusive Commentary
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 6:31 p.m. ET Oct 27, 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15445958/site/newsweek/

The country-club Republicans who once defined the GOP must be embarrassed by the latest slime to emerge in the battle for Congress. The ad running against Democrat Harold Ford in Tennessee features a young woman flirtatiously saying, “Harold, call me.” Republicans claim they’re just trying to puncture Ford’s churchgoing image by reminding voters he attended a Playboy party at a football game, as if the two locales are mutually exclusive.

A party that came of age with a Southern Strategy of race baiting can’t play innocent. Ford is African-American; the woman in the ad is white. Race has been a subliminal factor in the campaign. Now it’s out in the open, and it’s another wake-up call for a fractured coalition that has lost its way.

It is shameful for the GOP to stoop this low to hang on to its majority. Ford has run a textbook campaign for a Democrat in the South, or anywhere for that matter, and the Republican National Committee wants him stopped. The ad, produced by an independent-expenditure group, crosses the line and has the potential to generate a backlash among Barbara Bush suburban mothers and grandmothers that could elect Ford. The Republican outreach effort to African-Americans was always more about moderating the party’s image with white women than winning black votes. This kind of election-eve innuendo wipes away all that talk about building a big tent for the 21st century. Whatever the outcome on Election Day, Ford has come too far too fast to let a racist ad extinguish his electoral future.

In their eagerness to shore up the conservative base, Republicans can also kiss goodbye the gains they made with Hispanic voters. President Bush resisted a public signing ceremony for the 700-mile border fence bill, but the troglodytes on Capitol Hill insisted, so the event was held in the Roosevelt Room, the White House equivalent of a phone booth. Hispanics will still take notice. “They view this as loaded guns against them,” says a Democratic strategist.

[blitzen]

1. she lost me at "Barbara Bush suburban mothers"...WTF?

[saltpoint]

2. Clift was on The McLaughlin Group this evening earlier and offered

many of these same points.

She was forceful -- you almost have to be with both Blankley and Buchanan sitting in on the conservative side -- and very much to the point.

I was proud of her that she nailed that Ford/Corker race so beautifully.

[WHAT]

3. "Excuse Me!?"...

I don't always agree with her but I sure like her. Academia saves her from being a bully. She conceputalizes ideology so I respect her position even when I don't always agree with it.

I get a kick out of her. She's right a lot of the time.

"Excuse Me"!?.....OK

[saltpoint]

4. Yep. Blankley was especially smarmy in that program, even more

than usual, and his usual is already pure propaganda for the Bush administration and the Republican line.

She stood strong against his weasely ways.

[JI7]

5. is the Conservative God a bigoted God ?

Conservatives love to talk about morals and values and God yet they promote bigotry. racism, sexism, anti gay, etc. does their God approve of such things ? is their God outraged at someone attending a football game with naked girls yet approves of George Allen's racism ?

[Totally Committed]

6. "Ford has run a textbook campaign for a Democrat in the South, ...

or anywhere for that matter....

You know the Pork commercials that make the claim that pork is "the other white meat"? This statement by a national columnist proves to be we are dangerously close to becoming "the other conservative party".

Ford is one of the most conservative "Democrats" in this Party. To laud his campaign as "textbook" just tells me where we are headed, and I weep.

Ugh.

TC