WaPo Says The Entire GOP Is Considering Using Racism To Win

In an attempt to tar the entire corpus of GOP candidates running for office in 2018, The Washington Post published an article on Sunday that claimed all GOP candidates were considering whether to use racist rhetoric in order to win on November 6.

Matt Viser, writing for the Post, cited various examples to buttress his claim that an entire party was tilting toward using racism to engender support from voters.

Viser began his odyssey with his oversized paintbrush by stating, “The fierce battle for control of Congress and the nation’s governorships has turned toward blatant and overtly racial attacks rarely seen since the civil rights era of the 1960s.”

Then the rather short laundry list, considering there are over 400 GOP candidates running for election on Tuesday: A robocall, which Viser did not ascribe to any particular candidate, that features an Oprah Winfrey sound-alike calling Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams “a poor man’s Aunt Jemima”; Sonny Perdue, the Secretary of Agriculture, saying of the Florida gubernatorial race, where Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum, who would be the state’s first black governor, is running, “This election is so cotton-pickin’ important.”

Viser cited Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who has made highly questionable choices with his rhetoric, but Viser even admitted King has been roundly condemned from most conservatives.

On the basis of this flimsy evidence, Viser offered this conclusion: “ The 2016 election confirmed that a potential president could run — and win — after stoking racism. Now, in their closing days, the midterms are shaping up as a demonstration of whether the entire Republican Party can succeed by following his lead.”

More: “By running so overtly on racially tinged messages, the GOP is putting that explosive form of politics on the ballot. If Republicans maintain control of the House, the notion of running a campaign built on blunt, race-based attacks on immigrants and minorities will have been validated.”

Unsatisfied with simply slamming current Republicans, Viser took a shot at those no longer with us: “Candidates in the past have tapped obliquely into racial undercurrents during political campaigns. Ronald Reagan talked of ‘welfare queens,’ and George H.W. Bush played on racial fears with an ad in his 1988 campaign about a black convict, Willie Horton.”

Reagan’s hatred of racism is a matter of record: in 1981, addressing the NAACP convention in Denver, Reagan blasted, “A few isolated groups in the back order of American life still hold perverted notions of what America is all about. Recently in some places in the nation, there’s been a disturbing reoccurrence of bigotry and violence. To those individual who persist in such hateful behavior … you are the ones who are out of step with our society, you are the ones who willfully violate the meaning of the dream that is America, and this country because it does what it stands for will not stand for your conduct.”

Though Viser didn’t mention him, since he seems determined to limn the GOP as the party of racism, how about this from Senator Bob Dole, in his 1996 presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in San Diego: “If there is anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we’re not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln and the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.”

Forget the Democratic Party buddying up to Louis Farrakhan and Linda Sarsour; it’s the GOP that’s the party of racists, according to the Post.