McCain Campaign Fumes Over Paterson's Racism Claim

[tekisui]

http://cbs3.com/topstories/paterson.mccain.palin.2.813891.html


(CBS) On Monday, Gov. David Paterson angered some state lawmakers by comparing them to vampires, calling them a bunch of "blood suckers." On Tuesday, he raised eyebrows again, and tempers, by accusing the John McCain campaign of veiled racism.

At the Crain's Business Forum this morning, Paterson drew attention to a phrase used numerous times by speakers at the Republican National Convention to describe Barack Obama's leadership experience: community organizer.

"I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama 'black' in a sense that it would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican Convention – a 'community organizer.' They kept saying it, they kept laughing," he said.

Paterson referred to McCain's running mate Sarah Palin who compared her work experience to Obama's.

"So I suppose a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except with real responsibilities," she said at the convention.

Paterson sees the repeated use of the words "community organizer" as Republican code for "black".

"I think where there are overtones is when there are uses of language that are designed to inhibit other people's progress with a subtle reference to their race," he said.

But the McCain/Palin campaign quickly fired back in a statement, saying: "It is disappointing that Governor Paterson would launch accusations of racism. … Governor Palin's remarks about Barack Obama's work as a community organizer was in response to the Obama campaign's belittling of her executive experience."

The statement goes on to point out Sarah Palin's own experience of civic involvement and says Paterson's comments are "a sure sign of a flailing campaign that is bordering on desperation".

Paterson raises the question of whether the Presidential race has become desperate or devious.

"At this point, Americans wouldn't tolerate a racial appeal. What I'm saying is that there are sneaky ways to try to hurt someone," he said.

more...


Ladies and Gentlemen. It is GO time!

[C_U_L8R]

1. McCain's manipulative machinations are pretty transparent

repukes don't do subtle

[theothersnippywshrub]

14. That is because repuke voters don't understand "subtle." It is beyond them. n/t

[babylonsister]

2. Rec'd. I like Governor Paterson a lot; tellin' it like it is. nt

[NWHarkness]

3. Go Paterson!

There's no doubt in my mind that "community organizer" is the new GOP term for "Negro agitator".

[tekisui]

4. No doubt at all.

It's one of the "code words" this race. Good on Gov. Patterson for exposing it.

[bleever]

9. Agree.

:thumbsup:

[MadMaddie]

10. Bingo!

[Raineyb]

17. You're exactly right!

Way to go Patterson! Nice to see our Governor telling it like it is.

:thumbsup:

Regards

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. They're "fuming" and lashing out...they're totally unhinged

They're probably trying to tutor poor Sarah Plain and Tall Tale, and just now realizing that it will take months to train her for the debate, since she is a know-nothing motherfucker. That and Obama's just beating them silly on the issues day and night. They're fucking reeling in the Mccain camp, and totally unhinged. It's a thing of beauty to watch Obama spank they asses red!

[President_Obama]

6. and Paterson has McCain in the corner hammerin' away!

Gobama!

[nc4bo]

7. hmm. So they can use their "innocent" coded racistwords & feign offense when they're called out

but when the role is reversed (*see lipstick posts) - we're being offensive to dear Mrs. Moose they promptly run and whine to M$M or whomever will believe it?!

yea, sure. Whatever you say.

[otohara]

8. He Was Awesome on Colbert

on Friday - if you missed it - worth a view at comedycentral.com

[endthewar]

11. I was surprised that he memorizes all of his entire speeches

[theothersnippywshrub]

12. Patterson's comments remind me of Lee Atwater's description of the republican "Southern Strategy."

Patterson knows what he is talking about. He merely described a long, long, long, standing republican tactic.

From Wikipedia:

Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, reported a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, published in Southern Politics in the 1990s by Prof. Alexander P. Lamis, in which Lee Atwater discussed politics in the South:

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".<4>

Herbert wrote in the same column, "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

The republican Southern Strategy was described by other republicans well before Attwater's 1981 description.

Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Richard Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it,<1> but merely popularized it.<2> In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."<3>

While Phillips was concerned with polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just with winning the white South, this was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to statewide offices, the Senate and House, as legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Patterson knows what he is talking about.

[KingFlorez]

13. He's telling the truth

They found a way to inject race subtly and "community organizer" is it. They think they are clever, but it's not hard to see through them.

[theothersnippywshrub]

16. Exactly. n/t

[lolamio]

15. Love my Gov !

[Pacifist Patriot]

18. When the tittering started at the convention I knew damned well that's what they were doing.

[Jennicut]

19. So so true. Thank you Gov. Paterson.

It was obviously aimed at the fact that Obama is black and he worked in the inner city.

[applegrove]

20. Could be Gulianni and Palin didn't even know they were speaking code.

Could be a well thought out meme that was passed around to speechwriters who then added it to the two most important speeches that night. I think it was racist. Sometimes psychopaths (GOP political operatives are modeled on psychopathic behaviour) speak with forked tongues and a word has many meanings. So they like all the meanings a word like "community organizer" could have, including the racist overtones, so they put it out there.

[AtomicKitten]

21. It's more like a low information voter high sign.

[Waiting For Everyman]

22. O's first job: community organizer... Palin's first: SPORTSCASTER, not mayor

Compare apples to apples.

That was just some intentional deception to go with the racism.

[AspenRose]

23. BUSTED

"All I do is tell the truth, and they think it's hell." --Truman

[Phredicles]

24. For someone who's legally blind he sees things remarkably clearly.

:applause: