Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Know Your Base
Over the past few weeks, we've seen waves of... well, completely ass-backwards racism coming from political candidates. George Allen uses a term that's gaining in popularity amongst white supremacists to describe an Indian staffer who worked for his opponent. A Florida Congressional candidate says that blacks can't swim like whites. Conrad Burns talks about killer terrorist cab drivers. And so forth.
This may be, however, the first time this campaign season I've seen a candidate chill with white supremacists:
Dressed casually in a yellow t-shirt, Tancredo addressed the standing-room audience of 200-250 from behind a podium draped in a Confederate battle flag. To the congressman's right, a portrait of Robert E. Lee peered out at the crowd of Minutemen activists, local politicians, and red-shirted members of [the League of the South] and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The Confederate trappings of the event found a mismatch in Tancredo's standard nativist polemic, which stayed clear of references to Southern heritage or direct plaudits for the LOS, a Southern white nationalist organization dedicated to "Southern independence, complete, full, and total."
Yes, that would be the same League of the South that, on their website, describes multiculturalism as "a poison". And yes, this would be the same Tom Tancredo who suggested nuking Mecca to keep the Muslims in line.
But don't worry. According to Tony Snow, racism is dead.
This may be, however, the first time this campaign season I've seen a candidate chill with white supremacists:
Dressed casually in a yellow t-shirt, Tancredo addressed the standing-room audience of 200-250 from behind a podium draped in a Confederate battle flag. To the congressman's right, a portrait of Robert E. Lee peered out at the crowd of Minutemen activists, local politicians, and red-shirted members of [the League of the South] and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The Confederate trappings of the event found a mismatch in Tancredo's standard nativist polemic, which stayed clear of references to Southern heritage or direct plaudits for the LOS, a Southern white nationalist organization dedicated to "Southern independence, complete, full, and total."
Yes, that would be the same League of the South that, on their website, describes multiculturalism as "a poison". And yes, this would be the same Tom Tancredo who suggested nuking Mecca to keep the Muslims in line.
But don't worry. According to Tony Snow, racism is dead.
