Tuesday, August 08, 2006

 
The Emetic Mitt Romney Running Down His State Pitching To Neo-Confederates

Mitt Romney is in a South Carolina frame of mind. It’s in the paper today that the governor of Massachusetts referred to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression” to a cocktail party he hosted at The Citadel. Leaving aside the temptations of a cocktail party hosted by a highly connected Mormon, the question here is what this means especially when matched with the small furor caused by his use of the term “tar baby” a few days ago.

Just looking at Mitt Romney you see an exterior reeking of polish. Nancy Reagan at the height of her control couldn’t match it for detail work. You consider his resume and see a series of public positions effectively arranged to mask the rather filthy career of a man who made a fortune by buying up companies and throwing people out on the street. Nothing about this man is unplanned or un-calculated. “Tar baby” alone might have been just a sign of white cultural ignorance, taken with the “Northern Aggression” line, it smells like month old cottage cheese.

It is now clear that he is following the fully established precedent of Republican presidential hopefuls declaring their allegiance to the neo-Confederate cause. Just about every successful Republican candidate has done it since the time of Nixon. I search my memory for Ford doing so but am not certain if it never happened or if, like most everything except "WIN", his doing so was forgettable.

How de rigeur is this Republican denigration ceremony? John McCain, the direct beneficiary of neo-Confederate racism in his last bid for the nomination has duly gone to genuflect at Liberty University. Falwell doesn’t have a ring of office, you know what the once proud McCain was kissing. And they all will end up making that pilgrimage. The most archetypical modern Republican of them all, Reagan, did it with some of the most racist language used by a future president since the 1920s. None have yet paid a price for their blatant appeals to racists and bigots dedicated to a tradition of traitors and domestic terrorists.

It’s not for me to tell Southerners how the spectacle of McCain and Romney and the other Republicans sucking up to the lowest form of religious hucksters and racists should strike them. I can well imagine that it is as repulsive to them as it is to me. But they can tell us themselves and I sincerely hope they do. My purpose is to incite a discussion of what it means and how it should be used.

Coda:

Mitt Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts as the most recent in a string of Republican governors. From Weld to Cellucci, Jane Swift and now Romney these governors have done just about everything they could think of to run down their alleged home state while holding the governorship. Two of them didn't even think it was worth keeping the office till the end of their term. They do so in the full knowledge that the Republican Party officially hates New England.

The fact that the Democratic establishment in Massachusetts keeps putting up weak, insider, losing candidates in one of the most Democratic states in the country and what that tells the national Democratic party is worthy of the deepest consideration but that’s one for the day after the Connecticut primary.

Comments:
The fact that the Democratic establishment in Massachusetts keeps putting up weak, insider, losing candidates in one of the most Democratic states in the country and what that tells the national Democratic party is worthy of the deepest consideration but that’s one for the day after the Connecticut primary.

We're going to take back the corner office this year!!

Kerry Healy is a weak candidate and the Ds have three strong, viable candidates this year. I'm supporting Deval Patrick - he's interesting, articulate and experienced. (A Clintonista)

- Thumbody
 
Man, this one's just chock-full, Olvlzl. It is a mystery how deep-blue MASS keeps electing repub govs, no? But, that's just splitting the ticket, maybe? New Englanders being so independent-thinking and all.

But your post puts me back on a think-track I've been on for some while now regarding The Great Divide in our country and I hate to be simple (-minded), but I'm becoming more and more convinced it's the Civil War redux. That Red State/Blue State map juxtaposed on the slave-states really got me thinking. Then I read Michael Lind's Made in Texas in which LBJ's people come from immigrant German stock to whom all work was a dignified activity and GWB's people from the deep South where work is done by others especially the black/brown.

I've been reading about a movie (don't actually go to movies much)that's a mockumentary about how it would be if the South had won. The reviewer evinced some disgust with the South's vapors (my term) for the last 140 years over their loss and their subsequent over-compensation... Well. I just realized at that reading that I, too, was damn tired of their fuss, especially given the fix it's landed us in these days. (And, yes, I know I'm painting with a broad brush, and that the Best President Ever, Bill Clinton, is from the South).

I do appreciate the space to vent.

BirdGiirrrlll
 
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