All posts tagged GOP

The GOP, still waving goodbye to the American people.

Remember back when I said that the GOP as currently constituted is pulling away from the American shore?

Hereunder, this week’s exhibits pointing to same:

  1. Robert Marshall, a Republican delegate in Virginia, on why he voted against the judicial nomination of a gay prosecutor: “Sodomy is not a civil right.” Yes, he really said that. On the other hand, 50% of Americans now support marriage equality — and we learned a few months ago that among 18-34 year olds, that support stands at 70%.
  2. A study produced by a GOP SuperPAC “suggested hiring as a spokesman an ‘extremely literate conservative African-American’ who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln’.” Because being Lincolnian, and knowing your way around a suit, is a bad thing. (Weird side note: The man who commissioned this report is Joe Ricketts, “the patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs“). (Also, if I may: “extremely literate”? Really? Can his name be Mr. Tibbs?)
  3. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, on the JP Morgan trading debacle: “The $2 billion JPMorgan lost someone else gained…. I would not rush to pass new legislation or new regulation.”

All of this — from the vile anti-gay biogtry, to the old-school (and equally vile) Fear of Smart Black Men, to the complete cluelessness about what losing $2 billion might mean to the American public (especially as “a larger loss could have fallen to the taxpayer because as a federally regulated bank, JPMorgan benefits from depositors insurance“) — is really pretty horrifying. I sit and listen to these things and my skin crawls, and my heart pounds, and my blood pressure rises, because it is clear to me that the people saying these things have very little understanding of the actual humanity buried by their words. The lives, the blood and bone, of actual people.

But at the same time — even as my skin crawls — I feel an odd, reverse-flip kind of hope.

Because America is changing. Because as loathsome as all of the foregoing is, it is all an indication of a party that is truly unmoored from the concerns of the society it seeks to lead.

None of which is to say that we should let down our guard — Republican delegates, wealthy Super PACs, and Presidential candidates are powerful forces and must be reckoned with.

But the more we reckon with them, the smaller their power will grow. And the more perfected our union.

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by emilylhauser on May 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Domestic Politics, Rant, Social Justice
Tagged , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on May 17, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/the-gop-still-waving-goodbye-to-the-american-people/

Dear Democrats, Progressives, Liberals & assorted American lefties – settle down.

I’ve been seeing a certain amount of glee across my side of the internet lately over the fact that Willard McMittington Romney is a terrible candidate.

The Republican Party establishment doesn’t like him and never has — that’s been established time and again — and the Republican masses are avoiding him in droves. Whoot! They hate their candidate!

Here’s the deal: We knew that. We allllll knew that. The Left knew it, the Right knew it, the media knew it, the White House knew it, and I’m pretty dang sure McMittington himself knew it, and knows it still. How a man so thoroughly disliked convinces himself to continue running is beyond me, and I genuinely think it involves a certain mental dysfunction, but that’s not my point.

My point is this: The fact that that the GOP has selected a terrible Presidential candidate, who (barring disaster, and disasters do sometimes happen) will lose to the Democratic incumbent is not news. It’s not even useful information. Because the point now is Congress.

If the GOP had found someone who could genuinely threaten to unseat President Obama, that would be a very important conversation to have. But they didn’t — which means there’s a very powerful possibility that a large percentage of our folks will simply sit the election out, confident that our guy is safe.

Yet if we have learned nothing else over the past three years, surely we have learned that our guy — and more to the point, the agenda we elected him to bring to fruition — will never be safe from a group of people dedicated to his/its complete failure; plus which, there’s this little thing called “The Legislative Branch.”

The Democrats’ current slim majority in the Senate is not enough to overcome the Republicans’ favorite non-legislative tool, the filibuster, and you might recall that we lost the House in 2010. Which is to say: If we want to not only see President Obama re-elected but to actually see our own goals (writ large) achieved — we have got to do all we can to claw back some seats.

The forces arrayed against us are not insignificant: A) Romney may be weak, but the Republican Party and its moneyed backers are not. They are throwing every dirty, nasty thing they can at Democrats, politicians and rank-and-file, to scare us away from the voting booth, not to mention doing all they can to just straight-up bar the door; B) disasters (see: above) are not unheard of in history and/or politics, and when there exists even the slimmest possibility of a Romney Presidency, with the current GOP at his back, we must not take the threat lightly; C) incumbents are re-elected at a genuinely alarming rate in American politics — to the tune of 80-95% (for a truly sinus-clearing visual of what 80-95% re-elction rates look like, click here).

If we don’t gird our loins and do our damndest to get more Democrats into Congress this fall, we might as well just sit back and await more of the kind of dehumanizing, anti-economic-recovery, pro-big-business shenanigans at which the GOP has excelled since 2008. It’s really that simple.

Fine. I’m thrilled that the Republican Party, macro- and micro-, hates their candidate.

Can we get down to business now?

by emilylhauser on May 7, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Domestic Politics
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on May 7, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/dear-democrats-progressives-liberals-assorted-american-lefties-settle-down/

The breathtaking cruelty of Florida Gov Rick Scott.

I’ve been thinking a lot and writing a little about the idea that bigotry is, in essence, cruelty and lies, and that the current conservative movement is marked by all three.

Well, if you were still looking for one, here’s your sign:

With a flick of his pen, Florida’s tea party Republican governor, Rick Scott, used a line-item veto to cut funding to the state’s rape crisis centers last week—in the middle of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

…The state legislature had approved $1.5 million to help close the gap so the centers could keep serving the approximately 700,000 women in Florida who’ve been victims of rape. But in reviewing the state’s $70 billion budget, Scott decided last Tuesday that the .002 percent slated for the crisis centers was just too much. He used his line-item power to veto the funds, alongside $141 million in other cuts targeting a wide range of projects, including an indigent psychiatric medicine program, Girls Incorporated of Sarasota County, the Alzheimer’s Family Care Center of Broward County, and a state settlement for child welfare case managers who were owed overtime. The entire list of vetoed programs is available here (PDF).

To recap:

The governor of Florida has just taken money from: Rape victims; the poor; the mentally ill; children; and adults who protect children. And the dying.

Is he culling the weak? Is he launching a Florida Office for Social Engineering? Is the next step to throw these agencies into a fancy arena and make them slaughter each other for grants?

But don’t worry, Floridians! The law Gov Scott introduced forcing welfare applicants to undergo drug testing is still in place, even though the vast majority of tests (96%) come back squeaky clean, and the testing procedure costs Florida more than it saves.

Cruelty, and lies.

via Mother Jones

by emilylhauser on April 25, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Domestic Politics, Fury, Social Justice
Tagged , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on April 25, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/the-breathtaking-cruelty-of-florida-gov-rick-scott/

Bigotry, today’s GOP, cruelty, and lies.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=politics&ctt=1#ai:MC900301302|mt:0|Over at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates recently posited racism as cruelty — from jokey emails suggesting that the President’s dead mother indulged in bestiality to the cruelty inherent in “sneer[ing] at the unguarded thoughts of dead children,” and so much else besides. He takes the idea further:

[T]his embrace of cruelty is arguably the dominant feature of the present conservative movement. It has been repeatedly expressed in alleged “humor.” The assertion of a right of judgement over the First Lady’s physical person, for instance. Or watermelon patches on the front lawn. Or Obama waffles.  There is little distance from that kind of cruelty to aspirin between one’s legs and from aspirin between one’s legs to transvaginal probes.

I find Ta-Nehisi’s point particularly powerful. Let’s call conservative social attitudes, policies and legislative efforts what they are: Mean. Mean-spirited. Cruel. When you reduce living, breathing human beings to your worst ideas about them, and act on that reduction, you’re acting with genuine cruelty. Plain and simple.

But here’s another thing that I can’t stop thinking about: When you do these things, you’re also lying.

Bigotry is lies.

It doesn’t matter if the bigot actually believes what he or she is saying. When you tell me that black Americans should “demand paychecks instead of food stamps” — you’re spreading lies. When you tell me that “if you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage” — you’re spreading lies. When you tell me that Islam and Muslims are “pure, unadulterated evil” — you’re spreading lies.

Spanish is the “language of living in the ghetto“? Women frequently and regularly lie about having been raped? Recipients of unemployment insurance need to “get off their backsides and get a job… [and] stop stealing from their neighbors“? Lies, lies, and more lies.

Cruel lies, at that.

These are not differences of opinion, or legitimate perspectives on the world. These are lies told and perpetuated in order to allow those who tell them to have power over certain classes of human, or, at the very least, to feel superior to said humans. And I’m done pretending otherwise.

I can accept that your religion teaches you that men should control women, and that birth control and abortion are wrong. But when you insist that you have a right to impose that belief on me in this country, a secular nation by definition and design — you’re lying. You can believe in your heart of hearts that homosexuality is disgusting. But when you insist that you have a right to deny LGBTQ Americans their civil rights as a result — you’re lying. On and on and bloody on.

At a certain point, willed and willful ignorance becomes willed and willful deceit, of the self and of others. If you honestly believe that certain people deserve to be denied some measure of human dignity because of how the Good Lord/Mother Nature created them? Then you, sir or madam, are full of it.

And if you’re an elected representative of one of this nation’s two political parties (like every single one of the people to whom I link following the words “bigotry is lies”), I have an even greater duty to call you on it.

by emilylhauser on April 11, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Domestic Politics, Fury, Social Justice
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on April 11, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/bigotry-todays-gop-cruelty-and-lies/

Helping anti-choice terrorists, one name at a time.

Last week, I got all caught up in my anti-War on Women fury and tweeted an article that, it transpired, was three years old. Oopsie!

In my defense, though, it was about a law in Oklahoma that was really, really heinous and had actually passed, so my brain was a bit addled. This law (later struck down by the courts) would have required that the details of every abortion conducted in the state be posted on a public website:

The questionnaire doesn’t include the woman’s name or “any information specifically identifying the patient,” but it does ask for age, race, level of education, marital status, number of previous pregnancies, and the county in which the abortion was performed, information which opponents of the bill argue would be enough to identify a woman in a small town. The questionnaire also asks about the mother’s reason for the abortion, her method of payment, and even what type of insurance she has, as well as whether the fetus received anaesthetic and whether there was “an infant born alive as a result of the abortion.”

So, you know – phew! At least we dodged that one!

Except we didn’t.

It’s not happening in Oklahoma anymore – but it is on the cusp of happening in Tennessee (also sadly known as the “don’t say gay” state) — with this particular bill boasting the added bonus of distributing helpful information to those who might want to murder abortion providers:

A new bill moving through the Tennessee House of Representatives would require the state to publish the names of each doctor who performs an abortion and detailed statistics about the woman having the procedure, which opponents worry will spur anti-abortion violence in the state.

The Life Defense Act of 2012, sponsored by state Rep. Matthew Hill (R-Jonesboro), mandates that the Tennessee Department of Health make detailed demographic information about every woman who has an abortion available to the public, including her age, race, county, marital status, education level, number of children, the location of the procedure and how many times she has been pregnant. Each report would also have to include the name of the doctor who performed the procedure.

In the words of Rep. Gary Odom (D-Nashville), this bill “puts a target on women’s and physicians’ backs. I think it’s a very dangerous piece of legislation and serves no purpose I can tell other than trying to intimidate women and physicians.”

Indeed.

And some people wonder why I’m so engulfed in rage these days.

by emilylhauser on March 20, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Domestic Politics, Fury, Social Justice
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on March 20, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/helping-anti-choice-terrorists-one-name-at-a-time/

Sunday morning re-up: The GOP rides into the sunset.

I don’t usually post on the weekends, but the readership of this blog has leapt exponentially since Thursday, when I posted a little reminder to the Republican Party regarding how babies are made. So, given the interest and the audience, not to mention the despair that so many of us are feeling about the anti-woman tactics of the current GOP, I thought it made sense to re-up the post I wrote a month or so ago, in which I posit that the Republican Party, as currently constitued, is not long for this world.

So I despair — and I grieve for the lives currently being ruined by these cruel acts of anger, ideology, and political posturing — but I also hope. I don’t forsee (or even wish for) an end to the Republican Party (a two-party democracy cannot thrive in the absence of two viable parties, and our two-party democracy is far too important to me to lose sight of that), but I do quite genuinely foresee an end to the race-baiting, homophobia, poor-shaming and misogyny. Because the American people simply doesn’t buy it anymore.

(And thanks again, so much, for coming by! If you scroll down, you’ll also find a general introduction to the blog).

*******************************

Ok, I’m just going to say this crazy thing out loud:

It is my professional opinion, as a typer of words for little pay and longtime citizen of these United States, that the GOP as we know it will soon, within my lifetime, be a thing of the past.

BEFORE YOU START TELLING ME I’M WRONG, let’s focus on the words “as we know it.”

I’m not suggesting that the Republican Party will disappear, nor that a third party will rise to threaten it. No apocalypse, no Zombie Lincoln coming back to regain the brand.

I’m merely suggesting that the GOP that very clearly has little-to-no time for gay people, black people, Latino people, Asian people, not-rich people, not-Christian people, or women people, will, within a generation, have to find a new way to keep big business afloat.

My evidence?

The American people.

First of all, fewer than two-thirds of Americans are non-Latino whites. At a certain point, the percentage of the nearly-40% of Americans who are not-Caucasian who get fed up hearing that they don’t know how to work, speak the language of the ghetto, and/or are threatening our economy will reach a tipping point, and the GOP-as-we-know-it will not be able to get them back.

Second of all, the issues on which the GOP-as-we-know-it is campaigning have simply stopped resonating with most Americans. A wee sampling:

Gay marriage is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: Really GOP? ‘Cause 53% of America disagrees with you. Perhaps more to the point, 70% of Americans aged 18-34 disagree – and according Gallup, that number is up from 54% the previous year. Sixteen points in one year!

Birth control is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming. Abortion? Sure. But suggesting that there’s something wrong with controlling our fertility even if we’re adults, even if we’re married, even if…? Wow. Sorry, GOP, but even Catholics disagree with you here, even when we take into consideration that (contrary to what we were all saying last week) it’s not quite true that 98% of all Catholic women have used birth control (it’s 98% of Catholic women aged 15-44 “for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are ‘at risk’ of becoming pregnant“). Apparently, 61% of Catholics support federally-mandated contraception coverage for religiously-affiliated employers — a percentage identical to that of Americans more broadly. (And even on abortion, we’re not really with you: 57% of Americans think abortion should be legal “in all or most cases”).

Increasing taxes on the wealthy is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: Not only do 72% of Americans disagree with the GOP-as-we-know-it on this, but that includes 55% of self-professed Republicans!

Being not-Christian (in a particularly narrowly defined sense of “Christian”) is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: It is true that 78.4% of Americans identify as Christian (51% Protestant, 24% Catholic, the rest various others manners of Christian) — however, not only do 70% of religiously affiliated people (of all religions) believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life,” but 68% believe that even within their own faith community, “there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”

And finally, even the GOP’s central, driving issue — Barack Obama is evil/unnatural/will ruin America – has lost a lot of steam: Today the President has a 47% approval rating (including among Catholics [46%. Let’s not quibble]) — whereas the GOP’s nominee (stop it – it will not be Santorum) currently has a net favorability rating that has dropped to -24%. That’s right: “Mitt Romney’s net favorability rating has plummeted to NEGATIVE TWENTY-FOUR PERCENT.” I’ll be honest – I’m not sure what that means or how it’s even possible, but I do know that “47% job approval” is better than whatever the hell that is.

So, gentle reader, here’s the point: Whether its leaders realize it or not, the GOP is pulling away from the American shore. Way, waaaaay away. As its primary function is to protect the moneyed class and promote the world-view (to which I believe many Republicans sincerely subscribe) that being not-poor is a simple matter of will, the Republican Party will soon have to start shifting its place on social issues if it’s going to stick to its larger goal.

Bottom line, this is good. There will always be rich people who want to protect their hoard from the hordes, but as we chip away at the social issues, we’ll also (unbeknownst to them) be chipping away at the economic ones. The more people who are genuinely enfranchised, the better the power will be distributed.

Other bottom line? It’s up to us to give the GOP the push. If we want the Republicans to stop assaulting the rights and dignity of entire American communities, we need to act on the knowledge that Americans don’t like what they say. Whatever the hell kind of not-Republican you consider yourself to be, you have to get involved with the 2012 election. You can start here, or here, or by picking up the phone and calling your local Democrats.

Let’s regain the House, strengthen our hold on the Senate, sweep through our statehouses and city halls, and show the GOP what America really thinks.

Remember 2010: Elections have consequences. Polls don’t matter, unless people vote.

by emilylhauser on March 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Domestic Politics
Tagged , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on March 18, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/03/18/sunday-morning-re-up-the-gop-rides-into-the-sunset/

Super Tuesday – Vote Republican 2012!

In honor of today’s many GOP primaries (eleven! ten!), I thought I’d just leave this here:

For details on the foregoing, you could always read my recent post entitled The GOP rides into the sunset, but there’s nothing like a good graphic artist to make a person humble: What I took 850 words to write, graphic artist Will Amato (I’m guessing that’s him in the Batman mask on his website’s front page) accomplished in 12 lines.

Vote Republican 2012!

h/t David Graham at The Atlantic

by emilylhauser on March 6, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Domestic Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on March 6, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/super-tuesday-vote-republican-2012/

A day in the life of the GOP. And American women.

Over on TPM, Evan McMorris-Santoro sums up the day on which the GOP decided it was time to time-travel back at least sixty years, and drag us all along with them for the trip.

Today. That day was today:

There you have it: modern women being told by Republicans that they’re not qualified to talk about their own sexual health, are dressed like “whores” and probably need birth control because they’re so slutty. And this is just in one day.

For details, click here. But hold on tight, because that time machine moves fast.

And here you were worrying that I was being over optimistic in yesterday’s post. Tch.

by emilylhauser on February 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Body, Domestic Politics
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on February 16, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-gop-and-american-women/

The GOP rides into the sunset.

Ok, I’m just going to say this crazy thing out loud:

It is my professional opinion, as a typer of words for little pay and longtime citizen of these United States, that the GOP as we know it will soon, within my lifetime, be a thing of the past.

BEFORE YOU START TELLING ME I’M WRONG, let’s focus on the words “as we know it.”

I’m not suggesting that the Republican Party will disappear, nor that a third party will rise to threaten it. No apocalypse, no Zombie Lincoln coming back to regain the brand.

I’m merely suggesting that the GOP that very clearly has little-to-no time for gay people, black people, Latino people, Asian people, not-rich people, not-Christian people, or women people, will, within a generation, have to find a new way to keep big business afloat.

My evidence?

The American people.

First of all, fewer than two-thirds of Americans are non-Latino whites. At a certain point, the percentage of the nearly-40% of Americans who are not-Caucasian who get fed up hearing that they don’t know how to work, speak the language of the ghetto, and/or are threatening our economy will reach a tipping point, and the GOP-as-we-know-it will not be able to get them back.

Second of all, the issues on which the GOP-as-we-know-it is campaigning have simply stopped resonating with most Americans. A wee sampling:

Gay marriage is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: Really GOP? ‘Cause 53% of America disagrees with you. Perhaps more to the point, 70% of Americans aged 18-34 disagree — and according Gallup, that number is up from 54% the previous year. Sixteen points in one year!

Birth control is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming. Abortion? Sure. But suggesting that there’s something wrong with controlling our fertility even if we’re adults, even if we’re married, even if…? Wow. Sorry, GOP, but even Catholics disagree with you here, even when we take into consideration that (contrary to what we were all saying last week) it’s not quite true that 98% of all Catholic women have used birth control (it’s 98% of Catholic women aged 15-44 “for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are ‘at risk’ of becoming pregnant“). Apparently, 61% of Catholics support federally-mandated contraception coverage for religiously-affiliated employers — a percentage identical to that of Americans more broadly. (And even on abortion, we’re not really with you: 57% of Americans think abortion should be legal “in all or most cases”).

Increasing taxes on the wealthy is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: Not only do 72% of Americans disagree with the GOP-as-we-know-it on this, but that includes 55% of self-professed Republicans!

Being not-Christian (in a particularly narrowly defined sense of “Christian”) is evil/unnatural/will ruin America: It is true that 78.4% of Americans identify as Christian (51% Protestant, 24% Catholic, the rest various others manners of Christian) — however, not only do 70% of religiously affiliated people (of all religions) believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life,” but 68% believe that even within their own faith community, “there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”

And finally, even the GOP’s central, driving issue — Barack Obama is evil/unnatural/will ruin America — has lost a lot of steam: Today the President has a 47% approval rating (including among Catholics [46%. Let’s not quibble]) — whereas the GOP’s nominee (stop it – it will not be Santorum) currently has a net favorability rating that has dropped to -24%. That’s right: “Mitt Romney’s net favorability rating has plummeted to NEGATIVE TWENTY-FOUR PERCENT.” I’ll be honest – I’m not sure what that means or how it’s even possible, but I do know that “47% job approval” is better than whatever the hell that is.

So, gentle reader, here’s the point: Whether its leaders realize it or not, the GOP is pulling away from the American shore. Way, waaaaay away. As its primary function is to protect the moneyed class and promote the world-view (to which I believe many Republicans sincerely subscribe) that being not-poor is a simple matter of will, the Republican Party will soon have to start shifting its place on social issues if it’s going to stick to its larger goal.

Bottom line, this is good. There will always be rich people who want to protect their hoard from the hordes, but as we chip away at the social issues, we’ll also (unbeknownst to them) be chipping away at the economic ones. The more people who are genuinely enfranchised, the better the power will be distributed.

Other bottom line? It’s up to us to give the GOP the push. If we want the Republicans to stop assaulting the rights and dignity of entire American communities, we need to act on the knowledge that Americans don’t like what they say. Whatever the hell kind of not-Republican you consider yourself to be, you have to get involved with the 2012 election. You can start here, or here, or by picking up the phone and calling your local Democrats.

Let’s regain the House, strengthen our hold on the Senate, sweep through our statehouses and city halls, and show the GOP what America really thinks.

Remember 2010: Elections have consequences. Polls don’t matter, unless people vote.

by emilylhauser on February 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Domestic Politics
Tagged , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on February 15, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/the-gop-rides-into-the-sunset/

Dear Asian-Americans: I am so sorry that I didn’t warn you about the GOP.

Or: The GOP – they really don’t seem to like much of anybody!

Last week, I wrote a post asking the GOP to just shut up about black people, a post which got a surprising amount of attention across the web.

In the aftermath of that, I found myself wondering: “Huh. Who is the GOP going to demonize and belittle next in this election cycle?”

And I knew: Asian-Americans. A post began to form itself in my head, one I intended to write sometime this week.

I mean, they’ve demonized and belittled gay people already:

Michele Bachmann: “If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. Personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement.” (She said this 2004, but it got a re-airing this summer).

Michele Bachmann’s husband Marcus: “We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined. Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road.”

Rick Santorum: Families headed by gay parents lead to “great dysfunction.”

So ok. They hate the gays. Check.

And they’ve demonized and belittled Latinos:

Newt Gingrich: “We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.” (He said this in 2008, but again, it’s been re-aired).

Mitt Romney has promised to veto the DREAM Act (a bi-partisan effort to resolve the issues facing the children of undocumented immigrants).

All the candidates have completely waffled (and Romney threw in disdain for good measure) on the question of Puerto Rican statehood.

So. Latinos? Good for what are considered their generally conservative social views, but otherwise: Bad for America! Check.

And of course, women, of all colors.

Rick Santorum, regarding wanting to ban abortion even in cases of rape: “We have to make the best out of a bad situation.”

Ron Paul: We should differentiate between “honest rape” and, you know, lie-y rape.

Rick Santorum (again – he’s a peach, ain’t he?): “Look at the political base of the Democratic Party: It is single mothers who run a household. Why? Because it’s so tough economically that they look to the government for help and therefore they’re going to vote. So if you want to reduce the Democratic advantage, what you want to do is build two parent families, you eliminate that desire for government.”

The entire GOP field: “Among the major GOP candidates… not a single one has handed over the title of campaign manager to a female.”

Women – lying bitches who don’t deserve compassion in the face of rape, who foolishly buy the lies peddled by Democrats because they’re so needy with their slutty single-parent families, and don’t really need to be in politics. Check!

AND BLACK PEOPLE – omg! So not-working and gullible and that one in the White House is so worthy of being strung up! Not American. Check.

After all of this (and the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-poor people, anti-union, anti-anyone-not-white-male-straight-and-wealthy palaver as well) clearly, the Asians were next up.

I was going to call the post forming itself in my head:

“Dear Asian-Americans – Look out, I think they’re coming for you.”

I will admit, however, that I was stymied by an inability to figure out just what the slurs might be. It’s the burden, I suppose, of being the “model minority” — you face discrimination and othering and bigotry, but it comes wrapped in words that are meant to sound like compliments. “Good at math” being one example. “Tiger mom” being another.

AND THEN THEY FREAKING CAME. And good lord, how could I have been so stupid?

I refer, of course, to the ad run not by a Presidential candidate, but by Michigan candidate for US Senate Pete Hoekstra, during the Super Bowl.

Of course! Asians are, first of all, Not American. They are Chinese, and they Want Your Economy.

They are Chinese, but in a really oddly Vietnam-y way, one which will remind you that not only are they Not American, they are Inscrutable, and Peasant-y, and Very Very Dangerous.

They are also oddly interchangeable, because the scuttlebutt is that the woman featured in Hoekstra’s ad (in which she says she’s Chinese in pidgin English while bicycling along a rice paddy in a conical hat) isn’t even Chinese-American. It’s just scuttlebutt at this point, but I would be willing to bet that Hoekstra’s campaign didn’t necessarily make a point of looking for an authentically Chinese-American person to use for race-baiting purposes.

Soooo, it’s been a super long walk to get here, but:

Dear Asian-Americans: I am so sorry that I didn’t warn you about the GOP. I could see it coming — I just had no idea how fast the Racism Train was running.

Oh, and PS: To anyone wanting to suggest that Hoekstra’s ad can’t in any way reflect on the Presidential campaign, as he’s not running for President, I say that unless and until the GOP’s Presidential candidates publicly condemn the racism (and homophobia and misogyny) in their midst? They own it. Simple as that.

by emilylhauser on February 7, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Domestic Politics, Rant, Social Justice
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by emilylhauser on February 7, 2012

https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/asian-americans-gop-hoekstra/

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