Racist video ipart of a broader GOP strategy

[struggle4progress]

By Eric Bradner and Fredreka Schouten, CNN
Updated 12:16 PM ET, Thu November 1, 2018

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's new Willie Horton-style web video posted to Twitter on Wednesday night represented a new flashpoint in a culture war he is stoking ahead of next week's midterm elections. But it also came as part of a broader strategy GOP candidates are using in key House, Senate and governor's races.

Republican candidates and outside groups involved in tough races, particularly in deep-red states and districts where turning out the conservative base is all that matters, are airing television advertisements stoking fears and spreading misinformation about the group of migrants still 900 miles from the Southern border.

It's the GOP's closing argument in Tennessee, where Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who faces Democratic former governor Phil Bredesen in a competitive Senate race, has aired ads that mention the "caravan" nearly 800 times, according to an analysis by Kantar/CMAG, which tracks political ads.

One Blackburn ad describes the migrants as "gang members, known criminals, people from the Middle East, possibly even terrorists." A narrator says that "Marsha Blackburn will stand with Trump to build the wall and stop the caravan" ...

https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/politics/trump-ad-republicans-immigration-scare-tactics/index.html

[struggle4progress]

1. Racist ad shows how low Republicans have sunk

By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
November 1 at 12:00 PM

President Trump’s blatantly racist ad — showing an illegal immigrant boasting about killing police officers — is a fitting final pitch for a party and a campaign that are now nearly entirely focused on whipping up xenophobia. I won’t link to the ad ...

To all the Republicans who think that words don’t matter, who rationalize support for the president because of judges or tax cuts, who insist that domestic terrorism is unrelated to normalization of virulent racist rhetoric and who remain silent believing they have no moral responsibility for this brand of politics, I would say this is reason enough to vote, as my colleague Max Boot has suggested, against each and every Republican on the ballot. We have not seen individual Republican candidates, let alone House and Senate leaders, denounce the ad or insist that Trump take it down. Silence is assent. And therefore each one deserves the ire of decent voters.

To all the White House staffers who think they are “saving” the United States from harm, who bristle at the notion they should be shunned from polite society (not harassed, shunned) and who insist that they be treated like staffers of previous administrations (e.g. thanked for their service), I would say that you will share the blame for a dark chapter in American history.

To Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Fox shareholders, Fox producers and Fox executives and other on-air Fox personalities, I would say that this is in large part your doing. You’ve spent years drumming up fear of immigrants, misrepresenting the danger they pose, blurring the line between criminals and noncriminals (including “dreamers”) and sending dog whistles — no, make that trumpet blasts — to the white nationalists. I would say to you that Fox is not a news organization but a source of material and affirmation for the worst elements in our society, a small sliver of whom become violent. It’s not a place where reputable news people should want to work, nor a network that advertisers should support or viewers should indulge ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/11/01/trumps-racist-ad-shows-how-low-republicans-have-sunk/?utm_term=.be70adf44438

[struggle4progress]

2. Race-Baiting Ad Could Backfire

DAVID A. GRAHAM
12:42 PM ET

With a few days left before the election, there’s an aroma of panic emanating from the White House. President Donald Trump appears to be trying everything he can to seize control of the news cycle and appeal to base voters with strident, xenophobic rhetoric.

That includes, on Thursday alone, the release of a race-baiting ad about immigrants and crime, and a scheduled speech at the White House in the afternoon, where Trump will reportedly discuss asylum for immigrants. Many members of a caravan working its way slowly toward the United States, and still hundreds of miles away, say they hope to apply for asylum.

The political play here is relatively simple to understand. As my colleague McKay Coppins writes, immigration hard-liners such as the White House senior adviser Stephen Miller see it not only as a midterm talking point, but also as part of a longer cultural battle. Predicting the results of the longer fight is a fool’s errand, but there are at least some reasons to believe that it might not be a perfectly potent technique for the midterms.

The ad has drawn immediate comparisons to the infamous “Willie Horton” spot that Republicans used to attack the Democrat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 election, though as the Princeton historian Kevin Kruse notes, it’s actually worse: The makers of the Horton ad were at least ashamed of inflaming racial tension, while the president is proudly trumpeting his. (It’s also not running on television anywhere. Instead, the Trump team is relying on word of mouth and media coverage to spread it, so that even writing critically turns critics into abettors) ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/trumps-race-baiting-midterms-ad-could-backfire/574627/

[redstatebluegirl]

3. You should see the one Congressman Steve Russell is running in Oklahoma, it is horrible.