The GOP's Disturbing Shift to the Right on Race

[SecularMotion]

Fresh from the controversy over Republicans attacking the Civil Rights Act, party leaders have now turned their attention to attacking the Fourteenth Amendment. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called for hearings, and John McCain, facing a tough party primary, has backed him.

While Republican leaders' official reason for reexamining the Fourteenth Amendment has to do with retroactively repealing the citizenship of "anchor babies," the Fourteenth Amendment's language is what extends the Bill of Rights to the states, and establishes the due process and equal protection guarantees that are the basis of modern civil rights law. If Republicans could somehow eliminate this amendment, they would be able to undo the majority of landmark Supreme Court civil rights and women's rights cases, eliminate the concept of privacy rights that has formed the basis of federal court rulings on LGBT rights and abortion, and essentially reclaim, at least with respect to the judiciary, Andrew Johnson's vision of "a government for white men."

http://civilliberty.about.com/b/2010/08/03/the-gops-disturbing-shift-to-the-right-on-race.htm

[HillbillyBob]

1. I don't thinks a shift so much as revealing what

they kept or tried to keep out of sight.

[Enthusiast]

9. Yes, they have been emboldened.

Like torture and rampant corruption, racism is becoming mainstreamed.

[ThomWV]

2. Do you think this is purposful?

Your analysis is interesting. I don't disagree with it at all but it begs a question. Is the end you see - elimination of equal protection and the concept of privacy rights - a desired outcome, or effectively an unanticipated consequence of a position they simply have not thought out to its end?

[MadMaddie]

6. Thom I think you have asked the right question

They never look past the current state. They don't have the capacity to plan and evaluate long term consequences of their childish decisions. For example the tax cut for the rich, allowing even more companies to off-shore jobs etc...

[ThomWV]

7. You're right - they don't, but they used to. Remember Nixon's "Southern Strategy"

There was a time when the appeal to the bigots, who were predominated by southern Democrats, was a carefully thought out strategy to increase the ranks of the Republican Party. It worked to give us what remains today a relatively 'solid south' of Republican voters.

I don't think today's batch of Republicans is capable of seeing farther into the future than the Book of Revelations.

[Brewman_Jax]

3. This is what they've always wanted

without having to put on the white sheets and hoods.

[YOY]

4. I find our shift to the right over the past 30 years disturbing.

Did someone expect the Republicans to move back towards the center because of this?

Of course "the American People are as a majority conservative." Just ask all those people who don't vote because "they see little difference between the parties." They're totally "conservative"!

[randr]

5. Not a sudden shift at all

The "southern strategy" has come around to bite them in the ass.

[jeremyfive]

8. Bye-Bye Independent Vote

A lot of independents are reasonable people who are not impressed with far-right crazies.

[MadMaddie]

13. I think you are right

November will be interesting.

[felix_numinous]

10. The incremental steps toward the Right

and the open animosity toward minorities, women, gays, refugees, homeless and poor are deeply disturbing.

They need the rest of society to stand by and watch while one group is singled out, repressed and abused--and dehumanized, and this cannot happen.

[AlienGirl]

14. Felix, you have hit the nail on the head

Times of widespread economic strain, crumbling empires, over-extended militaries, collapsing economies...the pressure on people just builds and builds, and pretty soon someone comes along to offer them a facile explanation that pins responsibility for the whole mess on someone who can be defined as Other, dehumanized, abused, and, often, killed.

Then, after the conditions that led to the orgy of violence go away, everyone scratches their head and asks themselves how that could have happened--what were we thinking? and promises that it'll never happen again, and a generation or two of liberalism prevails, until the next mass stressor.

Tucker

[Scurrilous]

11. K & R

:thumbsup:

[spanone]

12. they want to repeal the 14th amendment then the birthers can take Obama to supreme court

after all, we need to see that kenyan birth certificate