Bob Herbert Tells It Like It Is

I call bullshit on all these attempts portray these extreme attacks on Obama as anything but racist; as the genuine feelings of honestly outraged citizens from "real" America (small population rural states where barely 20% of the American population lives). I'm a Southerner from a Confederate state (Texas) who remembers the Civil Rights days and the tide of white resentment that followed and has yet to recede. I remember all the angry resentment of "welfare cheats" (never mind the white-owned banks that robbed people of property and livelihoods all the time). I remember the store owners that would follow black customers through their stores while ignoring the little white shoplifters at the candy-counter. I remember the sign up in J's Cafeteria into the mid 70s that read "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."

I'll let Herbert tell the rest:

Republicans have been openly feeding off of race hatred since the days of Dick Nixon. Today’s conservative activists are carrying that banner proudly. What does anybody think is going on when, as Anderson Cooper pointed out on CNN, one of the leaders of the so-called tea party movement, Mark Williams, refers to the president of the United States as an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug, and a racist in chief.

After all these years of race-baiting and stirring the pot of hatred for political gain, it’s too much to ask the leaders of the Republican Party to step forward and denounce this spreading stain of reprehensible conduct. Republicans are trying to ride that dependable steed of bigotry back to power.

But it’s time for other Americans, of whatever persuasion, to take a stand, to say we’re better than this. They should do it because it’s right. But also because we’ve seen so many times what can happen when this garbage gets out of control.

Think about the Oklahoma City bombing, and the assassinations of King and the Kennedys. On Nov. 22, 1963, as they were preparing to fly to Dallas, a hotbed of political insanity, President Kennedy said to Mrs. Kennedy: “We’re heading into nut country today.”

No one ever lost an election in the South by pandering to people's worst fears and resentments.