Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Politics / Woods GOP Denies Appealing to Racial Prejudice
Posted by Jeff Woods on Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 12:05 PM
In case you require more evidence that the state GOP was working to inflame racial fears and animosities before last week’s elections, consider what Republicans did to Nathan Vaughn, the conservative black Democratic state representative from Kingsport.
The party sent a mail piece showing the faces of Vaughn, Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on blackbirds. The headline? “Birds of a feather flock together.”
You might recall that Jason Mumpower, soon to be the new speaker of the House, made thinly cloaked appeals to racial prejudice during the campaign against Vaughn. Mumpower said Vaughn, who lost by 300 votes, was “better suited to be representing inner-city Memphis than the rural hills of East Tennessee.”
We asked state GOP flack Bill Hobbs to address these issues in an interview this morning. The Q&A follows:
Q: Would you respond to these Democratic claims that your campaign was racist?
Hobbs: I think that was a claim you made in something you wrote.
Q: Yeah well, the Democrats are saying it as well
Hobbs: Of course they are because they don’t wanna look at why they really lost. A nebulous charge like that, no I won’t respond to it. If they want to point to something specific, maybe I can deal with that.
Q: OK, specifically they point to your Barack Hussein Obama press release.
Hobbs: Nothing in that dealt with race. That dealt with his position toward Israel.
Q: Do you think that they have any basis to say that you were at least trying to inflame racial fears or antagonism toward Obama?
Q: No.
Q: You don’t think you do that when you put out a press release showing him in an African turban and calling him by his full name?
Hobbs: No.
Q: Secondly, they point to this blackbird mailer …
Hobbs: Don’t know anything about it, haven’t seen it.
Q: Against Nathan Vaughn.
Hobbs: Haven’t seen it.
Q: It was a state Republican Party mailer.
Hobbs: I haven’t seen it.
Q: Well it showed Nathan Vaughn’s head on the body of a blackbird and Obama and Pelosi too, and it said something about them flocking together.
Hobbs: That’s a famous cliché, birds of a feather flock together.
Q: You don’t think it’s racist to put him …
Hobbs: On a bird? No.
Q: To put Nathan Vaughn’s head on a blackbird?
Hobbs: No.
Q: Do you think there were any sort of racial overtones that might explain McCain’s margins being larger than Bush’s four years ago?
Hobbs: No.
Q: You’re working really hard here not to give me any quotes, aren’t you Bill?
Hobbs: No, the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama is a highly liberal, ultra liberal, very liberal candidate. It was clear in the primaries that he was the wrong candidate for Tennessee … His campaign put zero resources, zero time, zero money into this state.
Q: Well, what the Democrats are saying is that you guys deliberately tried to inflame racial fears toward Obama to drive up McCain’s margins so that his coattails would drag some Republicans into office in the legislature.
Hobbs: That’s a nice conspiracy theory, but we never focused on McCain’s race [campaign] at all. … There were polls that came out, national polls, that showed up to a third of Democrats were considering not voting for Obama for racial reasons. That’s Democrats. … They seem to be wanting to blame Republicans for not backing Barack Obama when a lot of Democrats in this state didn’t back Barack Obama. Were they racist? Or were they simply saying, no, Barack Obama’s liberalism and his condescension toward people who in his words clinging to their God and their guns was just out of step with the views of most Tennesseans.
Comments (3)
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You have to love the fact that "a third of the democrats were considering not voting for Obama for racial reasons" and yet he won handily. Odd that. As a side note to this, I'd like to point you to Aunt B's "And this is better than racism, how?" over at tiny cat pants.
http://tinycatpants.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/and-this-is-better-than-racism-how/
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Posted by
polerin
on 11/12/2008 at 2:09 PM
Why you people provide another forum for a demagogue like Bill Hobbs to spout his poisonous bullshit is beyond me.
Posted by
BoydBBiggs
on 11/12/2008 at 2:19 PM
It must pain Republicans like Bill Hobbs to know that despite his own charges that Obama is a baby killing Marxist Muslim that America still prefered that over how they viewed Sarah Palin and her running mate.
Bill's only saving grace in Tennessee was a win in the absence of the Tennessee Democratic Party echoing a winning message.
Posted by
Christian
on 11/12/2008 at 3:07 PM
