Bless your heart, Earl: "The race thing."

Earl Capps, regrettably, tries to have it both ways on the recent, undeniably racist comments by two state party activists. One said the President's wife is descended from a gorilla that escaped from the Columbia zoo. The other reported the President plans to slap a tax on aspirin because it's white and it works.

Capps shot himself in the foot, however, with the first paragraph of what would have been a pretty estimable piece of work, by pulling lesson 3 from the Bipartisan Playbook for Evading Blame: say the other side did it, too, first, and worse:

Over the last few days, we've learned that Republicans can say some bone-headed things. Some of those things can sound about as racist as a speech by two prominent Democratic "Reverends" - Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright.

Neither one, however, is a senior person in the party that pretty much runs this state unopposed, and with Capps' wholehearted approval. Nor does it help to downgrade the issue to the equivalent of George H.W. Bush's dismissive invocation of the need, in his campaign, for "the vision thing."

Republicans, so far, seem utterly unable to address their own shortcomings without having to comfort themselves by that sort of disclaimer at the top that as "bone-headed" some of their own's comments may seem, they weren't as racist as some the other party's people uttered.

Thus is the air let out of the balloon, the GOP declares itself born again, and proceeds to explain how the man who shot up the Holocaust Museum is a liberal socialist.

Former SC GOP chair Katon Dawson faintly condemned the Obama-ape remark by observing "even if it was taken out of context" it was kinda tacky.

In what other context could it have been taken? Can someone explain it to me, like I'm a six-year old?

Capps continues:

While one can argue these comments weren't too smart, knowing these guys, you'd never convinced me they were said out of hate, or that Mike or Rusty were racist in the last.

Racism is something I know all too well. As my first wife was of Sub-Saharan African descent (and we had a daughter together), I've had more than a little racism directed at me over the years - as well at my ex-wife and my daughter.

You want to know how it feels? It hurts, and it's infuriating.

From these experiences, I have come to learn a lot about what racism is - the more overt kind in which insults are used to hurt and degrade, and the less overt kind in which comments are made in jest, with no malice, by people who simply do not understand how these words can hurt.

Well, first it begs the question, assuming Caps' interpretation to be true, why does your party keep electing stupid white men to senior posts and letting them bloviate in public? (As an aside, what did you think when Governor Mitt Romney, confronted by marriage equality, dusted off the state's 1913 antimiscegenation law, designed and passed to prevent you from marrying your first wife? Care to parse that?0


But the larger question is, why, then, when people get called out for this sort of thing, do they resort to the standard, bipartisan non-apology- I meant it in jest, without explaining why I thought anybody with a head would think it funny, I am sorry if I offended anyone (which dismisses the whole affair as one ginned up by hypersensitive PC liberals.)? Or in this case, that the monkey guy said the President's wife started it by saying we are all descended from primates.

Capps then cites FITS News' Will Folks for calling out as racist comments Capps has just assured us are not racist, just bone-headed:

Will Folks is onto something when he points out:

The point is this - at a time when Republicans need to be playing the game of addition, these stupid sophomoric comments are making it harder for their “outreach” efforts to succeed.

But again, therein lies our point …

As we’ve said in the past, “outreach” can’t be some pathetically transparent attempt to insert a few token blacks into leadership positions, it has to be a fundamental recasting of the party’s mindset - which, incidentally, has to be accompanied by a restoration of individual liberty and economic prosperity as the party’s two defining (and decidedly colorblind) values.

After all, we remain firmly convinced that black South Carolinians are being sold out by most of their Democratic leaders - and are waiting for a party to articulate what they believe in for a change.

To a point, he's dead on with his argument - but there's more that he didn't touch upon. Republicans can talk a lot about how they're on the right side of many black voters on the issues, but such issue-oriented alignments won't happen if these voters don't TRUST Republicans.

It's hard to earn that trust when these kinds of comments are posted online.

Which brings us to our post, this evening, on Folks' getting up on his hind legs about the death of an Australian original elder in police custody, a post which ends up declaring that Crocodile Dundee would never stand for such a thing, inspired as he was by the ageless ass cheeks of his white, female costar?

That kinda undermines the main message. It recalls, for persons of a certain age, the late Madison County, NC, political boss Zeno Ponder, who, accused of corruption, just dismissed it as "pootin' under the covers."

It just happened. Everyone does it, sometimes at the wrong time, bless their hearts.

Capps concludes:

It's hard to earn that trust when good-meaning black community leaders have to turn to Democratic leaders for help for their communities, opportunities to be appointed to boards and commissions, etc.

It's hard to earn that trust when you ask GOP voters on a primary ballot if they support keeping the Confederate flag over the state capitol, and an overwhelming majority of them support it.

Maybe these things were not intended with malice, but maybe it would help to consider that other people see things in a very different light and try to show a little respect for their points of view.

In the absence of a strong and clear effort to earn the trust and respect of black voters, these kinds of actions speak volumes about how little Republicans understand and respect them. If the GOP wants to ever win the support of any significant number of black voters, it's going to have to do much better than that.

But the trouble is, as infrequently as there that sort of thoughtful analysis of of the way forward for the state GOP, who is standing up in front of God and everybody and saying so where it counts? Who is recruiting candidates for state party office who aren't just more comfortable, complacent members of the Lawn Jockey Caucus? Who is willing to stand up and risk something real before the powers of the Old Confederacy & Buffalo Commons Party? Who is willing to call out someone like the obsessively homophobic legislator Greg Delleny? If there weren't queers and women seeking abortions the man would be mute. Y'all just talking the talk.

In a state where the leading conservative blogger is a religious nut and the next half dozen are either political consultants or GOP activists, there's just nobody willing to put any skin into the game.

To effect real reform, you gotta be willing to stand in front of a tank.

Just as an aside, it'd have been nice to see Capps arguing something like his thesis on how to attract African-American voters when the same Will Folks he cites for special insight head-faked an interest in attracting gay SC voters before dismissing them as "birth defects."

As Capps said earlier,

"You want to know how it feels? It hurts, and it's infuriating.

"From these experiences, I have come to learn a lot about what racism is - the more overt kind in which insults are used to hurt and degrade, and the less overt kind in which comments are made in jest, with no malice, by people who simply do not understand how these words can hurt."

But, apparently, not enough. If you're for real equality, you have to do better than pandering to those who cling to a little power while those who, in this state, have none. There's a word for that.

Never mind. Capps has a glimmering idea of what discrimination is. But that idea is is so grudging, and narrow, it speaks volumes as to what the rest of his party, lagging even further behind him, thinks. SC GOP's idea of progress, on this date, is finding some blacks as reactionary as the whites are, and bearing them forth as trophies, proof of their big-tentyness. His is an sense of injury as a white man who married an African woman. It's personal.

Here's a telling thought-experiment, Mr. Capps: go read a few weeks' worth of posts at Gay Patriot. Then explain why gay conservatives so keen to be in The Show they set up GOProud, a group of gay Republicans who pledged not to work on any gay rights issues, aren't welcomed into the bosom of your party? Then tackle a week or two's worth at The Sunlit Uplands, and advise why gay South Carolinians- who, despite their birth defects and satanic natures you still expect to pay taxes (isn't their money cringeworthy, too?) are, truly, as evil as Daniel J. Cassidy says, and why you are happy he sits on the SC Advisory Committee to the United States Commissionon Civil Rights. As a Republican.

Just curious.