Republicans lie down with racist welfare rancher Bundy, wake up with racist fleas
by David Atkins
Welfare rancher and newly minted Republican hero Cliven Bundy made his case on race relations:
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.
“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
Now the Republican politicians who cozied up to Bundy are suddenly backing away:
he remarks brought about a quick rebuke from Chandler Smith, a spokesperson for Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV). Heller had previously called Bundy and his supporters “patriots” for their actions and challenged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) description of them as “domestic terrorists.”
Smith told the Times that Heller “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”
Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s (R) apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas.
But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”
But it's not as if Bundy's rhetoric isn't just a less veiled and coded form of mainstream Republican rhetoric. Herman Cain, E.W. Jackson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and many others have all described government subsidies for the poor as a "plantation" oppressing minorities.
Let's not forget GOP darling Paul Ryan's take on race relations, either:
We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with…you need to get involved, you need to get involved yourself, whether through a good mentor program or some religious charity, whatever it is to make a difference. And that’s how we resuscitate our culture.
Republican politicians will try to distance themselves from Bundy, but it's too late. Bundy really does speak for the conservative base, and uses the same arguments as most of the GOP's most popular politicians and talking heads. He just uses more honest and forthright language to describe his racist beliefs.
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