The Wheels Off the Wagon

by Benjamin J. Kirby

The wheels have officially come off the GOP Convention's unity bandwagon.

Last week I wrote about the Texas judge expecting a civil war upon President Obama's re-election.  In the same post I talked about the New Hampshire Sherrif's candidate who said he would use "deadly force" against doctors who provided abortions in the name of protecting "life."  

Before that, I chronicled the litany of bullying and mean-spiritedness in this campaign -- and yes, it exists almost exclusively on one side of the ledger, I'm sorry to say.

Two attendees of the RNC -- it remains unclear if they were actual delegates or not -- were removed today after throwing peanuts at an African American CNN camerawoman and saying, "this is how we feed animals."

And that is about all we know of the incident right now, largely because the media -- including CNN, which has nothing on their extensive website about the incident, nor does it come up if you search "peanuts" and "rnc" together.

You'd like to think this is an isolated incident, the work of two hate-filled individual asshole who were rightly ejected from the proceedings by folks who know better.

Unfortunately, there is just too much anecdotal evidence that Mitt Romney -- he of the utterly false, unbearably awful welfare ads, called demonstrably false by such liberal icons as Joe Scarborough and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback -- is now the nominee of the party of seething racist hate.

To wit:

“If you know Middle Easterners, a lot of them, they look Mexican or they look, you know, like a lot of people in South America, dark skin, dark hair, brown eyes. And they mix. They mix in.

“And those people, their only goal in life is to, to cause harm to the United States. So why do we want them here, either legally or illegally? When they come across the border, besides the trash that they leave behind, the drug smuggling, the killings, the beheadings. I mean, you are seeing stuff. It’s a war out there.”

These are not the comments of some fringe activist living in a shack in the woods.  They are the comments of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer-endorsed Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, GOP candidate for Congress in the Arizona 3rd.

Given that, maybe the positive response of a State Representative in South Carolina to an overtly racist email shouldn't surprise me all that much. 

Back at the GOP Convention just up the road, they're not only throwning peanuts at African Americans, they're chanting USA! USA! when a Puerto Rican Republican Party functionary -- a woman named Zoraida Fonalledas -- took to the podium.  It was such chaos that the GOP Chairman himself, Reince Priebus, had to step in to gavel them down and call for order.  Here's the fairly disturbing video:

Rational thought has long ago set sail with these folks.  

We already knew that, I guess, but it doesn't make these most recent events -- and every one that will follow, and you know there will be more -- any less shocking.  

What happens to the Republican Party -- and our country -- if Romney/Ryan lose the election in November?  Where will these Americans channel their hate?  In what twisted, awful ways will we bear witness to the ugliness?  How will it manifest itself?

What happens if they win?  

Comments

[Betty]

I'm much more afraid of what will happen if R&R win than if they lose. We can fight back against the hatred and discrimination if we fight together. That is much easier with leaders that are part of the solution not the ones stirring the pot and creating hate and fear among less enlightened individuals that they pander to.