Thursday, October 11, 2012

Southern Strategy Mormon-Style

Yes, Mitt Romney did refer to the President as "boy." And, yes, Miss Ann and Marse Josh did refer to him and his followers both as a child, in the singular, and as obstinate children.

I come from the South, where years ago - back in the 1850s, you know, the times to which the Republican Party want us all to return - "enlightened" Southern slaveowners tended to see their slaves as "children" who needed patient instruction (and occasionally a beating).



Now, I've just returned from a visit home. I have a cousin, who converted to Mormonism and whose husband is a Mormon bishop. Four years ago, they voted for the President and watched MSNBC. Now they're fully paid-up Mittbots and devotees of Fox. Four years ago, they were pissed that Bush's tax cuts only got them 300 dollars - plus, it was fashionable to vote for the cool black guy.

But, according to them, for some reason, he didn't deliver. What, I don't know. But I did hear my cousin refer to the First Lady, derogatorily, as "the black woman," and I did hear her preface a conversation with the phrase "I'm not racist, but ..." (which means that she is); and then I remembered, when she converted, back in 1976, at the age of twenty, when she got into a screaming row with her older sister, who was engaged to a black man. The argument was about why and how Mormons refused to give African Americans full membership in their church - something about the mark of Cain.

It's obvious that this deviant form of campaigning is not only meant to enrage the Left and the Democratic Party, but it's also meant to cast the Romney family as poor, pitiful victims, willfully using euphemistic words with a double-edged meaning, so they can hide behind the obvious innocence and accuse Miss Ann and her young'uns of being mean, horrible racists - and no one wants to be tagged (as in Tagg Romney) a racist. It's a dare. Accuse the sainted, morally pure Romneys of racism, and the GOPers will rush to their defence, along with all the white working and middle-class closet racists in tow.

I can live with the fact that Mitt Romney's belief is that the President's melanin really is significant of the mark of Cain; what I can't live with is someone in the White House who bears the mark of Bain.

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