Jesse Jackson Fouls Out on Lebron and Race

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Jesse Jackson should be slapped with a sixth foul and a fast ejection from the Lebron James game. Jackson should get the much deserved boot for shoving race into an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with race. Jackson likened Cleveland Cavs owner Dan Gilbert’s much publicized open letter tirade against James for jumping ship in Cleveland to treating James as a “runaway slave.” Jackson’s race card sound bite would have gotten a splashy news note if he had stopped there. But Jackson couldn’t let it go at that. He demanded that the league chastise Gilbert for his James outburst. That’s hyperbole and neither Gilbert, the NBA, nor James bothered to dignify the inanity with a response.

Jackson didn’t bother to explain how a slave, let alone a runaway slave, can orchestrate their own media self-coronation. Or, how a slave can have the entire sports media genuflect in front of him, shove the BP spill, financial reform bill, and looming immigration reform debate, and the Oscar Grant shooting case verdict off the front page for a day. Nor did he say, how a slave can get a president, a slew of senators, and congresspersons, and Florida’s governor to gush on about the importance of James’s announcement. And certainly, no slave can turn an entire city (Miami) gaga over his decision to head their way, and stir excitement that he will create jobs, boost tourism, and business revenues to the tune of tens of millions dollars for an entire region.

The Jackson race play with James was more than a desperate grab to snatch a moment of media limelight. That could easily be flicked aside and forgotten. But Jackson is still regarded in some circles as the bellwether for black opinion. That’s not a good thing since much of the media is still profoundly conditioned to believe that all blacks think, act and sway to the same racial beat. They freely use the words and deeds of the chosen black leader as the standard for African-American behavior. When the beleaguered chosen one makes a real or contrived misstep, he or she becomes the whipping boy among many whites, and blacks are blamed for being rash, foolhardy, irresponsible and prone to shuffle the race card on every social ill that befalls them.

Jackson’s twist of the James flight from Cleveland into an issue of black victimization fits that bill. The issue in the James wildly inflated media overkill saga is the media’s insatiable thirst to make athletes and entertainers demi-gods, turn millions of fans and even the disinterested into celebrity peeping toms, and then cash in on the ratings surge (and of course increased advertising revenue) from the hype.

James understands how the media hype game is played, and simply elevated himself to a pedestal higher than the other athlete demi-gods with his self- celebratory ESPN special. To Jackson, these are all mere trifles. What counted was that he got a chance to pop off on the one and only issue that was guaranteed to get a dab of media ink, namely James and race. He deserves the bench for that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

The New GOP Con--Obama the Reverse Racist

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In quick succession J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney, strongly implied in his testimony to the Civil Rights Commission that the word came down from on White House high to the Justice Department to dump a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Adams just as strongly implied that the White House put the word out to play hard ball on discrimination cases when the victims are minorities, and soft peddle the same type cases when the victims are white. The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch quickly announced a lawsuit against the DOJ to hand over documents on the case. Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh gassed that Obama hates America (meaning whites) and that he’s deliberately torpedoing the economy to “payback” the nation for 230 years of racial sins against blacks.

Any other time, and with any other president, this would be treated exactly for what it is, sheer lunacy. But this not any other time, and the president is Obama. The suspicion that always lurks close to the surface is that an African-American once in a position of power will turn the tables and “payback” whites for the decades of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, abuse, degradation and exclusion. The two decade assault on affirmative action firmly implanted the widespread belief that unfit and unqualified minorities and especially blacks were hell bent to shove whites aside and grab all the plum positions. It was reverse discrimination and racism. It was a short step from this to the notion that racism is virtually dead in America, except for the racism of blacks. This set the stage to tag Obama the reverse racist.
The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, Obama joker posters, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flag waved by tea party activists was not just a naked, spasmodic race baiting by unreconstructed bigots. Many passionately believe that Obama is determined to give the company store away to minorities, especially blacks. Every chance he gets he’ll dump more money, devise more programs, and propose favorable legislation that favor blacks and minorities at the expense of whites. An Obama White House will bend, twist, and mangle laws to aid and abet black advancement. No matter how much Obama talks about being president of all the people, downplays race, and has an impeccable record on broad race neutral legislation, he’s still a reverse bigot.
The knock of Obama as a racist is much more than mindless dribble it serves a canny political purpose. The starting point is the 2008 campaign. The GOP could not have been competitive during campaign 2008 without the bail out from white male voters. Blue collar white voters have shrunk from more than half of the nation's voters to less than forty percent. The assumption based solely on this slide and the increased minority population numbers and regional demographic changes is that the GOP's white vote strategy is doomed to fail. This ignores three political facts. Elections are usually won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters. White males, particularly older white males, vote consistently and faithfully. They vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks.

GOP leaders have long known that blue collar white male voters can be easily aroused to vote and shout loudly on the emotional wedge issues; abortion, family values, anti-gay marriage and tax cuts. They whipped up their hysteria and borderline racism against health care reform. This was glaringly apparent in the ferocity and bile spouted by the shock troops the GOP leaders in consort with the tea party activists brought out to harangue, harass and bully Democrat legislators on the eve of the final health care vote. These are the very voters that GOP presidents and aspiring presidents, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and W. Bush, and McCain and legions of GOP governors, senators and congresspersons banked for victory and to seize and maintain regional and national political dominance.
The GOP's win with the white vote failed in 2008 only because of the rage and disgust of legions of white voters at Bush's horribly failed and flawed domestic and war policies. This was more a personal and visceral reaction to the bumbles of Bush than a radical and permanent sea change in overall white voter sentiment about Obama, the Democrats, and the GOP. Even if the GOP is, as is widely seen, an insular party of Deep South and narrow Heartland, rural and, non-college educated blue-collar whites this is not a voting demographic to mock, ridicule or be sneered at, let alone dismiss, because the numbers are still huge.
Adams, Limbaugh, the tea party activists, and GOP leaders have crudely but effectively programmed millions to think of and see Obama as their worst racial nightmare. To them, he’s a black man who has real power and will lord it over whites. It’s the worst kind of con, but for the Obama loathers selling the con is all that matters.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

President Obama Should Say Yes to the NAACP Convention

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

An Obama will again address the NAACP’s annual convention starting July 9 in Kansas City. It just won’t be President Obama. First Lady Michelle Obama will give a talk, and it’s not really billed as a key note talk, more an informal workshop type discussion on her signature issue, the campaign against childhood obesity. She’s not listed in the confab’s 10 page schedule of speakers, panels and workshops.
There are two thoughts about the president’s no show at the convention. One he’s adhering to his avowed, cautious, goal of doing and saying nothing that belies his race neutral stance as the president of all the people. An appearance or a message to the convention wouldn’t violate that. He appeared last year and there was no issue. And every Democratic and GOP president including Reagan and W. Bush has either spoke to the convention or delivered a message to the convention since there’s been an NAACP convention. With the exception of Bush, and only because he boycotted the convention for the first six years of his White House tenure, presidential addresses raise no eyebrows. The other thought is that Obama fears that an appearance before a racial advocacy group like the NAACP will give more ammunition to the Obama loathers, Palin and tea party activists. This is even less plausible. A no-show at the NAACP convention won’t do anything to stop their non-stop pound of his agenda and him. And he almost certainly knows that.

Obama did not give an official reason why he’s skipping the convention. But one can fill in the surface blank. His plate groans with Afghanistan funding and logistic problems, putting the finishing touches on the financial reform bill, the BP spill, and the looming fight over energy reform bill, stalled jobless funding bills, and the never ending press of requests to promote Democratic candidates. These are all plausible reasons for skipping the convention. But there are problems with his no show. He’ll be in Kansas City the day before the start of the convention to attend a fundraiser for Democratic Senate hopeful Robin Carnahan; so isn’t a schedule tweak possible? If not, a video message from Obama to the convention is certainly more than doable. An appearance or a message from him is the politically expedient, the practical and just simply the right thing to do.

The black vote has been the Democrats' trump card in every election for the past half century, win or lose. If black voters had not turned the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries into a virtual holy crusade for Obama, and if Obama had not openly in the South Carolina primary and subtly in primaries thereafter stoked the black vote, he could easily have been just another failed Democratic presidential candidate. The Through its voter education, vote awareness, and get out the vote campaigns, the NAACP played a colossal role in galvanizing and boosting the numbers of black voters, nearly all votes for Obama.

This is not old history. The 2010 mid-term elections are fast approaching. Political analysts, pundits, and even Democratic consultants are near unanimous that the Democrats will lose seats in Congress to Republicans. The only real question is how bad the political hemorrhaging will be. A solid and united GOP, and droves of independents who are disillusioned, disgusted and even hostile toward Obama, should make the black vote loom even bigger in Obama's calculus. There's little margin of error with this vote. He needs a reasonable facsimile of the November 2008 black vote outpour to save as many Democratic seats as possible, and serve as a partial shield against the withering non-stop assault from the GOP leaders, tea party activists, Palin, and Limbaugh on his agenda and his person.

It’s the right thing to do. For the past half century, the NAACP has fought tough battles in the courts and the streets for voting rights, affirmative action, school integration and an end to housing and job discrimination. The group still accurately captures the mood of fear and hostility the majority of blacks feel toward the Republicans, and the chronic Obama bashers. Whether Obama appears, sends a message, or simply comes and quickly departs Kansas City the day before the convention, the NAACP will still exhort, implore, and cajole blacks to vote, which again means votes for Democrats. The aim is to insure maximum support for Obama’s agenda and to do damage control against GOP attacks.

Obama needs the NAACP and the NAACP needs Obama. He’s still their best hope to hold the line against the GOP assault on job, education and health care spending and programs, as well as the fight for immigration reform, and the always crucial Supreme Court appointments. These are bread and butter issues and concerns for Obama and the NAACP. President Obama should say yes to the NAACP convention.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Palin’s Play of the Obama as Hitler Card Was Inevitable

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The only surprise when Sarah Palin tweeted out her message to followers likening President Obama to Hitler was that it took so long for her to make the comparison. Her tea party pals, and a rogues list of GOP and rightwing hacks, bigots, loudmouths, and spin artists took giddy delight in making the Obama to Hitler comparison even before he put a foot in the Oval Office. Fox News’s Tom Sullivan was the first in the door with the Obama as Hitler lunacy in February 2008 when he played a side by side recording of Hitler and Obama’s speeches.

Clear Channel’s Bill Cunningham, foul mouth gab queen Ann Coulter, her male counterpart, Mike Savage, Limbaugh, Cal Thomas, and, of course, Glenn Beck quickly took up the Obama as Hitler chant. With that, the Obama as Hitler line was firmly set. The only thing missing was a mob setting to do an imitation torch light parade complete with banner, signs and posters with Obama depicted as Hitler. The mob parades were tea party rallies where Obama as Hitler agitprop paraphernalia was on full display.

Now there’s Palin. In a bit of crude craft, she slyly compared Obama to Hitler by exhorting her twitter followers to read a recent column by right wing pseudo egg head writer Thomas Sowell. He pilloried Obama for arm twisting BP to set up the $20 billion escrow fund. The fund is to help repair and compensate the victims of its Gulf ruin. To Sowell Obama took another giant step toward seizing dictatorial power. There’s absolutely nothing new about this crackpot charge. It’s been an absolute smash favorite of fringe GOP congresspersons, tea party acolytes, Fox News and the menagerie of rightside talk show gabbers for two years. The Obama as Hitler idiocy is more than just the ancient and stock GOP tactic of smearing, slandering, name calling, character assassinating, and baiting liberal, and moderate Democrats. The tactic is used to prick primitive passions, and it allows the GOP to duck and dodge making a coherent case for its untenable and more often than not foolish positions on issues. No, the Hitler smear is coldly calculated, and strategically trotted out when Obama introduces a major piece of legislation, new policy initiative, or in his pre White House days, when his groundbreaking autobiography rocket launched him as a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. The Hitler card is played even more furiously when it appears that Obama is near victory on legislation or an initiative.

The health care, and financial reform bills, and the BP escrow fund are textbook examples of that. Each of these initiatives had wide popular support, and GOP opposition to them appeared even more shrill, isolated, and vapid.
The Obama to Hitler card is also played opposite the Obama as Bolshevik analogy. This imprints the image of a power mad Obama out to turn government into an instrument of state control of industry and by extension to squash personal freedoms and liberties. The Hitler comparison imprints the image of a diabolical Obama out to snatch full dictatorial control of government.

Palin grabbed at Sowell’s hit piece to jump on the Hitler bandwagon. She didn’t have to explain how or why Obama’s urge of BP to set up the Gulf damage fund was Hitler like. But she didn’t have to explain the absurd. She knows that legions already have mindlessly swallowed the Hitler image of Obama. Expect more Obama as Hitler digs the next time the White House stands poised to score another victory.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

One Year Later Michael Jackson Still Provokes Controversy

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Pop king Michael Jackson has been dead exactly one year. But the controversy that surrounded his life didn’t end with his death. On the eve of the first anniversary of his death June 25, Latoya Jackson loudly declared that her brother was murdered. Why, because he had grown to rich, powerful, and posed a threat. Sister Latoya didn’t say who or whom the unknown he posed the threat too. But then she didn’t have to. The charge that Jackson was the victim of foul play has been bandied about by Jackson family members, legions of fans, and hotly discussed and debated on blogs and websites since that fateful day a year ago.

The murder conspiracy theories are just the tip of the iceberg of the Jackson controversy. On the eve of the first anniversary of his death, news reports were filled with rampant speculation and guesswork about Jackson’s financial woes, squabbles between his attorneys and former attorneys over who represents who and what in divvying up Jackson’s estate, and reports of more finger-pointing by Joe Jackson about Jackson’s death. This is no surprise. Jackson made news even when he didn’t do anything to make news during his life.

Jackson's infamous child molestation trial in 2005 for a time was the centerpiece of much of the chatter back and forth about Jackson’s actions. The acquittal didn’t end that. Debate still rages over whether Jackson was an innocent victim of greedy, media hungry parents, or of his own actions. Then there was Jackson's on again, off again, quirky, ambivalent relationship with African-Americans and his seemingly confused racial identity. For many blacks, Jackson was little more than a Casper-the-ghost-looking bleached skin, nose job, eye shade, straight hair and gyrating hips ambiguous black man who had made a ton of money and had been lauded, fawned over, and adored by whites. This was more than reason for some blacks to view him with a jaundiced eye.

Jackson for the most part stayed about the controversy. He always seemed to want much more, and that was to be thought of as much more than an entertainer, a musician, and certainly not a polarizing figure. Jackson was much more. A year later it’s worth remembering what exactly that was. The first inkling that Jackson was more than just a pampered, oddball recluse came after the burn accident he suffered while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984. Jackson quietly forked over the $1.5 million the Burn Center at Brothman Hospital in Southern California that he got in the accident settlement. He drew accolades in 1985 when he and Lionel Ritchie wrote "We Are the World" and performed the music as part of an all-star cast of singers and celebrities to raise money for African charities. But that was pretty much what was known about the other Jackson.

Few knew then, and many still don’t, about Jackson's charitable giving and the list of the peace and social justice related activities he was involved with. The list numbered more than fifty known charities and organizations that he gave to during the 1990s, both individually and through his expansively named Heal the World Foundation. The foundation was mired in a messy organizational and tax wrangle that briefly made headlines in 2002. Yet, there was virtually no press mention when Jackson jumpstarted the Foundation again in 2008 with a fresh wad of cash.
In the months and years after his 2005 child molestation trial acquittal debate raged over whether he was a washed up, health challenged, damaged goods, and financially strapped one time pop star who desperately wanted to snatch back a glimmer of his past glory. Or, whether he still had some of the trademark Jackson flare and talent left. Even that debate, though, seemed to pass Jackson by since he knew that his every word and act was still instant news, and that there were still hordes of fans who would heap dreamy eyed adulation on him.

The quest to seal a legacy as more than just the Pop King told much about Jackson's desire that the small but unseen and much neglected part of his life, that is his charitable work be known and remembered. That he be remembered as more than just a black man who made his living grabbing his crotch before millions. Or a man who's other claim to notoriety was that he delighted in surrounding himself with packs of children.
A year later Jackson’s reported financial troubles, the murder-conspiracy allegations, the looming manslaughter trail of Dr. Conrad Murray, and the occasional faint whispers about his alleged questionable child relations, still badly cloud the Jackson legacy. There’s still the other Jackson, though. ; The Jackson who unselfishly gave his money, time and name for humanitarian causes. A year after his death this is undoubtedly the Jackson that he wanted the world to know and remember. It’s the Jackson that we should remember too.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Can President Obama Really Break Our Oil Addiction?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Two surreal things happened within the span of two days. In his televised address, President Obama again sternly warned that the nation must break its dependency on oil. He again called on Congress to pass an energy bill that would vastly expand our hunt for and use of alternative and renewable energy sources. The next day he sternly tongue lashed BP executives about the monumental damage of their spill, and demanded they cough up billions to pay the damage costs. They agreed. The tough talk generally about breaking America’s oil addiction publicly played well, and BP paying the damage freight played even better. But while the president made his umpteenth pitch to break the oil addiction, a slew of Gulf Coast congresspersons and senators loudly called for Obama to lift the moratorium on off shore drilling. There’s some evidence that the president may listen to their plea.
Before the BP spill Obama had approved an expansion in off shore drilling. After the BP spill, he quickly reversed gears. However, he also left the door for a resumption of drilling when he indicated that he would wait and see what his oil spill commission came up with about the spill.
The love-public loathe relation that politicians have with big oil has been the all too familiar pattern. The very moment that House committee leaders very publicly saber rattled BP’s hapless CEO Tony Hayward, GOP Senate leaders very quietly moved to kill off any effort to dump the farcically low $75 million liability cap on damages big oil would have to shell out, for well, a Gulf spill. The Orwellian reason for not tampering with the cap is that it would push all but the biggest oil giants out of the business of oil exploration and drilling since smaller companies would be too scared to drill if they knew they would have to pony up tens of millions for a mishap. Big or little, the drill, baby drill crowd had to be protected at all cost.
The operative word is always cost. The much touted alternative energy sources, wind, solar, hydrogen and ethanol are too expensive, too time consuming, and often not cost effective. Even if congress was willing to do what it publicly claims it wants to do and push hard to develop these alternative sources, it won’t pay what it will cost. The climate and energy legislation pushed by Obama as it now stands increases funding for R&D and demonstration of alternative sources by a paltry $2 to $4 billion. That’s a fraction of the $25 to $30 billion per year experts agree it takes to achieve the technological breakthroughs needed to make clean energy cheap and scalable. Congress has further tilted the playing field against all out production and use of all alternative energy sources by taxing it. There is no tax on foreign oil imports.



It still comes back to supply and demand. In 2008 the United States consumed 23 percent of the world’s petroleum nearly 60 percent of this was imported. But the country holds less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. About 40 percent of the imports came from Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, and that figure continues to climb. The naked fact is that the US is running out of oil. The amount of oil in proven U.S. reserves, reserves that the United States is fairly certain it can extract oil from in the future, plunged nearly 20 billion barrels the last thirty years. This means even if the country drilled and produced all the oil reserves it had they’d be depleted in four years.
Oil is still by any standard relatively cheap. As painful as it is to swallow, for the forseeable future, anyway, sustainable. The country consumes over 7 billion barrels of oil per year. Federal estimates are that the nation's outer continental shelf could hold more than 80 billion barrels of crude. That includes more than 10 billion barrels off California alone. If the US did not get another drop of oil from the world’s land suppliers, and relied solely on the supply it got from California off shore drilling it would fill the country’s energy need for twelve years. The near 100 billion of oil deposits is just in or near US coastal waters. A 2008 International Energy Agency report estimates that reachable conventional oil located in water more than a quarter-mile deep world-wide is between 160 and 300 billion barrels, with more than two-thirds of that in Brazil, Angola, Nigeria and, of course, the United States.

The BP spill ratcheted up the much needed war of words from President Obama and congress about the peril of America’s incessant oil addiction, and the urgency of breaking it. Words are one thing, but the terrifying reality is that to break the oil addiction, as with any other addiction, it takes a strong will and the means to do it. So far neither one is there.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

South Carolina Democratic US Senate Candidate Alvin Greene’s Interview on the Hutchinson Report

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Alvin Greene discusses his shocking win in the South Carolina Democratic primary. Greene discusses the impact of his win on state and national politics, his campaign plans, his relations with the Democratic Party, charges that he’s a GOP plant, and calls for him to drop out of the race because of felony obscenity charges. Greene discussed these issues in an exclusive interview with Earl Ofari Hutchinson Host of The Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles on Saturday, June 12.

“Greene’s controversial campaign and primary win has stirred national attention and sent shock waves through the Democratic Party,” says Hutchinson Report Host Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “The interview was the first full length interview Greene has conducted since his shocking win in South Carolina.”

Interview with South Carolina Democratic US Senatorial Candidate Alvin Greene
THR: A number of critics are convinced that you are a GOP plant, a put up job.
AG: I’m a Democrat, and I always have been a Democrat.
THR: South Carolina Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn has called for a federal investigation.
AG: I have no comment on that. My campaign is about jobs, better education for children and justice.
THR: Tell us, who is Alvin Greene? What should people know about you?
AG: I’m 32. I was born in Florence, South Carolina, and grew up in Manning, South Carolina. I graduated from the University of South Carolina. I’m an Air Force and an army veteran. I did a year tour of duty in Korea. I have been out of the service nine months.
THR: Why did you decide to run?
AG: To make a difference. I saw the US declining and I decided to save my money to run.
THR: Let’s discuss your campaign platform. You emphasize reforming the criminal justice system.
AG: The punishment must fit the crime. We spend much more of our taxpayer dollars on inmates than students. We must get our priorities together in South Carolina and across the country.
THR: You also emphasize lower gas prices.
AG: We need an energy bill that emphasizes alternative forms of energy such as solar. We must explore all our resources.
THR: South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Carol Fowler has cited the obscenity charges pending against you and called for you to withdraw.
AG: The election was certified on Friday, June 11, so that’s old business. I’m in the race all the way.
THR: Have you reached out to the state Democrats for support?
AG: I’m seeking state and national support that I need and am entitled to. I’m the party’s nominee.
THR: Has there been any word from president Obama about your victory?
AG: None that I know of.
THR: Your GOP rival Senator Jim DeMint is a strong, vigorous critic of the president. How are you going to battle him?
AG: I’m working on getting a September date for a 1 hour live, national network debate. But my focus is on the issues.
THR: Do you now have a campaign committee, and solicited endorsements from the media and elected officials?
AG: I’m organizing my campaign for the general election and trying to find support.
THR: Have the state’s Democratic African-American elected officials offered support?
AG: I’ve had some offers from small organizations, but no official endorsements yet.
THR: Have you gotten support from younger voters and college students?
AG; Yes, I get a lot of calls from across the country, and the world. They me how much they are inspired by my campaign. And they want to do anything they can to help.
THR: Do you feel that you made a statement to the political establishment this election with your victory?
AG: Yes. All I heard was how are you going to do it? You don’t have $100 million. I’m hearing that now about the general election. In the end, it’s not about the money in the bank. It’s the votes that count and the issues. My goal is getting South Carolina and the nation moving forward.

Alvin Greene Is America’s Much Needed Political Rocky, Tainted Though he May Be

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Alvin Greene is America’s much needed political Rocky, tainted though he may be. The line American school kids hear the moment they set foot in a classroom is that one day you can be president. Most school kids long before they stop becoming school kids know it’s just that a line, they can’t and won’t be president. Now enter Alvin Greene. Here’s a guy with no job, no degree, no name recognition, no campaign organization, no website, and for all practical purposes no party (he never attended a Democratic Party function). And to top it off he’s facing felony obscenity charges. Yet Greene gets 100,000 South Carolina voters to punch his name on the Democratic senatorial ballot.

The deep suspicion is that Greene is a GOP cropper; that is that he’s a bought and paid for plant by the party to make fools of the Democrats and insure a cakewalk victory for GOP Senate incumbent Jim DeMint. Possible, it’s happened before, the GOP has been accused of secretly bankrolling plants, shills, and croppers, and given the notorious cartoon antics of South Carolina politics, this can’t be totally discounted. Greene had to plop down $10, 400 to get his name on the ballot. That’s a lot for a working stiff to pay out of pocket, let alone for someone unemployed.
But while it’s plausible to be suspicious, for a GOP dirty trickster to prop up Greene as a strawman would be too blatant. They’d be more likely to put money behind someone with some political involvement and name recognition. Money inevitably leaves a paper trail, and if the trail led back to a GOP clandestine operative, the scandal could blow the party out the water. If Democratic voters suspected hanky panky with Greene they could have easily ignored him and voted for his chief rival, Vic Rawl, a judge, who served on several state commissions, and was a four term state legislator. He was the Democratic Party favorite. But voters didn’t. They overwhelmingly picked Greene.

Republicans outnumber Democrats three to one in the state, and no Democratic presidential candidate has won South Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976. The chance of DeMint being toppled by a Democratic, especially a Democrat such as Rawl who’s just as much a party fixture, even with the fierce anti-incumbent mood was unlikely.
Greene makes even more sense with even a cursory look at the Gallup poll released a week before the June 8 primaries. It found that sixty percent of voters, and nearly 70 percent of self-described independents, said they would rather vote for a candidate who has never before served in Congress. Greene then is the perfect field of dreams for countless numbers of voters. He’s the anti-candidate candidate who got on the ballot with nothing more than moxey, conviction and a vague desire to make change. Then without spending a king’s ransom on the race, without the backing of an armada of telecoms companies, banks, lawyers, unions, tobacco companies and other special interests greasing their campaign wheels, and without cutting endless back room deals can actually win. The first and often the only question anyone who wants to run for office is asked is not what are your ideas and program but how much money can and did you raise? Greene is the candidate who can honestly answer not a penny. The money first and last question drives the polluted stream of American politics.

The Centre of Responsive Politics, a Washington think tank which tracks election spending, estimates that spending in the 2010 Congressional elections will total almost 4 billion. The five highest-spending Senate races were: Connecticut, $21 million. California $18 million; Nevada, where the Democratic Majority leader Harry Reid spent $17 million, and Arizona, where Republican John McCain spent $17 million. Senatorial candidates in Arkansas spent $12 million. California GOP senatorial nominee Carly Fiorina spent nearly $6 million out of her own pocket to bag the party nomination. That’s just for this election. The Centre for Public Integrity found that the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, has spent nearly $50 million over the past quarter century on campaigning. One political financial watchdog group flatly branded this obscene spending legalized corruption.

The mind boggling runaway cost of elections has turned American politics into a rich person’s sport, demolished any semblance of a political level playing field, and mocks the notion that voters have a Democratic choice. The Supreme Court’s decision to rip away virtually all checks on corporate and labor union spending and its fresh assault on public financing (Arizona decision) will make political campaigning even more the playground of the super-rich.

Greene didn’t simply beat these odds. He rewrote them. He is one antidote for those fed up with the stench of money and deal making in politics. Voters should take careful note of what Greene did in South Caroline with a felony rap hanging over him, with no name, no money, and seemingly not a prayer of a chance to win, and then does. That’s what a Rocky can do, tainted though he may be.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Shout at Obama to Muscle BP aside is Futile and Wrongheaded

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell minced no words in a talk with ABC News. Powell said President Obama should muscle BP aside and move in with “decisive force.” The general had one thing in mind, and that’s a military type response to and seizure of the operation. Powell thinks and talks like a hard-nosed military man. So his demand for a military solution to the BP spill is understandable. Powell didn’t say how the government, let alone the military, could cap the runaway well and insure that it stayed capped. But Powell and the wave of media pundits, politicians, and much of the public still shout at Obama to impose a total government takeover of the operation. The shout is futile and wrongheaded. The Obama BP critics shout it at him in part out of ignorance at what the government can do, and in part to beat up on him.

When a hazardous substance poses a major threat to the health and well-being of US citizens, the president can invoke provisions of the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act to take full charge. But the BP spill is in international waters and technically federal law doesn’t apply to that. Even if the government makes the compelling legal case that the BP spill poses a grave enough threat for government agencies, the military, or both to step in then what? Every credible military expert that’s weighed in on what the military can do if it were called on to take over the cap and control of an errant off shore drill operation has said that it would be totally lost. Its deep sea technical capability and undersea imager technology is too limited, and untested in this kind of complex, intricate, and uncharted operation. The bitter pill every scientist, engineer, and technician that’s weighed in on the spill said the public must swallow is that BP created the problem, and despite its flop so far in fixing it, it has the technology and expertise to do the job. The military and government agencies can take over containment, cleanup and construction. But the government has dispatched more than 20,000 responders, dozens of ships, and floating operation stations that are doing those functions.
Government agencies can bar any company that engages in fraudulent, reckless or criminal conduct from doing any business in the form of contracts, land leases, drilling rights, or loans with the government. Given BP’s well documented nose thumb at safety rules that have cost dozens of lives and maimed and injured many others, the pile of lawsuits, settlements and massive civil fines against it, and the red faced lies and half truths its officials have told regulators and investigators about its operations, a solid case could be made that the government can and should bar BP from government business.

But there are problems with this. BP is the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf of Mexico and operates some 22,000 oil and gas wells across the country, it is a top supplier of fuel to the military, and employs thousands in its operations, and subsidiaries. The disbarment process would take at least a year, and either BP, the military, or incredible as it sounds, another government agency can claim in court that disbarment would pose a monumental national security risk to the country. This is not academic speculation. In times past when BP came under fire for legal and environmental malfeasance, these were the concerns raised, and the talk of disbarment quickly fizzled. Then there’s the clamor for indictments and jail. Attorney General Eric Holder says he’ll look seriously at criminal charges against BP. But it would take months, even years, to build a case that BP executives willfully intended to commit the violations. That’s a near insurmountable high legal bar. The best that can he hoped for are hefty civil penalties, fines and settlements. That’s been the case in the past with Exxon and BP and the oil giants didn’t miss a beat. They were back to business as usual.

The BP spill is not solely about what Obama can or should do. The catastrophe is a political grenade Palin, the GOP, tea party activists, and the pack of rightside talk jocks have eagerly tossed at Obama to tar him as a weak, ineffectual leader, and grab more seats from the Democrats in the November elections. When the first drop oozed out of the well, if Obama had declared a national security emergency, sent in the troops, and clamped the cuffs on BP CEOs, the Obama bashers would have screamed dictator, heavy handed government interference, and socialist takeover. When that didn’t happen, they dredged up the phony Katrina-Bush bungle comparison and reamed him for being cautious, vacillating, and sending out mixed signals.
The BP spill is the perfect storm of political one-upmanship and environmental catastrophe. This insures that the shout for Obama to do what he can’t do with BP will get even louder, and that’s muscle BP aside.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Maher Owes Obama an Apology for Racist and Demeaning BP Dig

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

On his Friday May 28 show, Real Time HBO host Bill Maher demanded that President Obama act like a black president and pack a gun when he meets with the BP CEOs. Now Maher should take his own advice and act like a responsible commentator and apologize for his own politically demeaning and racially offensive dig at Obama. Politically demeaning and racially offensive are probably not strong enough characterizations of Maher’s silly, inane, effort to get a laugh. In one fell line, Maher demoted Obama from American president Obama, to black president Obama, complete with gun tucked in waistband. This played to the vile stereotype that blacks are inherent gun toting gang bangers, drive shooters and thugs, and that violence is a natural way of life in black communities. In another fell line, he played hard on the media and GOP line that Obama fell badly asleep at the wheel on the BP spill, has done little to contain it, and has botched every chance to be the strong, commanding president and rein in the oil giant and the oil industry.

Non-funnyman Maher dredged up a textbook perfect bad guy image storm for Obama; a storm chock full of racial stereotypes, and the terrible, finger pointing by much the public and the GOP at Obama for the BP catastrophe. Maher could have hit Obama from any of a dozen angles to get a chuckle about the political straight the BP ooze has put Obama in. He could have cracked that Obama should clamp a wetsuit or a diving bell on the BP CEO, or spray him with an oil can, or even took it the street, and said Obama should kick his butt if he didn’t fix the spill. None of which carried any hint, overt at least, of a racial slam or disrespect for Obama and the office.

But Maher didn’t go there with that. Race stuff is simply too juicy and eye catching. And now in the wake of the BP spill, Maher, like the ever swelling pack of sharks circling their victim in the water, sniff Obama’s sudden vulnerability, and political blood. The hard fact is at this point BP can’t cap the well, and even if Obama did what the new crop of his bashers shout he do and order the oil giant to cap it immediately, it still wouldn’t get done that minute. Obama, then, can expect more blame, finger pointing, and cheap shots, will be heaped on and taken at him. Maher certainly heaped that on him for the wrong reason, and above all in the wrong way. Bill, you owe Obama an apology.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Sniffing Political Blood in the Oil Spill

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The instant the BP ooze hit the Gulf’s surface the sniff of political blood was steady and strong. Virtually every reputable scientist, engineer, and technician made the point that given the complexity of the spill, the technical challenges, and constraints on the regulatory power of government’s agencies, the Obama administration has done everything it could to staunch the spill. But the cry still is: Blame Obama for it.

The GOP got its first return on the hit attack on Obama for the spill with a USA/Gallup poll. A majority of Americans say that Obama did not do and say enough about the spill. An even bigger number finger point the government for inaction. This isn’t much of a consolation. Thanks to the drumbeat attack from the GOP, the Ron and Rand Pauls, tea party activists, shrill rightside bloggers, talk jocks and columnists, in much of the public’s mind the government and Obama are one and the same villains. The drumbeat attack on Obama for the spill has been so effective that some top Democrats who should know better buy into it. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell loudly proclaimed that if Bill Clinton were president he would have been in Gulf water in a wetsuit. Rendell didn’t explain how Clinton in a wetsuit could cap a runaway well 5000 feet down. But that’s the kind of mindless idiocy that the bash Obama for BP has dredged up.

The worst part is that a big chunk of the press has beaten the blame Obama for the spill drum. The issue is not what Obama or the government could or couldn’t do, but how to wound Obama. The GOP angles for three big political payoffs in the political blood lust. Stick just enough of the oil tar on Obama to grab a few more seats in the house and senate in November. With many political contests rated horse races, a natural disaster can be massaged, exploited, and twisted to squeeze the maximum political benefit out of it, at least that’s the hope.

Obama’s energy plan, cap and trade, and climate control is also the target. Cripple them, or kill them, and then the GOP can wave the victory flag and claim that it rescued alleged flawed, business and energy industry unfriendly plans from being hoisted on Americans. A cynical dividend from this is that Obama embraced ramped up offshore drilling before the BP spill. The GOP’s mantra was drill, baby, drill. It relentlessly carried oil industry’s bucket for it and waged a two decade war against environmentalists to open up Alaska, and the coastal waterways, for drilling. Another cynical dividend is that the GOP gets to knock Obama for supposed lax regulation and oversight of the oil industry, the very things that it always regards as a plague on big business.

The GOP will paint Obama as weak, ineffectual, and clueless in the face of a major crisis. During campaign 2008, Republican presidential foe John McCain and mate Sarah Palin pounded him as an untested, greenhorn novice on terrorism and foreign policy. When the first major crisis hit, supposedly he’d come unglued. The crisis McCain and company had in mind was a major terrorist strike on US soil. That hasn’t happened. But BP did, and it’s as good a substitute as any for the GOP to ream Obama as inexperienced and frozen in place when it comes to taking decisive action to confront a crisis. It wasted no time in trying to plant the vision in the public mind of a comatose Obama reacting the way Bush did to Katrina. The vision hasn’t stuck mostly because the comparison is bogus, and the public hasn’t bought it.

The BP spill, though, does pose a grave political danger to Obama. The longer it takes to fully cap the well, the door stays wide open for the GOP to rivet public attention on the damage, spin it as the greatest environmental disaster in American history, and stoke public anger at Obama and the government’s supposed ineptitude. The Bush administration was hopelessly crippled after its gigantic Katrina bauble. The GOP banks the same thing will happen again and that voters will misconnect the political dots and punish incumbents in November for the perceived weakness or incompetence of the administration in power in dealing with a horrific disaster. In this case, the administration is Obama’s and the incumbents targeted are Democrats. More than a few Democrats have taken the cue, and remained stone silent on the crisis.

Obama has acted diligently, responsibly and professionally in dealing with an unexpected crisis that would have caught any administration off guard. A significant number of Americans understand this and even those critical of Obama for his handling of the spill still tag BP as the real bad guy. Still, no matter how well managed, disasters carry political risks, the BP spill is no different. The GOP will do everything it can to tag it as Obama’s disaster.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

GOP’s Calling Gulf Spill Obama’s Katrina Bogus

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

This one could have been mailed in. Sarah Palin predictably knocked President Obama for as she put it in garbled colloquialism failing to “dive in there” and solve the Gulf spill disaster. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and a rash of GOP senators were slightly more grammatically intelligible but still pounced on Obama for being too cozy with BP and not pulling out all stops to staunch the spill. The GOP’s political attack plan is crude and transparent. Compare the Gulf spill to Bush’s Katrina bumble, liken Obama to Bush and heap the same blame on him.

It won’t fly. Before Katrina hit, government tracking systems, weather satellites, and countless news reports warned that the hurricane potentially posed a grave threat to New Orleans and the Gulf. Bush administration officials well knew this. They also knew that the sea walls there were in terrible shape and could give way. When the storm hit, Bush hesitated, dithered, and minimized the immediate impact of the storm, and made no effort to counter the wild, sensational and thoroughly false reports of looting, rape and vandalism. The colossal loss of property, the thousands dead and injured, the horrendous displacement of residents were the direct result of government ineptitude. Five years later thousands remain uprooted, and whole neighborhoods remain gutted. New Orleans and the Gulf are still paying the high price for Bush’s abysmal delay. After an international army of volunteers and donors sped aid and relief to the area, Bush eventually recovered and kicked relief efforts into high gear.

Obama’s response to the Gulf spill stands in stark contrast. He sent cabinet secretaries, and an armada of homeland security, Environmental Protection Agency, FEMA and Coast Guard personnel, engineers, scientists, technicians and clean-up workers to the Gulf; more than 20,000 responders in all. There are multiple staging areas, and ships in the area involved in the clean-up. Nearly 2 million feet of containment boom, and a million gallons of chemical dispersant have been used to fight the spill. Obama has asked Congress for $130 million for clean-up operations. The White House has churned out reams of releases, statements, and reports to keep the public updated on the progress and problems in containing the spill.

Obama correctly points the blame finger at BP and oil executives for their duck and dodge of full responsibility for the spill, and their inability to successfully contain it. They deserve the blame. But as environmental disasters go, off shore drilling spills are rare. The industry’s forty year safety record on drilling has been fairly good. But the BP mess shows that all it takes is one drill disaster to cancel out the industry’s record and paint the industry as a greedy, safety plagued, environmentally irresponsible menace.

The spill should be a wake-up call on the potential and real hazards of ultra deep water oil drilling, and the urgent need to devise new and better safety and equipment standards and controls. The Obama administration has been hands on in supervising BP’s efforts to stop the spill. This provides it with terrible but needed teaching moment on the need for the government to ramp up oversight and monitoring of the industry. And beyond that for the Obama administration to rethink and reexamine the potentially devastating environmental hazards and drawbacks of expanded off shore drilling as well as its potential to dent America’s energy dependent shackle.

Public opinion polls now show that more than half of Americans say they disapprove of Obama’s handling of the disaster. An even bigger percentage says they have no confidence in the government’s ability to prevent another spill. The public’s heightened jitters over the spill are understandable given the nightmare environmental messes that the oil industry has at times made in the past. The public is also right to be deeply suspicious and outraged over the far too lax and cozy relationship between government regulatory agencies and the oil industry.

The Gulf spill, though, is not solely an environmental catastrophe to Palin and the GOP or even a matter to them of government officials in bed with an industry. If that was there real concern they’d point the same blame finger at themselves as they do at Obama for their sweetheart relation with the oil industry. According to the Sunlight Foundation, BP has dumped six million in campaign contributions to congresspersons in past years. Seven of the top ten recipients of BP contributions have been GOP senators and congress persons, and one of the principal recipients has been GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But the facts are irrelevant. The Gulf spill is simply too juicy a political opportunity for the GOP to pass up to ream President Obama for a disaster that he could not foresee, did not make, and has made a best effort to solve. What better way to drive the political nail in the box than to call the Gulf spill the politically loaded Obama’s Katrina. It’s a bogus call.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).

Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

The Dubious Company Rand Paul May Keep

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Kentucky GOP senate nominee Rand Paul took withering heat for knocking the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Paul's kind of, sort of recant further fueled fierce debate over whether he is a homegrown bigot or a principled libertarian. It's worth noting that Paul said much worse about civil rights in a May 2002 letter to the editor in response to the Bowling Green Daily News editorial on enforcing the Federal Fair Housing Act. He rapped the editorial, "Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate."

As bad as his 2002 letter affirming the right to racially discriminate there's a Paul issue that's even more ominous. That's the dubious company that he may keep. It's an odd ball and dangerous assortment of fringe gun nut, bible spouting home schoolers, global conspiracy theorists and abolish government organizations, all backed by fundamentalist race and gender baiting preachers. The groups are linked directly and indirectly through the unofficial Paul related takebackkentucky website. Here's a list and a short take on some of the choicest organizations in the unofficial Paul network.

(www.amerikanexpose.com). This is a group that believes that the United States uses weather control to assail and control other nations, and that the country is under the direct control of the United Nations - without any real sovereignty of its own. This links to (www.freedomadvocates.org). This is a group which appears to believe that the concept of "sustainable development," (both economic and environmental), are actually plots to deny the "liberties" of the peoples of the world, and exert sinister control of population growth movement of sovereign nations. For a representative sample of their literature see (www.freedomadvocates.org/images/pdf/DDDoA.sml.pdf). The subject of the publication refers to a deliberate "dumbing down" of America in preparation for a "socialist" takeover.

(www.afaky.com).
This site connects directly to the Take Back Kentucky/Kentucky Taxpayers United site. It is ultra-religious and seeks to directly influence the outcome of local and national elections. It provides a storehouse of information about politicians involved with these organizations. (http://www.afaky.com/Show.aspx?id=12&m=19). This is the URL to register for the site (votervoice.net/groups/afaky/register). Also on this page is (http://www.afaky.com/Show.aspx?id=111), which discusses punishments for "Hate Crimes." The American Family Association of Kentucky considers it to be inappropriate to tell ministers that they cannot discriminate against homosexuals or other unchristian individuals.

Next there's (www.chek.org). This is the site of the Christian Home Educators of Kentucky. They have waged a ferocious fight against state mandates and controls on how home schooled children are educated by their parents. The emphasis is on a Christian education, which includes the concepts of dispensationalism (their term), American exceptionalism, and strong opposition to secular institutions.
The list wouldn't be complete without the obligatory links to rightwing gun lobby advocacy groups. The prime gun group listing (gunowners.org) is based in Virginia.

It's one of the most outspoken rightside pro gun groups in the nation.
The link to (www.youdontsay.org) links to all manner of websites. It has links to Jewish extremist sites, sites advocating direct confrontation with progressive groups, vigilante sites, and sites linked directly to vigilantes and militias.
Some organization listed express a genuine fear of what is known as "Real ID Tags." These are proposed radio tracking devices that these organizations fear the federal government will require be worn by all Americans at some point in the future. The language employed by these organizations in describing their fears in this area is something best described as "panic speech."

Then there's (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bible-smack-radio) where the Reverend Matt Singleton holds forth on such enlightened topics as whether the supposedly mythological creatures of the Bible match the fossil record. Singleton also appears to believe that the Catholic Church is on course to take over America.
For the curious here's the complete list of recommended and affiliated groups on the "unofficial" takebackkentucky.net site.

Rolling Thunder(National)
Greasy OnlineGun Owners of America
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
Armed Females of America
Legally Armed
Women Against Gun Control
Citizens committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Second Amendment Foundation
Law Enforcement Alliance of America
NRA-ILA
Second Amendment Committee
Keep and Bear Arms
Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed
Save the Guns
Kentuckians for the Right to Bear Arms (KRBA)
Take Back Kentucky
League of Kentucky Property Owners
freedom.org
Jefferson Review
Congressman Ron Paul
Take Back Florida
Sovereignty International, Inc.
Libertarian Party of Kentucky
Meade County Citizens for Better Government
http://www.cpky.org/
Kentucky Motorcycle Assoc. / K.B.A.
Take Back Maryland
These groups are among the most extreme, xenophobic, homophobic and gender and racial hostile groups in the country. Paul has not publicly said that he supports or receives support from any of these groups. He doesn't have too. He's their champion and the takebackkentucky site makes that amply clear.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Why Didn’t Rand Paul Fire His Racially Suspect Spokesperson?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The news hit last December that there was a racially inflammatory picture of the lynching of a black man next to a smiling cherubic picture of three young happy go lucky whites captioned “Happy N….Day” on senate campaign spokesperson Chris Hightower’s myspace website. Rand Paul issued this statement. “I have never heard a single utterance of racism from this staffer nor do I believe him to have any racist tendencies. However, it is impossible to present the ideas and reforms we need in this country with this controversy present. Therefore I have accepted his resignation."

What’s wrong with this? Where to begin? The racially vile picture was posted on the site on January 2008. It’s irrelevant whether Hightower posted it or not (and he didn’t say) or by a nut case prankster. It stayed there for nearly two years was viewed and commented on by countless site visitors and many others. It was removed only after a mild furor about it. The furor became a furor only after Paul emerged as a serious contender for the GOP senate nomination in Kentucky. So the ancient question again is what did Paul (or Hightower) know about the posting and when did he know about it? And if he didn’t know anything about it which we still don’t know for a fact, why didn’t he know about it? Hightower was not some low level campaign grunt. He was Paul’s main spokesperson.

Now there’s Rand’s statement on Hightower’s resignation. Note carefully that he remorsefully and regretfully accepted it with the obligatory denunciation of racism. But Paul did not fire him. He did not even reprimand him. He did not promise a sweeping, thorough investigation of how this kind of blatant racist taunt could filter into anything that remotely touched on his campaign. Nor did he publicly threaten to ban in Boston anyone who remotely allowed the use of a site connected with his campaign to post or spew racially vile material. A few libertarian sites took Paul to task for his muted response to Hightower and questioned whether Paul took the issue seriously enough. They chided him for not taking a more aggressive stance against it. It was indeed a teaching moment that Paul could have used to make it clear racism has no place in his campaign, and anyone that goes there with that will get the swift boot.

Democrats, civil rights leaders, and a wave of commentators have gotten hoarse screaming at the tea party leaders to speak out against the party’s unabashed bigots and the displays of racial hate. The pleas have fallen on deaf ears the tea party top. The simple reason is that it would cut its throat if it denounced its racists and racism, and really meant it. The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, joker posters, N word slurs, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flag waving by tea party activists is and has been an indispensable political necessity for the movement.
Just as Chris Hightower about that. Paul for sure didn’t.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Will Race Trip up Rand Paul Too?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Kentucky GOP senate candidate Rand Paul may or may not learn what his father Ron learned. And that’s when you pop off on the always thorny issue of race there’s a consequence. The horrid thing is that the consequence might not be the same for Rand as it was for dad. The senior Paul and his backers went apoplectic during presidential campaign 2008 when it was amply and correctly pointed out that Ron Paul’s official newsletter was stuffed with oft color unabashed racial jibes and barbs. It bashed Martin Luther King Jr. as a "pro-Communist philanderer." It declared that the 1992 L.A. riots petered out “when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks." And it branded black males as "the criminals who terrorize our cities -- in riots and on every non-riot day.” And then assured the reason for that is they were genetically engineered “to hate whites and to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible."

An outraged Ron Paul vehemently denied that he uttered the vile racial slurs and claimed that he did not know they were said or written by him or anyone else in his camp. The colossal problem with his denial was that the racial bile appeared in his officially approved newsletters. There was no evidence then or later that he wrote a correction, issued a clarification, or even as he hinted they were written by someone else, and, if so, that he publicly disavowed and fired that someone else.
Ron Paul had to denounce the racially loaded quips in 2008 because for a brief moment he was deliriously embraced by thousands as the populist alternative to the supposedly hopelessly corrupt, bought and paid for, corporate interest Democrat and Republicans presidential candidates. Paul’s fanatic backer’s mix of blind adulation and desperation meant more media and public scrutiny than Paul had ever gotten. That in turn meant that his past, or alleged past words, were now wide open for public dissection and accountability. The senior Paul knew that he had to indignantly deny he wrote or uttered anything that could be construed as fanning racial bigotry. The issue quickly faded mostly because Paul’s presidential candidacy quickly faded.

Things may be different with Rand. There’s his widely quoted smoking gun interview with the Louisville Courier Journal in which he blew off the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a slap against private businesses’ right to racially discriminate. He had a second and third chance to eat his words in two separate interviews after his primary win. He blew both. He did the obligatory disavowal of racism, but did not back away from his belief that the Civil Rights Act went way too far in telling private businesses that they couldn’t racially discriminate. Junior Paul, unlike dad, is suddenly a national figure and counted on by legions of revved up tea party activists to carry the party flag into battle against President Obama. Rand hasn’t disappointed. He made it clear that he’ll pound Obama and his agenda at every turn.
Even if Rand, as his dad, didn’t trash the Civil Rights Act, his odd mish mash of ultra conservatism and libertarian pronouncements would mark him as racially suspect. A cornerstone of the jumble is his view of government and what it should or should not do about civil rights. Rand, as Ron, holds that government should have minimal or better still no role in civil rights laws and enforcement. The government passed and enforced civil rights laws, did nothing to solve the country's racial ills, and worse, fueled even more racial polarization, he says. That old, worn, and thoroughly discredited view warms the hearts of the packs of closet bigots who pine for the old days when racial and gender discrimination was the American norm and government did little to protect black and gay rights.

Rand pretty much said the same thing in the Courier-Journal interview. Any other time and place in recent American politics that would instantly make him unfit to hold any state or national office. And those who defend his view would be branded as bigots and crackpots. But this is not any other time or place. Rand, unlike Ron, has the most inviting and vulnerable target in President Obama to level his fire at. He has the cheers and backing of untold numbers who share his belief that the President is leading the country to social and financial ruin. They will do everything they can to drive him from the White House.

If Rand and company have to reach back nearly half a century and dredge up a monumental piece of legislation that totally remade the racial map in America to fire up the faithful, then so be it. After all, why let a little thing like racial bigotry trip a Paul up. Ron tipped around it. Rand will do the same. The frightening thing is that he may get away with it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Palin’s “Mama Grizzlies” Are Devouring the GOP Not Obama

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Sarah Palin recently told an anti-abortion activist group that “mama grizzlies” will eat up the Democrats in November and shove the country back into the GOP’s arms. Her home grown, home state animal kingdom analogy would have been more apt and frightening a year ago when the Tea Party first gathered steam. Then GOP leaders banked that the Tea Party would be their back channel hammer to pound Obama and the Democrats in November. Things went well in the beginning. The party’s angry protests, marches, and parades, the passion, zealotry, their sloganeering, name calling, their anti-tax, anti big government, and defense of freedoms code word racism boded well. President Obama seemed the perfect made-in-heaven foil. He's a moderate, African-American, Democrat who they recast as a closet unpatriotic, race baiting, socialist.

The set script, though, has suddenly radically changed. In quick succession, GOP stalwarts in Utah, Florida, Kentucky, and Maine, and John McCain in Arizona have either been knocked out the box or are under withering fire from Tea Party activists. The white hot anti-incumbent rhetoric in Tea Party circles is almost totally aimed at the GOP incumbents and candidates. Any hint from a GOP incumbent in their words, actions, or voting record of making nice with Democrats and Obama guarantees a tongue lash from Palin, and relentless hectoring, harassment, and even physical threats from street level activists. GOP leaders have slowly woke to the recognition that Tea Party activists will settle for nothing less than a full blown exorcism of any trace of moderation or compromise from the GOP.

The danger looms for the GOP that 2010 could be 1964 all over again. That was the year that a right insurgency powered by ferocious Deep South and Western opposition to the civil rights movement, legislative and court ordered desegregation, and pending civil rights rights bills rammed the GOP to the hard right and in that year’s presidential election, to political disaster. The GOP suffered mightily in the aftermath of LBJ and the Democrat’s landslide sweep. But the crushing defeat did not totally transform the GOP into a hard core rightwing opposition party. There were many conservative Republicans who were still willing to compromise, conciliate, and work when necessary with Democrats.

The best case in point is McCain. Pre-presidential candidate Obama’s ascension, he was widely held up as the standard model of the responsible, pragmatic, Republican conservative who was willing to reach across the congressional aisle to get things done. It’s a far different story in the Obama White House days. McCain’s sprouted wings on his heels in his mad dash to the right to keep his Senatorial job. His rush to the right typifies the GOP’s Catch 22 dilemma. He can’t win, or at least the perception is that he can’t win, by ticking off Tea Party activists. Yet, catering to them types him as a pandering, captive of the loose jointed right, shill.

Either case scenario poses the grave threat that the GOP could be a fractured, unhinged party months before the November showdown. Polls and surveys show this potentially chilling scenario. In a Pew survey 40 percent of Democrats say they have no faith in their elected representatives in Congress. That’s an all time low in the history of the Pew survey. But even fewer Republicans say that they have any faith in their congressional representatives. That’s a crushing load the GOP could drag into the fall elections. A pack of hard right candidates that carry the GOP banner will be a powerful turn-off to thousands of politically crucial independent voters. In past polls, many of them registered disgust, frustration and anger at Obama and the Democrat’s policies and signaled a willingness to shift back to the GOP. This could be out the window.

Then there’s Palin. She poses absolutely no threat to Obama’s solid or lukewarm Democratic base. The mere mention of her as a possible presidential candidate is more than enough to terrorize disappointed liberal Democrats out of their Obama inertia. The real damage that she can do will be to further confuse, rile up, and split Republicans. Polls show that while voters in general say Palin's not presidential timber, a huge minority of Republicans say that she is. This could translate into a stock of disgruntled, frustrated voters who would be sorely tempted to push, prod and hector the GOP to give Palin her due as a possible presidential candidate. This kind of talk will propel even more independents away from the GOP.
Palin can talk all day about “mama grizzlies” ousting Democrats from power in November and beyond. But the stark political reality is that so far the only ones who have been threatened or devoured wear the GOP tag. This wasn’t in the GOP mainstream’s script for Palin and the Tea Party.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Kagan’s Affirmative Action Achilles Heel

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will plop an issue back on the nation’s table that hasn’t been seen or heard from or about in what seems like ages. And that’s affirmative action. Even before her nomination the word furiously circulated in some circles that during her six year tenure as dean of Harvard University Law School, Kagan had an abominable record on recruiting and hiring minority professors.

At first glance, her record indeed looks atrocious. There were 29 new hires. They were 23 white men, 5 white women, and one Asian American woman; not one black or Latino professor in the bunch. When the dismal figure was released, the White House quickly pushed back. It issued a detailed fact sheet that essentially said that her zero hire of a black or Latino faculty member was grossly misleading. That Kagan had offered several African-American and Latino candidates visiting offers; visiting offers meaning invites to be a visiting lecturer. That’s not the same as a permanent offer for faculty spot. But the inference was that a visiting offer, if accepted, could lead to an offer of a permanent faculty position. That didn’t happen. The visiting offers were not accepted. That in itself is not a prima facie case to say that Kagan deliberately pushed diversity to the back burner at Harvard. Or even that she did not make a sincere effort to recruit minority faculty members. There are always factors, big, little and unseen in the business of faculty hires at major, even prestigious, universities. But Kagan’s motives and the effort she may have made to get a diverse faculty at Harvard Law in the end or a moot point.

Her record on minority hires still stands-- 29 faculty hires, and no black or Latino hires. This is hardly a moot point. There are two major reasons that President Obama nominated Kagan. The first is pragmatic politics. She already went through the confirmation wars as the administration’s solicitor general and is widely considered as a consensus building, judicial moderate. That’s least likely to ignite a prolonged, heated, and divisive fight over her nomination. The second reason is just as crucial. She is the supposedly the breathing embodiment of diversity.

At a presidential campaign appearance in 2007 Obama was emphatic in demanding that a Supreme Court pick be someone who had empathy for the poor, minorities, disabled and old. In the Senate he ferociously attacked and voted against the confirmation of Bush nominees John J. Roberts and Samuel Alito again precisely because they were hardly cheer leaders for diversity. In their views and rulings they were hard line conservative ideologues who did everything possible to subvert diversity. Obama promised there would be no ideological litmus test in his court picks. However diversity seemed clearly a prime consideration in his choice of a high court judge.
This is not an academic numbers balancing act to get the requisite black, Latino and women on the court. The issue of diversity is a fierce battleground in law and public policy. There are countless cases that invariably wind up contested before the high court on gender, age, disability, and racial discrimination, abortion, the death penalty, prisoner and victim rights, and corporate practices. The issues are highly complex, raise important legal and social questions, and are always contentious. Kagan will be in the thick of the court debate on these cases for years to come.
Conservative judicial watchdog groups know the importance of the diversity battle in court rulings better than any other group. They watch hawk like all potential Supreme Court picks, and they wage endless war in their journals, news articles, on blogs, and in position papers on the need for strict constructionist, diversity neutral judicial picks. They have and will continue to rush to the barricades in their fight to insure that a high court pick will be free of any leaning toward opinions and views that tilt toward a bias for minority rights. They will rally public opinion and Senate Republicans to battle against any such judicial pick.
The irony is that Kagan’s blurred record on diversity faculty hiring at Harvard Law School may be a plus and actually keep her out of harm’s way from conservative critics at least on the issue of affirmative action. This will and should trouble liberals and progressives who want and expect that President Obama’s high court nominee take a stand, a firm stand on the one issue that matters a lot to them and from the president’s oft spoken words to him as well, and that’s a solid commitment to diversity. The jury is still out on Kagan on this one.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Black Tea Party Activists Say Don’t Call Us Traitors

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

There was mild surprise when a small contingent of black tea party bloggers and writers screamed loudly that Georgia Congressman John Lewis made up that he was spit on and called the N word as he left the Cannon office building across from the Capitol in the hours before the final vote on the health care reform bill. The black tea party activists demanded that Democrats produce the tapes to prove that Lewis was attacked.

The black tea partiers were lambasted as Uncle Toms, Oreos and worst of all, traitors. They’ve heard all this before, many times before. Some of them have turned the smears into a badge of pride, and say that more blacks should, and even quietly do, back the tea party’s avowed goal of tax cuts, small government, and defense of individual rights. Their claim is a tough sell, mostly because tea party leaders have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly by saying and doing nothing about the Confederate flags, Texas Lone Star flags, and the borderline racist signs and slogans that are waved and brandished at tea party rallies. This further feeds the deep suspicion that the tea party movement is chock full of unreconstructed bigots driven to hysteria by the mere thought of a black man in the White House.

Then there’s the GOP. Its relentless, take no prisoners, four decade war with civil rights leaders, the Congressional Black Caucus, and now Obama has further deepened fear and loathing among blacks of anyone and anything that carries the Republican stamp. The black tea party activists in almost all cases mark themselves with that stamp. But blacks and the GOP and now the tea party is not a total oxymoron.
Blacks have always been either in or on the fringe within the GOP during its metamorphosis over the last half century from the multi-racial party of Lincoln, champion of federal protections, and civil rights to a white man’s party that touts states rights, promotes racial division, and that uses championing small government, defense of constitutional freedoms and individual rights as hidden racial code words.

The motives of the blacks that have stayed loyal to the GOP are varied. Some have found the GOP a good hustle. They’ve been showered with political favors, money, and PR promotion. For others the GOP is a contrarian fad to boast that aren’t part of the nation of sheep pack that pay blind allegiance to the Democrats and President Obama. Then others sincerely buy the tea party claim that taxes and big government hurt blacks too.

The seed of their attraction to the tea party movement was planted six years ago during the presidential campaign of 2004. Bush through an adroit mix of emotional appeals, political messaging, and faith based largesse to a select few high profile black evangelicals stirred the hard feeling of many blacks toward abortion, gay rights, and their defense of family values. This paid big political dividends in the must win states of Florida and Ohio. The double-digit bump up he got in the black vote padded his comfort vote margin to bag both states and the White House.

It didn’t last. Bush’s colossal Katrina flub turned the grumbles from those blacks who defected to him during the election into a stampede away from him and the GOP. The still strong current of religious evangelicalism, and anti-gay, anti-abortion, sentiment and the targeting of government as the villain behind them, coupled with mounting economic insecurity, still struck a small chord among some blacks. The off the chart black vote for Obama didn’t entirely change that. Their vote was in part a general contempt and loathe of Bush policies, repulsion at the marginal thinly veiled race tinged appeals, and Sarah Palin, and in part a rally round the brother.
Republican National Chair Michael Steele paid some initial lip service to the need for greater diversity in the GOP but that didn’t last either. He was quickly regarded as a comic mouthpiece for the GOP’s non-stop pound of Obama. This insured that any black that uttered even a faint word of sympathy for the GOP would earn the tag of traitor.

The tea party, though, seems to be another story. It’s loose, disjointed, populist pitch with seemingly no direct tie to the GOP mainstream seems a safe haven for some blacks to vent their opposition to big government and high taxes while declaring disdain for Democrats. The record 37 blacks running as Republicans in the fall elections in majority or heavily white vote districts bank that they can rally tea party activists to their banner. That may be delusionary thinking. But the fact that they’re willing to try is their way of saying don’t call us traitors for our political beliefs. They have a point.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Arizona Anti Immigration Law Puts President Obama on the Spot

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

President Obama wasted no time in denouncing Arizona’s hard-nosed anti-immigration law. He called it misguided, irresponsible and a threat to civil liberties. Obama’s right. The bill is wasteful, unenforceable, and more ominously virtually a license for police to engage in racial profiling. But it’s also popular in Arizona and judging from polls and underground sentiment of millions of Americans on immigration, popular with them too.

Arizona official’s claim they had to act in large part because the federal government has dithered, stalled, and back pedaled countless times on enacting comprehensive immigration reform. This in effect dumps the immigration reform issue squarely back in Obama’s lap. In the coming days immigration reform leaders, Hispanic activist groups, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus almost certainly will ratchet up their demand and efforts to get Obama to get the ball rolling on a reform bill in Congress. The demand couldn’t come at a worse time for Obama.
The loss of thousands of jobs, with official unemployment still nudging double digit, African-American joblessness far higher, and with low wage American workers bearing the brunt of the downturn presents a wedge for immigration foes. They will again hammer that undocumented workers snatch jobs from needy American workers. The charge has been hotly disputed but it still touches a raw nerve.
There’s still the loose network of anti-immigration organizations, and the legions of right wing talk jocks, Tea Party activists, and Fox News Network talking heads who can stir the troops to oppose any reform. The stock attack charge that any immigration reform bill is a de facto reward for breaking the law still ignites anger and passion in many Americans. Arizona governor Jan Brewer tied her signing the bill into law into another issue that ignites even greater passion and anger. And that’s crime. She flatly said that the law would help protect her state from crime from Mexico. The governor cited no evidence to show that immigration has bumped the state’s crime rate up. But then again she didn’t have to. The frightening shots of bullet riddled, hacked up bodies that have become regular news features on American TV screens from the low intensity warfare in Mexico between government forces and the drug cartels and with each other is more than enough to stir nightmare terror in many Americans that a wave of illegal immigrants flooding the country will turn America’s streets into blood drenched streets.

Immigration reform also can’t be separated from partisan politics. The two special elections slated in May in Hawaii and Pennsylvania are toss ups and a loss of either of the seats to Republicans would further add to Democrat’s fears that the three hammer blows they suffered in losing a revered Senate seat in Massachusetts, and governorships in Virginia and New Jersey were not aberrations. With November mid-term elections fast approaching and the real danger that Democrats could lose big in them, picking a fight that’s bound to be even more contentious and divisive than the health care battle is just too great a risk.
Obama has a major fight on his hands to get a financial reform bill passed. There’s the risk that the concessions he and Senate Democrats made to Republicans to quickly get the bill passed could alienate many liberal and progressive Democrats who want to see the toughest possible consumer protections in place against the ravages of big banks and financial houses. They were the driving force behind his election win and the White House banks on them their numbers and passion to help blunt the momentum of Tea Party activists in the fall, and beyond.

Obama gave immigration reform short shrift in his State of the Union back in February, and this rankled immigration reform backers. They loudly protested that the president reneged on his promise to them to make comprehensive emigration reform a centerpiece of his agenda. In the months since then they have hammered at Obama to make good on the promise with the vague hint that if he doesn’t, more than a few Latino voters may just be tempted to stay home in the fall and beyond.
Arizona may have taken the option of watch and wait caution off the White House table. And that puts Obama on the spot.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His nationally heard talk show is on KTYM-AM 1460 AM Los Angeles, Fridays 9:30 AM and KPFK Pacifica Radio 90.7 Los Angeles, Saturdays Noon PST.

Recycling the Angry White Male

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

A recent New York Time/CBS poll confirmed the obvious. Tea Party activists are overwhelmingly white, male, conservative, lower income, and GOP leaning. Nearly all passionately believe that President Obama is shoving the country to socialism. All lambaste the federal government for giving the company store away to the poor. The poor in this case are blacks. That race lurks perilously just beneath the surface with Tea Party activists is beyond dispute. To many the equation is government programs equal hand outs to undeserving blacks and the poor and that in turn equals money snatched from the pockets of hard working whites.

This is nothing new. It’s just a recycle of the media buzz depiction of the angry white male. The term was coined by political analyst and then GOP strategist Kevin Phillips during Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1968. Nixon stoked the fury of blue collar, white ethnics, rural voters with his slam of the Democrats for coddling criminals, welfare cheats, and fostering a culture of anything goes permissiveness, and of course, big government Great Society pandering to the poor. The crude thinly disguised code words and racial cues worked. Nixon eked out a narrow victory over Democratic presidential opponent Hubert Humphrey. The tag of law and order and permissiveness became a staple in the GOP attack play book for the next four decades. With tweaks and refinements, Reagan, Bush Sr. and W. Bush used it to ease their path to the White House. In the mid 1990s, Newt Gingrich and ultra conservatives recycled the strategy to seize Congress, and pound out an agenda that made big government, tax and spend Democrats, and soft on crime liberals the fall guys for everything wrong with America. It touched the familiar nerve with white males.

The volatile mix of big government and economics that can whip frustrated, rebellious, angry whites (and more than a few non-whites) into a tizzy far better than crude race baiting, magnificently for a reason that goes beyond race alone. Many blue-collar white males were losing ground to minorities and women in the workplace, schools, and in society. The trend toward white male poverty and alienation became more evident in the early 1980s when nearly 10 million Americans were added to the poverty rolls, more than half from white, male-headed families. Two decades later, the number of white men in poverty has continued to expand.
Hate groups, anti-Obama Web sites and bloggers, and radio talk jocks can craft this as the prime reason for the anger and alienation that many white males feel toward health care and, by extension, Obama while convincing themselves and the public that this has nothing to do with race. This translates to even more fear, rage and distrust of big government. The vintage blends of anti-government politics and calls defending personal freedom were the neo-libertarian war cries heard at the Conservative Political Action Conference and the tea party convention. Protests over big government dwarfed the subtle and overt race-baiting appeals that were seen and heard at both conventions.

Tea party activists hammer Obama, the Democrats, big government, the elites, and Wall Street. Yet, they also grouse about abortion, family values, gay rights, and tax cuts -- not race.

Rightwing populism, with its mix of xenophobia, loath of government as too liberal, too tax-and-spend, and too permissive, and a killer of personal freedom has been the engine that powered Reagan and Bush White House wins. Scores of GOP governors, senators and members of congress have used wedge issues to win office and maintain political dominance. The GOP grassroots brand of populism has stirred millions operating outside the confines of the mainstream Republican Party. In 2008, many of these voters stayed home. Even Sarah Palin wasn't enough to budge them. Their defection was more a personal and visceral reaction to the bumbles of George W. Bush than a radical and permanent sea change in overall white voter sentiment. They were ripe for the tea party movement -- or any movement that keyed their anger and frustration into action.

The supposed proof that the tea party movement is loaded with bigots and driven by race frenzy is that tea party leaders won't denounce the racists in their ranks. That won’t happen. One the movement would have to be structured, layered, and regimented with a unitary agenda and program for that to be the case. It's the disparate, disjointed and scrambled headless amoeba that makes the tea party movement potent, appealing and dangerous. But it won’t happen because the for more than foru decade history of politics the dangerous blend of big government, undeserving, crime prone, poor and minorities, and put upon whites has been so deeply encoded in the political thinking of millions of whites, that it’s the government not race that matters, true or not.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).