From comments on Media Matters’ Web Site following this video clip (comments edited for length):
I mentioned in another post that the N-Word is creeping closer to the lips of these ‘commentators.’ Who will be first? OR are they afraid? — princeofwheels
You’re not the only one. I fully expect to see Rush galloping through the cobblestone streets on the back of a dying nag screaming “The n-word is coming! The n-word is coming!” — snoopy
Well, it appears someone has given up.
Someone has given up on appealing to Latinos. Someone has given up on reaching out to blacks. Someone has thrown up their hands to the sky and said, “Fuck it. Let’s just do what we always do. I’m too lazy and too old for this new fangled, ‘we are the world’ crizzap. Pass me the bottle of Haterade, vintage 1968!”
With Republican party leaders so constrained by ideological blinders that none of their positions is likely to produce gains among non-white minorities, especially Hispanics, the GOP is finding it has no real alternative but to revert to a “white voter” strategy.
To some extent, it’s working. The party’s opposition to President Obama’s agenda — particularly his cap-and-trade energy proposal and health care reform plan — is resonating strongly with disaffected white Democratic voters. Republican grievances about Obama, combined with race-baiting commentary from the far-right ideologues who have become some of the most dominant voices of the modern GOP, have led to a precipitous drop in the president’s approval ratings among whites.
It’s all very reminiscent of the party’s notorious Southern Strategy, which carried the GOP for decades. But that strategy backfired spectacularly in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and there’s no reason to think it will work any better in 2010 — especially given the ever-growing importance of the minority electorate. (Huffington Post)
Remember during the 2008 campaign when Obama said some folks, out of fear, cling to their religion and guns and he had to retract it because Hillary Clinton slapped him around over it in Pennsylvania? Yeah. He was just being honest. This is some serious sleeping with your shotgun and muttering “The President is a Kenyan Muslim illegal America-hating terrorist and this is all a dream!” while crying into your pillow at night.
Basically, the world has gone mad for a small segment of the US population. Up is down. Left is right and a black man is president. Gird your loins and hide your daughters. It’s time for the great, long not-so-post-racial freak-out.
The Henry Louis Gates arrest, the fall-out and the president’s initial reaction were just fodder for an anxious, crazy part of America to go back to the Holy Grail of what they new best. Race-baiting, sans code. Who can be bothered with code anyway when you’re THIS upset and the symbol of post-racialism is THIS huge? He’s the leader of the free world and there’s nothing they can do about it. Desperate times call for batshit insane measures.
The Gates affair was the opening right-wingers used to pummel Obama with race-based attacks—to prove that America’s first post-racial presidency was anything but. On July 26, Fox’s Brit Hume whined on air that “to be labeled a racist” in today’s America is very bad, which has “placed into the hands of certain people a weapon” that can be wielded against poor, defenseless white America. One might think that the existence of social opprobrium against racists was a good thing and certainly an improvement from the recent past in which such opprobrium was directed at interracial couples and it was commonly impossible for Southern blacks to vote.
Either way, run-amok anti-racism doesn’t seem to have stopped Hume’s Fox News colleague Glenn Beck, who opined on July 28 that Obama had “exposed himself as a guy” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people or white culture.”
Given that the roster of white people in Obama’s life includes his mother, his vice president, his chief of staff, his chief political aide, the majority of his Cabinet, etc., the hatred strikes me as unlikely to be all that deep-seated. Rather, as with the absurd campaign by Newt Gingrich and others to brand Judge Sonia Sotomayor a “Latina woman racist,” we’re seeing the extreme racial paranoia that has characterized the American right for decades.
These sentiments long predate Obama’s rise to the White House or any particular actions on his part. Popular conservative talk-radio host Michael Savage self-published a 1991 book called The Death of the White Male at a time when there wasn’t so much as a black member of the United States Senate. But it’s perhaps not surprising that America’s first African-American president would prompt an outburst of racial anxiety and racist attacks. Indeed, many observers were expecting more of this sort of thing during the campaign. That it’s only emerging in a big way now illustrates the paucity of appealing political leaders on the contemporary American right. During the presidential campaign, John McCain himself was, for obvious reasons, the most prominent face of American conservatism. And McCain was a practical politician looking to appeal to a majority. He was also a quite popular figure, whose approval rating remained over 50 percent even as he ultimately lost the election to an even-more-popular Obama. Under the circumstances, he had strong incentives to avoid the sort of hyper-ugly rhetoric that could easily prompt a backlash. (Matthew Yglesias, The Daily Beast)
It’s bad now and it’s only going to get worse. When you’re losing a battle (and for some folks an Obama presidency equals “Last Stand at the Alamo”), you’re going to bring out the panic buttons, panic rooms, “Everybody Panic!” in every scared, “Obama’s gonna take my guns” person in America. And you’re going to get race baiting. Lots and lots of race baiting. And while the Alamo was ultimately lost, the last thing we want is for racial progress to get sidelined and seduced by an air of complacency and false security while eating a meal of chicken and being entertained by the freakin’ Yellow Rose of Texas. Essentially, keep your eyes on the prize. We’re going to freedomland whether these bigots want to come or not. We’re GOING and they can’t stop us with their crying and whining. We’re going to get to the mountain top and they’re just going to have to bitch the whole way. I don’t care. Keep your focus because the worst is yet to come.
Live Your Best Life. 
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