Is it a dog whistle if humans can hear it too?
“It’s important that Republicans talk about the importance of addressing illegal immigration,” DeMint tells [National Review Online]. “This is a long-term problem that impacts our economy and the heritage of our country. At the same time, [Republicans] need to be clear about the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants — heralding the importance of addressing the latter.”
The White House and Hill Democrats “don’t want a solution here,” DeMint laments. “They want continued trouble so we can be cast as demagogues — so they can say Republicans are against immigrants. Let’s realize that these big demonstrations against Arizona’s law are union organized and focus on the addressing how to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants in this country. It’s about our survival and safety as a nation.”
The emphasis is mine.
It’s ridiculous for Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina to tell us in one breath that he opposes illegal Latino immigration because it is a threat to the heritage of our country and then get indignant in the next breath that we accuse him being against Latinos.
DeMint is flat-out telling us he doesn’t like the browning of America. It wouldn’t matter if the immigration was all formal and legal, it would still brown America and DeMint would still oppose it. He’s a racist. If he wants to maintain the racial balance of this country he ought to support universal single-payer health care. Then maybe a white person from Canada or Australia or Europe would be able to get the same time types of benefits here that they already get at home. And maybe they’d immigrate here in much larger numbers. As it stands, white people have a better deal where they’re living right now so they’re staying put. Of course, there’s a bunch of Greeks who are newly eligible to join our sustenance class cleaning hotel bathrooms and folding sheets. Maybe DeMint can get them some green cards.
Ah, but they’d only join the SEIU and vote against Republicans. It never ends.
I look on in wonder at how all of conservatism seems to be represented by Homer Stokes. Everything they’ve done recently is explained by the world view represented in this speech:
Homer Stokes: [as Grand Kleagle at a KKK rally] Brothers! Oh, brothers! We have all gathered here, to preserve our hallowed culture and heritage! We aim to pull evil up by the root, before it chokes out the flower of our culture and heritage! And our women, let’s not forget those ladies, y’all. Looking to us for protection! From darkies, from Jews, from papists, and from all those smart-ass folks say we come descended from monkeys!
such a classic quote. It ends on such a great punch line.
When the Cohen brothers wrote that, it was meant as parody. Somehow in the decade or so since, it has turned into official Republican policy.
The mind boggles… it does.
those guys are geniuses.
Lol, like I told TarHeel the other day, they always manage to expose their racism somewhere along the line.
“I think that Republicans have a deep seated hatred of people who aren’t white.”
I like it when digby reminds everyone that American conservatism and talks of socialism are both racist in their roots. It’s an important reminder because people constantly forget.
Republicans have built their political fortunes on voters who have a deep-seated hatred of people who are not white. And until recently, they could successfully seem reasonable and dogwhistle the racists at the same time. Journalists especially in the Reagan years were suckers for affable every time. But now in retreat, they have become strident and Fox News and Rush and Glenn Beck provide them cover for their stridency.
They’re trying to make it fashionable once again to be blatantly racist. And that includes Republicans from outside the South. Watch how Christie starts moving in New Jersey and the GOPers from Indiana. You are seeing an attempt to nationalize racism as a wedge issue.
I developed a kinda of stupid test. Whenever you hear a Senator like DeMint or Kris Kobach speak. Change the work “Illegal” to Jewish or Jew depending on the grammar. And “boom goes the dynamite” their callous nature and hidden nature of their hate speech is readily apparent.
Wow. The ignorance…it hurts. I would tell them to take an ethnic studies class, but those are being banned because if our people knew what we did…
they are who we thought they were.
nobody remotely thinks that DeMint believes anything other than this.
of course, he’s a racist.
I thought that much was a given.
As the President would say, DeMint is proud of being ignorant.
He is not ignorant. He is very clear what he is doing. He just doesn’t care. He is just trying to recover from his Waterloo.
For DeMint, “heritage of our country” means white, English-speaking, Christian, “conservative”, pro-business. He should be happy. Illegal immigration counts as pro-business and Christian. Two out of five shouldn’t be so bad. Especially since the GOP just squandered the “conservative” card.
But in context of the rest of his statement, it is clear that it is not even a dog whistle. It very clearly says, “If you’re brown, get out of town.”
DeMint is a racist. He went to the same high school that I did but after de-segregation, graduating in the midst of the quiet troubles and white resistance to school-board ordered desegregation. Oh, the high school was named after a Confederate general who led the home rule movement in South Carolina and was the first home rule governor. Thus his appeal to “heritage”. And he most likely learned his conservatism from the proselytizing William Buckley fan that taught me US History.
Second, it’s not two out of five; it’s one out of five for many of the people listening to DeMint’s “dog whistle”.
For them, illegal immigration means Mexicans which means Catholics who, at best, aren’t really Christian, and at worst, are the whore of Babylon.
In the 1920s, when the Klan had an estimated 5 million members, it was commonly understood that KKK stood for opposition to “Koons, Kikes, and Katholics”.
DeMint and his followers are (in some cases literally, in some cases not) the grandchildren of the 1920s Klan.
This isn’t the 1920s. The alliance between Roman Catholics and evangelicals on the issues of abortion and homosexuality have moderated attitudes a bit. Plus Mormons have taken the place of Catholics in the “not really Christian” category.
DeMint and his followers are also in fact the grandchildren of FDR Democrats as well.
Your point is well taken, but times have changed since 1920 — even in the South, even in South Carolina. When I was growing up, folks who used the N word with abandon were shocked by “kike”, “polak”, “spic”, and “dago” ethnic epithets. Now, not so much. It is the N-word that is now “ugly”. I suppose folks cut slack for “exotics” or for some degree of political correctness.
I greatly doubt that first-generation Greek immigrants would fit DeMint’s definition of “the heritage of our country” either. They didn’t get a chance to become members of the slave-owning class.
Most colonists to the Southern colonies and their descendants didn’t get a chance to become members of the slave-owning class either. And ironically, some of these racist yokels are descendants of dirt farmers who never owned slaves. Don’t know about DeMint’s dad’s family. His mother was a Batson, who were small farmers in the mountainous part of South Carolina.