I’m a Southern Conservative and I’m Not Racist
Tonight, for various reasons, I had to watch Christ Matthews. I’ve never been more insulted.
During the third segment of his show, he discussed the Carville report that investigated the anger on the right. They are shocked! SHOCKED! that race never came up. Despite a Daily Kos poll that found 23% of Southerners believe Obama was not born in this country.
1. What does racism and the birther conspiracy have to do with each other?
2. Why the hell would someone believe a Daily Kos poll would be accurate, particularly when polling on an issue that opposes those found on the blog? That’s like Glenn Beck sponsoring a poll about the benefits of expanding the stimulus.
I have never been more insulted. It’s absolutely ridiculous that Democrats won’t get over this race issue. Even when presented with Democratic data that conservatives are not motivated by race, they still refuse to believe it.
Yes, there are racist individuals out there, but racism exists in every ethnicity and race. There are white people who hate black people. There are black people who hate white people. During my work in nonprofits, I spent a lot of time writing grants about building bridges between the black and Latino communities. Think there are racial issues between black and white people? That’s nothing compared to the massive issues between those two communities.
I could absolutely care less about what race Obama is. Obama could be a reptilian alien from the planet Zornog and as long as he supported policies that grow the government, take over health care, support abortion, raise taxes and penalize capitalism, I will oppose him. Can I express that any more clearly?
Conservatives are angry for very specific and very easy to understand reasons:
1. Out-of-control spending and skyrocketing debt
2. Expansion of government
3. Decreasing our liberties
4. Rampant illegal immigration
How can we collectively make this any clearer to the left? We gathered in our cities. We organized about it online. We marched on Washington. If liberals refuse to acknowledge that a majority of people in this country are angry because of their actions and their policies, it’s not our fault if 2010 doesn’t go so well for them. It’s not like there are warning signs…
October 17th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
[...] Conservative » I’m a Southern Conservative and I’m Not RacistPosted 5 hours [...]
October 17th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
It’s just the easiest way that they have come up with that they feel can magically turn any argument that we have into, ITNSHO, total rubbish.
I knew the moment that Obama was elected that I would have to endure 4 years at least (please no…. though I cannot imagine who we can field) of constantly being tarred as a racist for daring to disagree with The One.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Answers:
1. The birther conspiracy theory claims that the first African-American president of the United States is actually ineligible to serve (and also, presumably, actually an illegal immigrant) because he was born in a foreign country. Now, if there were good evidence for this, the racism link would be tenuous at best. But, instead, the conspiracy theory has been shot down over and over and over again. Anyone who bothers looking at the evidence can see that Obama was born in Hawaii.
The only “reality” that the conspiracy rests on, in other words, is that our current, legitimate president “seems” foreign, compared to the other folks who have held his office – he has a funny-sounding name, he’s related to some Muslims, and he’s black. That’s got a pretty blatant, racial (and racist) dimension to it.
2. This one’s pretty simple, actually. Kos’ polls are conducted by a hired, non-partisan firm, Research 2000. R2000’s not some hack, “pay for the results you want”-type company, either – 538’s statistical analysis of various pollsters found that it has a lower “pollster-introduced error” than the average poll-conductor, as well as a lower p.i.e. than CNN, ABC, CBS, Zogby, or Gallup.
Basically, the mainstream media can cite Kos’ polls because the people doing Kos’ polls are as good or better at conducting objective polls than the mainstream media sources themselves.