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Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Year started, ends with partisan games
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The bad-boy governor ends the year with a game — a fitting end to an intensely partisan political year where virtually every public policy observation or action had an underlying Election Day purpose.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich, said to be “defiant,” named a three-time loser in gubernatorial races to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. The attraction of 71-year-old Roland Burris is that he’s black and therefore puts the Democrats who are trying to keep Blagojevich in a box in the awkward political position of rejecting a guy who’d be the only black in the U.S. Senate.
Senate Democrats have made clear their unwillingness to seat a Blagojevich appointee. Oh, the drama! “In-you-eye.” “No, yours.”
By injecting race, Blagojevich assures that Obama’s replacement will be black, though that was likely the case anyway. What now? Blagojevich will be out by Lincoln’s birthday, as the lieutenant governor predicted. And Senate Democrats can’t back down. If Burris wants the job, he’ll have to run for it.
Republicans, not to be outdone, ended the year with a certain silliness of their own. The former chairman of the Tennessee GOP, Chip Saltsman, is running for chairman of the Republican National Committee. He sent fellow Republicans a CD over Christmas that included “Barack the Magic Negro.”
The parody was based on an observation by a black liberal columnist in the Los Angeles Times. He described Obama as the “Magic Negro” who appealed to white liberals because he helped assuage their guilt over slavery, while allowing them to rejected more authentic black voices.
The CD, in any event, provided liberals the media face-time to declare Republicans to be racists and insensitive. Yea, yea. The year started with silly games; it just as well end that way.
It is, however, a reminder to Republicans that they can’t do race. Liberals and many of those who make decisions about what’s news are very quick to embrace stereotypes about Republicans. And, since blacks are overwhelmingly Democratic, Republicans like Saltsman will never get a pass when it’s possible to perpetuate a stereotype.
2008 started with games. With games, it ends.
Happy New Year.
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