Downlo

Santorum actually uses “but I have black friends” excuse

And suggests someone is trying to bring him down…with his own, unedited remarks.

This is in response to questioning about his recent remarks about welfare and black Americans (“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.”), Santorum said this:

“I don’t single out on any group of people, that’s one thing I don’t do,” the former Pennsylvania Senator explained to Hannity. “I don’t divide people by group and race and class. I believe that in no people in this country. And I condemn all forms of racism. There’s no one that’s been out here working, as you know, in the inner city, and with people of all different races.”

Santorum added: “I condemn all forms of racism and there’s nobody who has done more as a Republican in the United States Senate to bring African-Americans into the party. Go ask J.C. Watts. Ask Michael Steele. I’ve worked with historically black colleges. I’ve done a ton of stuff. This is just someone trying to cause trouble.”

Rick Santorum: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Everyone is going after Ron Paul for his racist newsletters and remarks, but we can’t forget that stigmatizing POC is standard operating procedure for Republicans.

At a New Year’s campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa, Rick Santorum outlined his vision for the country—one that focuses on cutting government aid to the needy at a time when poverty rates are rising.

Even more troubling, Santorum seems to hold Reagan-era ideas about poverty that explicitly racialize it and, more subtly, link Blackness to shiftlessness, indecency, and immorality:

“Having that strong foundation of the faith and family allows America to be in a position where we can be more free,” Santorum says. “We can be free because we are good decent moral people.”

For Santorum that means cutting government regulation. Making Americans less dependent on government aid. Fewer people getting food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of federal assistance — especially one group.

“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” Santorum begins. “I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”

Santorum did not elaborate on why he singled out blacks who rely on federal assistance. The voters here didn’t seem to care.

This is the Reagan lie about the welfare queen all over again, disguised as compassionate conservatism. Santorum doesn’t care about making poor people’s lives or Black people’s lives better. Like all Republicans, Rick Santorum just wants to cut federal spending so he can lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy.

Rick Santorum: fully living up to his name

(Source: NPR)

Ron Paul’s rightwing libertarianism

Alex Pareene points out that Ron Paul’s particular brand of libertarianism has a history of endorsing racist views and associating with white supremacists for the sake of appealing to far right voters, thus expanding the influence of libertarianism:

There are, broadly, two different versions of American libertarianism: There’s Reason Magazine and Cato Institute libertarianism — “cool” libertarianism — and there’s Mises Institute/Lew Rockwell libertarianism — old crank libertarianism. Ron Paul is a Mises Institute libertarian…

The origins of the philosophical split are explained nicely by Brian Doherty in this piece on the late Murray Rothbard. To drastically oversimplify, guys like Hayek made pragmatic economic arguments (and left room for a “limited” state to provide some measure of assistance to the needy) and Rothbard made Randian philosophical arguments (and was radically anti-state). And Rothbard went full-on neo-Confederate in order to win over the “rednecks.”

This 2008 Reason article further explains the link between this strategy (one that Nixon and the GOP successfully used to win the American South) and the appalling homophobia and racism espoused in the Ron Paul newsletters:

The newsletters’ obsession with blacks and gays was of a piece with a conscious political strategy adopted at that same time by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. After breaking with the Libertarian Party following the 1988 presidential election, Rockwell and Rothbard formed a schismatic “paleolibertarian” movement, which rejected what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a broad new “paleo” coalition.

Rockwell explained the thrust of the idea in a 1990 Liberty essay entitled “The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism.” To Rockwell, the LP was a “party of the stoned,” a halfway house for libertines that had to be “de-loused.” To grow, the movement had to embrace older conservative values. “State-enforced segregation,” Rockwell wrote, “was wrong, but so is State-enforced integration. State-enforced segregation was not wrong because separateness is wrong, however. Wishing to associate with members of one’s own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse.”

As Pareene points out, Ron Paul’s involvement with the infamous newsletters (and his endorsement of the hateful views they expressed) does not contradict his libertarian beliefs. because Ron Paul’s libertarian is essentially focused on restoring and retaining white male privilege:

Ron Paul’s libertarianism has plenty of room for nativism and racism because so much of it does sound like a Pat Buchanan-style call for America to return to a golden age of white privilege. Paul isn’t a futurist…He’s a deeply religious anti-abortion small-town country doctor who basically wants the government to operate as it did in 1837.

Endorsing the legalization of marijuana and being against war does not erase Ron Paul’s self-serving complicity in spreading bigotry. He may not believe he’s racist or homophobic, but he’s perpetuated racism and homophobia for political gain. How can any right-thinking person, including libertarians, want such a man to be president?

(Source: salon.com)

Occam’s Racist

violaxcore:

Occam’s Racist: The notion that when confronted with multiple competing hypotheses for why a person published dozens of overtly racist newsletters over several years, the simplest and best explanation is that they are actually a racist.

JBcolo

I love this phrase.

(Source: The Atlantic, via paxamericana)