I spoke with some people at WNYMedia about how mainstream Carl Paladino is within the Western New York Republican party. They told me:
[H]is announcement a week ago was attended by a who’s who of Republican hackerama. (Republican Congressman) Chris Lee was there. The head of M&T bank was there. ECRC (Erie County Republican Committee) Chair Domagalski was there.
Paladino had been sending this crazy racist stuff around to local Republicans for months. Chris Lee and Domagalski certainly knew about this already.
As with the Confederate History Month in Virginia, Republicans make no effort to distance themselves from what they know full well is insane, racist, hateful nonsense. And why should they, I guess? Objecting to it would just piss off the base and there’s no political price to be paid for not objecting. Everyone knows that the objectionable images were photo-shopped or created by liberal plants or by FBI plants, and even if they weren’t, MoveOn did the same stuff to Bush. Plus none of it is really racist.
MikeJ
Why not ask Lee’s flak for a statement?
DougJ
@MikeJ:
I just spoke with the WNY media people about doing that.
mistermix
The racist stuff doesn’t surprise me.
It’s the horse fucking that is way out of left field. Chris Lee isn’t even on the Agriculture committee…
Dan B
Wasn’t Paladino’s excuse that it isn’t racist if you hate everyone equally?
eric
@mistermix: Dude, in case you have not been following politics, it has been the Gang of Six handling the horse fucking on the Hill. Luckily, we recovered from the equine efforts.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Plus, the only people who care about racism are uppity negroes who don’t know their place!
ChrisS
Plus none of it is really racist
They just like politically incorrect humor. What? Black people can call each other n***ers, why can’t I. Some of my best friends are black.
Fuck these fucking troglodytes.
Louise
I remember hearing about his announcement on WXXI last week and there was *nothing* about his being this hateful and crazy. I’m relatively new to Western NY and so I took the report at face value; another rich guy using his own money to enter a race. I had the requisite skepticism because of that, but NO IDEA he was a whackjob.
Chad N Freude
@ChrisS:
Fixed.
Kryptik
Democrats marginalize their fringe. Republicans mainstream them and redefine where the ‘fringe’ is.
We may be saner, but they seem to be winning the battle for the soul of America, and that depresses me.
dmsilev
TPM got a statement from his campaign manager:
“Off color”, huh? Does that mean he prefers pinto horses?
dms
Zifnab
Man, those FBI liberal photoshoppers are pretty lame if they can’t come up with something more racist than what MoveOn did to Bush.
They’d have outsourced to /b/ if they were smart.
zhak
Why is the country tacking toward right-wing Crazyland when the vast majority of us know it’s the wrong thing to do?
Kryptik
@Zifnab:
At least /b/tards simply do things for shits and giggles and pushing boundaries, rather than actually trying to influence things. When channers get serious, they manage to pick out decent targets thankfully, like Hal Turner and Scientology.
Zifnab
@zhak: The “country” isn’t. The wingers have just been getting progressively more effective in obtaining blanket media exposure.
Watching actual news disappear from the news shows kinda reminds me of watching actual music disappear from MTV. *sigh*
MikeJ
@zhak:
Obama won by a bigger margin than Reagan. Why do you think the country is tacking right?
Yes, the noise from the right is louder, but they don’t seem to be winning.
Kryptik
@zhak:
Because we’re always fed that a little evil isn’t so bad when it’s done to fight a bigger evil. Thus torture is ok because it’s used to fight against evil terrorism. Tacking toward the crazy racism and fearmongering is ok, because Obama is a Malcom X-esque radical Communazi Islamoappeasing traitor pansy.
Kryptik
@MikeJ:
These days, louder is winning, especially when, despite being a stark minority of voters in the US, they seem to be the ones driving the power structure and getting their shit done, while the sane folks are kind of helpless.
MikeJ
Which is why Obama never got to sign the ACA, right?
Kryptik
@MikeJ:
Point. But look at all the bullshit frames and memes and talking points taken as gospel truth that had to be waded through to get it passed, not to mention how many concessions had to be made because of said same frames and memes.
The ‘louder is winning’ crowd still managed to seed a hysteria that might not undo the ACA passage, but could pretty damn well ensure that there’s no realistic chance of improving it for years to come.
FormerSwingVoter
I don’t get it. How can Republicans be such huge, massive racists, and still be portrayed as the victims?
“Slavery was awesome! Wait, what? You think I’m a racist? WAAAAH You’re being MEAN to meeee! Why would you ever dare call me a racist? Its just because I’m white! You’re a reverse-racist!”
It’s not some form of political correctness run amok to expect people to not be huge, unapologetic racists all the time.
David
The sane people have already left the Republican Party and the marginally sane people are in the process of leaving.
Republicans = kooks
The Grand Panjandrum
I smell ACORNs!
Pangloss
If you say I’m racist, then that proves that it’s YOU that’s REALLY racist.
/GOP projection
Bill E Pilgrim
@dmsilev: I’m waiting for the denial that reads:
” (Wingnut candidate X) has forwarded thousands of thoughts from his brain to his mouth, none of which necessarily represent anything he actually believes, and half of which he can’t remember.”
timb
Check out the Big Government or Patterico today and see the complaints that some Boston guy is planning to “crash tea parties” with mis-spelled signs and the like.
Whereas rational people laugh at the idea that there are thousands of liberals just itchin’ to go to a wingnut rally and discredit them, these dumbasses believes every spoon-fed word.
makes you wonder if the plants are so far out of the mainstream of the rallies, why didn’t someone kick them out?
Citizen_X
@dmsilev:
Oh, I beg to differ. I’ll bet you that having sent horsefucking videos will turn out to be very memorable.
I’m going to start calling him “Carl Palomino” now.
Island in Alabama
@zhak:
This is American power maintenance 101. America’s ruling class has kept the peasants divided by race since it was a British colony. They’ve always feared the possibility that poor white and black peasants would band together against the aristocracy. Therefore, the use of implicit and explicit racism to keep the lower classes divided along racial lines.
There will always be a constituency that buys into the racist memes, so any time the ruling class gets worried that people are catching onto class warfare the rich practice on the rest, they turn up the dial on racism. Result: the peasants are divided, and distracted bickering (or worse) amongst each other. Meanwhile the rich get richer.
It has worked every time, so they’ve gone back to the well.
georgia pig
@Kryptik: Maybe not. Look at this way, a few of these tea party candidates will get elected because of the brouhaha around the health care bill. However, they can’t repeal it while Obama’s in office and, if Mr. Paladino is any indication, we should be treated to a stream of horsefucking emails and other choice nuggets of entertainment once they get a national stage and become media curiosities. These fuckers can hide under rocks but they can’t change who they are. By 2012, the freakshow may be in full display, perfect for a rout. By the mid teens, the tea party may become the functional equivalent of the National Front, i.e., a small but persistent core of nativist nuts. If not, the country’s fucked anyway, and we should all be thinking about emigrating.
Paris
Paladino is just being honest and saying what everyone already knows. He’s got the balls to not be intimidated by the PC elites. This is the type of bravery we need leading New York State during these poor economic times. Anyone who disagrees is a homosexual terrorist. /GOPapologist
kommrade reproductive vigor
Fxd.
JoeK
@ChrisS:
This should be an educational experience for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0IVuGK7sAw
fanshawe
@FormerSwingVoter:
That’s where you lose them. In their minds “Rascists” are cartoon characters who have brutally murdered every single black person they’ve ever met. “Racisim” is defined as what racists do. Because they, and everyone they know, have walked past black people without killing them, there are no racists and, accordingly, no racism.
Sly
@Island in Alabama:
The peasants were dumb in Colonial America, too. As the wealthy planter class in the Virgina colony kept all the good farming lands for themselves and gradually drove recently-freed indentures into the native-inhabited frontier, those indentures responded by… killing the Indians.
Bacon’s Rebellion: The First Tea Party Rally.
Bob K
Party of Family Values? But, but – back in the day they used to find this $hit hilarious in Carl’s frat house – they still do in the locker room at his country club. Keep the jokes coming G(NO)P – the campaign commercials just seem to be writing themselves.
Bubblegum Tate
@Kryptik:
These days, politics is a race to the bottom. And that’s a race wingnuts were born to run.
TuiMel
@dmsilev:
I always make a habit of forwarding “off-color” emails that I find NOT to represent my views, not to be memorable (i.e., not funny), and to be politically incorrect. I always do that rather than reply to the sender and ask them to quit wasting my time with such crap. No, I make a conscious choice to waste the time of others at the mercy of my address book.
cintibud
I’m becoming convinced that the modern Republican party is nothing more than a giant conspiracy theory convention. No matter what facts they are faced with there is always something that only they know which trumps our “apparent” reality.
Will
I am excited that former Georgia Supreme Court chief justice Leah Ward Sears is getting a lot of mention today. Extraordinarily qualified, liberal, African-American, female.
She will drive them absolutely insane.
pk
I sometimes wonder if the republicans want to drive away every single non white voter. It’s reached a stage where it is not even funny anymore. Seriously, I had no idea how prevalent racism was in the republican party. They openly direct their hatred towards muslims, by calling Obama a muslim, offend African-Americans with their confederate history month nonsense, and spitting on black law-makers (to say nothing of the sick Obama jokes), every Hispanic is illegal of course. The only set left to offend are Asians, and I am sure we will get there soon enough.
jl
@pk: Some GOPers have started on the Asian community, but I forget where I saw it.
I cannot understand this sensitivity about slavery among the neoconfederates without thinking it has something to do with racial prejudice, or concern about what might delicately be put as race-based social and economic power relationships.
No one is more of a California patriot than I am. I am proud of the good things in the state’s heritage. There are some very progressive things in the state’s history. Including bilingualism and very strong separation of church and state in the state constitution. Granted that the recognition of Californio land grants, recognition of Spanish as well as English were to some extent due to the fact that the help of sympathetic Californios was necessary for California independence and then admission to statehood without a lot more bloodshed and economic dislocation.
But the extreme and vicious racism in California history, especially against Asians, and the criminal and revolting genocide of Native Americans that occured in CA is a fact. It has to be recognized.
You can have some pride in the good aspects of your cultural history while also recognizing the bad. Many neoconfederates cannot seem to understand this obvious truth. One has to ask why they cannot after all these years.
Michael
For being a “forwarder”, he deserves to lose regardless of content.
I hate “forwarders” with the white hot passion of 1000 suns.
HRA
@Louise:
I am not fairly new to WNY. Yes, Paladino has been known as a whackjob for quite a while.
Let’s be truthful here about why we are getting an overload of the crazies. It is following the need to capture Palin’s followers towards getting elected and if perchance you gain some of that money like Palin, then it’s a win win for them.
celticdragonchick
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
That.
tatertot
“Why is the country tacking toward right-wing Crazyland when the vast majority of us know it’s the wrong thing to do?”
My mom (who I’ve mentioned here before) will be 80 in May; she has sent me forwarded emails of Obama photoshopped as a witch doctor, vids of rednecks singing about illegal aliens who should learn to speak English, etc.. She lives in a completely white neighbourhood only 25 miles north of New York City. Her forwarded messages always have the tags of at least a dozen of her (white, older) friends/neighbors, none of whom seem to have any problem with sending racist, nasty emails. Because they’ve decided their emails are just bits of funny, ha ha, not really serious. I would guess one reason why they feel comfortable sending these emails is because they live in enclaves that have NEVER had to really deal with racism (or poverty) on a day-to-day basis. They have NO understanding of people who live on minimum wage, or who work crap jobs – their children are ‘professionals’ making ‘professional’ wages. They are the other side of the Tea Partiers, who are always depicted as angry old working-class whites, who are funded by rich media-savvy whites and their political affiliates. People like my mom are not poor, though not millionaires either; she is part of the ‘silent [racist] majority’ that agrees with the Tea Baggers. She’ll never go on a march, or donate; but her and her friends hearts, and votes, are in the Right place.
Which is why I love family holidays ….
sistermoon
On behalf of all Buffalonians, I apologize for inflicting Carl Paladino on the rest of the state
We’ve known for years that he’s nothing more than a rude, crude ignoramous. He made a boatload of money ripping off low income people of color in a bogus “rent to own” property scheme, and now he thinks he can bully and buy his way into the governor’s mansion.
Chris Lee and the others are no better. They just have enough sense to keep their racism hidden…
SiubhanDuinne
At least Paladino has this going for him:: Keith just named him Worst Person in the WORLD.
Andrew A. Gill, SLS
The New York Republicans (and Democrats, in some cases) are a queer bunch.
Pretty much all NY politics is machine politics, and if one party isn’t supposed to win, they don’t bother fielding an actual candidate. Thus, the quality of the people who actually run for the office is terrible (I remember one guy who ran for Rochester mayor telling Hispanics that they needed to “talk English as good as or better than the whites.” Talk English good yourself there, bub).
The consequence is that people who don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning wind up getting a reputation as actual candidates, like what we see here.