Rick Santorum: …and I bet you there are people in this room who give money to colleges and universities who are undermining the very principles of our country every day by indoctrinating many kids with left wing ideology. And yet you continue to give to these colleges…

Where would the embrace of racism be without its frequent companion, anti-intellectualism?

From the Columbia Daily Tribune:

Orange stickers with an image of rifle cross hairs were found yesterday on the office nameplates of several Democratic state senators, prompting an investigation by Missouri Capitol Police, Senate Administrator Jim Howerton said…

”We don’t have any explanation,” Justus said on the Senate floor. “Many of us when we came back to our office this afternoon had gun targets on our nameplates. A few of the senators removed them, only to have them replaced by larger stickers later.”

Around the anniversary of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, about the time she made the news by officially resigning because of her injuries, someone put rifle-site stickers on the office nameplates of five Democrats and possibly one Republican. Four of those Democrats are women.

Anyone really wondering what the message could possibly be?

This comes on the heels of news about another “message” sent to people involved in Democratic politics. In Arkansas Jacob Burris, campaign manager for Democrat Ken Aden, came home to find the family pet killed and the word “Liberal” written on its carcass.

Aden’s opponent, Steve Womack, denounced the killing in no uncertain terms and Aden has said he doesn’t believe Womack’s campaign is connected to it. I personally would be astounded if we learned otherwise. That’s simply not the kind of thing political campaign operatives do.

That and the gun sight stunt are, however, the kind of things some people will do when they are inflamed by over-the-top rhetoric that paints the political opposition, not merely as the opposition, but as traitors, Communists, America-haters, secret Muslims, etc. Republicans can denounce individual acts like this all they want. When they countenance and even repeat the language that inspires it, those denunciations don’t really amount to much.

No, I don’t think the GOP is actually hoping that another Democrat gets shot. I do think the GOP has decided that the level of physical intimidation their rhetoric inspires can work to their advantage. Consider for a moment that our first African American president is going to be campaigning for re-election for the next few months. Running for president, even as an incumbent, typically involves, going out into public, shaking hands, meeting constituents face to face.

Certainly there’s an element of risk to this for any President, but the current language combining violent imagery, an emphasis on guns, and the repeated iteration of the president as an interloper, someone who is painted as not a real American, not a real Christian, but an outsider out to destroy America, ups the ante significantly.

If President Obama and any other Democratic candidate must now factor in an even higher risk factor than they’ve faced in the past, it can negatively impact their abililty to literally reach out to constituents, meet them one on one. They can end up campaigning, with one hand figuratively tied behind their backs.

Chris Matthews, in the wake of the Republican Debate where Newt Gingrich belittled Juan Williams: And by the way, calling someone a racist is the worst way to get them to stop being a racist, because everybody gets defensive…and they get mad about it. It’s stupid to say it, but if you notice it, you sorta oughta blow the whistle…but boy is this tricky…”

Let’s be clear about something. Nobody who actually knows anything about racism labors under the illusion that calling someone a “racist” is going to make that person stop being a racist. That’s not why the term needs to be used.

It needs to be used to call out racism before it makes significant inroads back into the mainstream. It needs to be used to ensure that racism continues to be viewed as something immoral, shameful. If racists had been consistently called out for what it is twenty years ago, overt racism would not be rearing its ugly head again in national politics.

But no, people like Matthews thought it was clever to avoid using that icky “R” word. They allowed racists to take control of the language, and the result is that today, what should be quite simple and obvious to anyone with an IQ beyond two digits is now deemed “tricky.”

In 1971, a study was conducted now known as “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” A small group of Stanford students were divided into “prisoners” and “guards.” The experiment was called to a halt early because so many of the “guards” became abusive towards their “prisoners.” These guards, it should be noted, were not sadists or sociopaths. They were human beings put into a situation where they were given “permission” to abuse other human beings, and where such abuse was treated as the norm.

What it revealed about human nature was simple and obvious. If no consequences are suffered, no restraints in the form of shaming or punishment, many human beings, even normal human beings, will do stupid, horrible things to each other.

I think what’s happened with the issue of racism in this country, and in fact intelligent debate in general, is a sort of vindication of the Stanford Experiment. At some point, complacent liberals and moderates decided that they needn’t call out any but the most overt public racism by using the term “racist” or “racism.” The result has been bolder and bolder forays into racism. At some point, the media decided they needn’t point out obvious flaws in logic and reality. The result has been increasingly brazen lies and a dangerous dumbing down of our political discourse.

Back in 1993, a major speech by then House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich was edited to remove the following passage:

For poor minorities, entrepreneurship in small business is the key to future wealth. This is understood thoroughly by most of the Asians, partially by Latinos, and to a tragically small degree by much of the American black community.

I wonder, if he were delivering that speech today, if that same passage would have been omitted. Probably not, considering the following:

Gingrich: I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African American Community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.

Gingrich: I had a very interesting dialogue Monday night in Myrtle Beach with Juan Williams about the idea of work, which seemed to Juan Williams to be a strange, distant concept.

Fan of Gingrich: I would like to thank you Mr. Speaker, for putting Mr. Juan Williams in his place the other night. (cheers and applause)

Yet another fan of Gingrich in response to Gingrich referring to President Obama (can be heard quite clearly at the .09 mark):

String him up!

An intelligent, educated adult who claims not to get the coded racial language here – a language plainly recognized and embraced by Gingrich’s followers — is being, at best, deliberately obtuse.

If those claiming not to see it applied that same inability to read social cues to their daily human interactions, they’d be so socially inept they’d risk being labeled as having Asperger’s Syndrome.

Woman to Rick Santorum at Town Hall Meeting: I never refer to Obama as President Obama because legally he is not….(cheers and applause)… He is an avowed Muslim (more cheers and applause) and my question is, why isn’t something being done to get him out of our government? He has no legal right to be calling himself president.

Rick Santorum: Well, I’m doing my best to try to get him out of the government. And your right about he uniformly ignores the constitution…I agree with you in the sense that he does things that are against the values and the founding principles of our country…

This is the attitude many Republicans are bringing to the election. President Obama is not just an incumbent they want to defeat.

He’s an interloper. Something must be DONE about him. And Republican candidates like Santorum can’t be bothered to correct this.

I’ve been told by more than one person that I should be happy about Newt Gingrich winning the recent primary. I’ve been told I should be glad that Republicans are apparently going to have to choose between Gingrich and Romney.

Well I’m not happy. I’m not happy because the year is 2012 — not 1996. Newt Gingrich did not just pop into the forefront of the race through some act of God. He’s there because he represents a significant portion of one of our two major political parties. Sixteen years ago, a candidate who openly defined anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan as a “socialist” and who used barely concealed racist dogwhistles that included publicly insulting a black reporter, would not be considered a serious contender for the nomination.

That’s changed, which is not good news for any American, even if it means President Obama gets another four years in office.

Mitt Romney: I know we’re going to get hit hard from President Obama, but we’re going to stuff it down his throat…

Townhall Questioner: We’ve got to bloody Obama’s nose. You’ve mentioned challenging him to seven, three-hour debates. He has this armor of media surrounding him. If he doesn’t agree to that, how do you plan to aggressively take the gloves off and go after him?

Newt Gingrich: Let me say first of all, I don’t want to argue with you about the analogy. I don’t want to bloody his nose, I want to knock him out.

So both of the lead contenders for the GOP nomination are talking about President Obama in terms of physically attacking him. I honestly don’t recall that in past presidential elections. The metaphor might have been applied in a generalized way to the rumble between Democrats and Republicans — but a possible presidential nominee for one of the major political parties publicly conjuring up the picture of the American president being physically beaten? Not something you see every day.

I wonder why the Republicans consider invoking that image a winning strategy.

Protester to Mitt Romney: What will you do to support the 99 percent even though you are part of the 1 percent?

Romney: Lemme tell ya something. America is a great nation, because we’re a united nation and those who are trying to divide the nation as you’re trying to do here and as the president is doing are hurting this country, seriously. The right course for America is not to divide America, and try and divide us between one and another, it’s for us to come together as a nation. And if you’ve got a better model, if you think China is better, or Russia is better, or Cuba’s better, or North Korea’s better, I’m glad to hear all about it. But you know what? America’s right, and you’re wrong

***

Andrea Mitchell, on Romney’s reaction: He took that on and reframed it and showed an aggressiveness. It looked, with all due respect, almost Reaganesque, going after a protestor and making it his case.

Ron Fournier: You say “reframing it” I say he built a straw man. That protestor didn’t say he thought Cuba and Russia had a better economic system.

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Andrea Mitchell’s reaction to Romney’s dishonest attack on his questioner is classic 21st century MSM. She soft-pedals what Fournier accurately describes as “building a strawman” as “reframing” and applies the term “Reaganesque” (which she seems to consider a compliment) to it. In short, she takes a blatant example of powerful man’s dishonesty and malice and presents it as smart and admirable.

This is exactly the kind of media coverage that prompted over 200 readers to comment so angrily to Alan Brisbane’s recent “Truth Vigilante” piece. I’m glad Fournier was there, but it’s really a pity he had to point out the obvious.

Newt Gingrich, on the Supreme Court: If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact ignore it.”

According to this Guardian article, Gingrich was referring to a Supreme Court decision extending some legal rights to “enemy combatants.” He also would apply this philosophy to Roe vs Wade.

In other words, if the president wants to kidnap, torture, and incarcerate foreigners, he can kidnap, torture, and incarcerate foreigners. And if the president wants to ignore a supreme court decision on domestic policy, he can ignore it. Michael Mukasey’s comment that Gingrich’s approach to the court would transform the US into a “banana republic” is spot on.

The problem is, it looks like a banana republic is exactly what the GOP “base” wants.

This is dangerous. I realize that Romney, not Gingrich, will probably end up with the nomination, but it’s disturbing that someone with Newt’s philosophy has gotten this far. There’s an undercurrent of violence in the GOP base that should never have been allowed into our mainstream, and could be incendiary in a presidential race in which the GOP opponent is America’s first black president.

Rick Perry: South Carolina is at war with this federal government, this adminstration…

As Jon Stewart says, “War against this government led by South Carolina! That always has a good ending, right?