Krugman says GOP exploits white racial resentments
Here is an e-mail I’ve just sent to Paul Krugman, Nobel economics prize winner and
New York Times op-ed bigot:
Dear Mr. Krugman,
In the New York Review of Books’ symposium on the election, you wrote:
The GOP has … been able to win elections through identity politics—above all, by exploiting white racial resentment. But, I argued, identity politics were losing their effectiveness, because America has become more tolerant and, not to put too fine a point on it, less white. As a result, the era of conservative dominance was over.
Could you provide examples of how President Bush, the leader of the GOP for the last eight years and the winner in the last two presidential elections, exploited white racial resentment in order to win those elections?
Did he do it, perhaps, during the 2000 election by saying in a speech in Miami in August of that year:
We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We’re a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.
Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey … and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.
For years our nation has debated this change—some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.
Or was he exploiting white resentment when, in September 2001, as reported in the Washington Times:
TOLEDO, Ohio—President Bush yesterday said he would ask Congress to legalize Mexican aliens if they would take jobs others pass up and called for the abolition of laws that bar American companies from employing border-jumpers.
“I mean, the truth of the matter is that if somebody is willing to do jobs others in America aren’t willing to do, we ought to welcome that person to the country and we ought to make that a legal part of our economy,” Mr. Bush said as he and Mexican President Vicente Fox prepared to depart the White House for Toledo.
Or was he exploiting white racial resentments after the 9/11 attack, when he kept calling Islam a religion of peace and tolerance, even as crowds throughout the Islamic world were shrieking in ecstasy over the smoking hole in lower Manhattan?
Or was he exploiting white racial resentments when he banned profiling of young Muslim men in airports and treated every American traveler as equally suspect of being a terrorist?
Or was he exploiting white racial resentment in June 2003, when he endorsed the revolutionary Grutter v. Bollinger decision that inserted into the Constitution the allowance of race-conscious preferences for nonwhites throughout American society?
Or was he exploiting white racial resentments in his speech at Gorey Island, Senegal in July 2003 when he said:
My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over. For racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation.
When Bush said white Americans today have the same racial bigotry as in the days of slavery and segregation, was he exploiting white racial resentments?
Or did Bush exploit white racial resentment in the run-up to the 2004 election when he announced his immigration proposal on January 7 of that year which would allow any foreigner who would take less pay than an American for the same job to become a legal immigrant?
Or was he exploiting white racial resentment when he and Secretary of State Rice repeatedly argued that all people in the world, particularly Muslims, are equally desirous of, ready for, and capable of democracy, and that anyone who thought otherwise was condescending and racist?
Or was he exploiting white racial resentments in 2006 and 2007 when he tried with all his might—and flying in the face of the entire grass roots of white conservative America—to pass a bill that would legalize all illegal aliens in America and triple from one million to three million the number of nonwhite immigrants entering this country annually?
If those examples don’t back up your argument, I would be very curious to know what exactly Bush and his administration have done to exploit white racial resentments.
Thank you.
Lawrence Auster
New York City
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If readers have further examples to add to my list of statements by President Bush, as well as by his administration and advisors and the GOP, exploiting white racial resentments, please send them in.
Tommy writes:
Honestly, LA, why do you bother? Krugman’s abuse of statistics, his willingness to make blatant “errors,” his his unwillingness to correct those same errors, and his all-around partisan foolishness is legendary. The man ranks among the most smugly dishonest people to pen columns in any national paper or magazine. Given the deplorable condition of our media, that’s saying a lot.
I cannot imagine what resonates in the mind of a man wo isn’t the least concerned about the strength of arguments he presents.
LA replies:
This kind of comment really annoys me. DO YOU THINK I WROTE IT FOR HIS SAKE?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 22, 2008 07:25 PM | Send