Not All Republicans Are Racist

But if you're racist, you're probably a Republican:

A comedian impersonating President Obama who was hired to perform here on Saturday at the Republican Leadership Conference delivered racially tinged remarks about Mr. Obama’s heritage and offered a mocking assessment of the Republican presidential candidates.

The impersonator, Reggie Brown of Chicago, opened his act by joking about Mr. Obama’s family history, referring to his white mother from Kansas and his black father from Kenya. He said that he was born in Hawaii, adding, “or as the Tea Partiers like to call it, Kenya.”

He said that Michelle Obama, the first lady, enjoys celebrating all of February, Black History Month. He said the president celebrates only half the month.

“My mother loved a black man and, no, she was not a Kardashian,” Mr. Brown said later, referring to the family that stars in reality shows. Khloe Kardashian, who is white, is married to Lamar Odom, who is black and plays for the Los Angeles Lakers.

The audience, which was nearly entirely white, watched with befuddlement as the impersonator told them to look into the future to see what the Obamas will look like when they are retired. An image of a feuding husband and wife, from the TV show “Sanford and Son,” was flashed on screens in the ballroom.

The GOP hates Obama. That much is glaringly evident. They only hired the comedian; they didn't prepare his material. But I think the fact that he instantly went to the issue of race to mock the President is pretty telling. There are countless other ways that he could have lampooned the Obamas, but he chose race. He was simply playing to his audience. 

And this quote is pretty good:

Doug Heye, a party strategist and former communications director for the Republican National Committee, criticized the hiring of Mr. Brown. As word of the performance began to spread online, he wrote in a message on Twitter: “Wonder why many minorities have problems with G.O.P.? Our own fault.”

Yes, because this incident of hiring a racist comedian for your Southern White Oligarch Conference is the primary reason why "many minorities" have problems with the GOP. It has nothing to do with the fact that since January 20, 2009 the GOP has spent every waking moment blowing racist dog whistles as they decried Obama's "otherness," that he is a Marxist socialist Kenyan secret Muslim that hates Jesus and America, that he does not believe in the same America that good ol' white folk believe in, that he has a deep seated hatred of white people, that he's secretly taking over the country through union thugs and his minority-laden election stealing army at ACORN, and the pervasive dissemination of these talking points (both explicitly and implicitly) to keep the not-at-all-racist teabaggers frothing at the mouth. But these are just principled differences! They only disagree with Obama's politics. The racially undertoned invectives being hurled at our first black president have nothing to do with his race.

There are plenty of reasons for "many minorities" to take issue with the GOP, but I would venture a guess that this barely registers as so much as a blip on how they view the GOP. This is nothing new, but rather a continuation of the modern GOP's excellent track record on race relations.

(h/t Steve Benen)