NC Republican Party Plays the Race Card

Everybody’s buzzing about this print attack on Cullie Tarleton, mailed out by the NC Republican Executive Committee. How low can they go? Well, pretty damn low.

The mailer proclaims on the reverse side, “Meet Your New Neighbors...” and essentially promises a black rapist living next door to you if Cullie Tarleton is reelected.

The white guy on the left is obviously thrown in to fuzz up the racial politics, but Wayne A. Laws, the white first degree murderer, is an odd felon to include here, since the law being referenced is the North Carolina Racial Justice Act, which prohibits the imposition of the death penalty where evidence is provided indicating that race was a factor in the death penalty. That law cannot even apply to the white convict. The Act actually states that where racial bias is demonstrated, “the death sentence imposed by the judgment shall be vacated and the defendant resentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.”

So the mailer is just one lie piled on top of another, all tied up in a juicy little “fear the black man” bundle meant to stampede all the little ole white ladies in Ashe and Watauga counties.

This was done to benefit Jonathan Jordan, who as a lawyer would/should know how badly this particular piece of filth warps the truth.

When confronted with this ad, Dr. Ada Fisher, herself a black woman, said she had no idea that this was being sent out in her name, since she is also a member of the NC Republican Executive Committee.

This is the worst racial politics that we’ve seen in this state since Jesse Helms’ salad days.

Fetzer to Steele: I'm Praying for You (To Drop Dead)

This news broke late yesterday p.m., while we were on the road in Stokes County (thunder, lightning, missing bridges), so we're catching up:

Tom Fetzer, chair of the N.C.G.O.P. and hence a voting member of the Republican National Committee, which has the power of life or unemployment over national Chair Michael Steele, is the first such Prominent Republican to call for the resignation of Mr. Steele. You know you're in trouble among Republican pooh-bahs when the letter opens like this: "Dear Michael, I have prayed for you...."

Oh, dear.

That's pulling rank as only the self-righteous can pull it.

Hearing the news about Fetzer's letter, North Carolina Committeewoman Ada Fisher, who had previously made her disdain for Mr. Steele perfectly clear, piled on with her own call for resignation.

Can a full crackup at the RNC be far behind?

Ada Fisher and the 11th Commandment

Dr. Ada Fisher, representing North Carolina, is one of three African-Americans on the 168-member Republican National Committee. During the recent tussle over the chairmanship of the RNC, which Michael Steele won on the sixth ballot, Dr. Fisher supported Katon ("whites only") Dawson of South Carolina. She has apparently been a sharp little pebble in Michael Steele's shoe ever since, to the point that she wrote an e-mail to 11 people on Steele's "transition team" at the RNC, urging them to urge Steele to resign. Said e-mail was promptly leaked to The Hill newspaper.

Among other things, Dr. Fisher wrote: "I don't want to hear anymore [sic] language trying to be cool about the bling in the stimulus package or appealing to D.L. Hughley and blacks in a way that isn't going to win us any votes and makes us frankly appear to many blacks as quite foolish."

Last night, Fisher went on The Rachel Maddow Show to explain why she was calling for Steele's resignation. She cited the Eleventh Commandment for Republicans ("Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican") without specifying which Republican Steele had spoken ill of (or noticing, for that matter, that she herself was breaking that commandment big-time on the Rachel Maddow Show).

We are left to assume that Limbaugh is the Republican Steele spoke ill of and thus earned the wrath of Dr. Fisher. But we're not entirely sure.

This is not the first time Dr. Fisher attracted a little attention in trying to discipline a fellow Republican. She got after Chip Saltsman back in December after she received his CD of "Barack the Magic Negro." Chip Saltsman was also running for the chairmanship of the RNC at the time, and as we said earlier, Fisher was supporting another Deep South white boy whose own racial foibles did not seem to bother her at all.

Fisher has also run twice for Congress, both times against Mel Watt. For more background on Fisher, her Wikipedia page is here. Her campaign website is here.

What Conservatives Think Is Funny

Chip Saltsman, Tennessee Republican operative and campaign manager for Mike Huckabee, is a self-declared candidate for chair of the Republican National Committee, and he thought it would be cool to send out Christmas greetings to all 168 members of the Republican National Committee, who'll be voting for their new party chair come January, and to tuck in a bonus CD of Rush Limbaugh-inspired novelty songs, one of which was "Barack the Magic Negro." Other songs on the CD, all of which enjoyed some air time on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, include "John Edwards' Poverty Tour," "Wright Place, Wrong Pastor," "Love Client #9," "Ivory and Ebony," and "The Star Spanglish Banner."

Chip Saltsman thought it was funny, bless his heart. Others ... not so much.

"I am shocked and appalled," Mike Duncan, the current party chairman, said in a statement released Saturday. Mr. Duncan's shock, appalling as it was, might have been ramped up somewhat by the fact that he's running against Saltsman (and four others) to continue in his job as party chair.

Newt Gingrich was even more categorical in his denunciation: "This is so inappropriate that it should disqualify any Republican National Committee candidate who would use it."

Blah, blah, blah.

We wouldn't be talking about this even now except that as of today there's a new North Carolina wrinkle: Dr. Ada Fisher, a Salisbury doctor and one of only three black members of the Republican National Committee, wrote an open letter to Saltsman:

"Racist actions and deeds have no place in the party. The lack of sensitivity in understanding the historical election we just had and the challenges this nation faces as we must bind our wounds as well as bring our people together requires that we set aside our biases and search out those constitutional principles inherent in our nation's foundings and our parties operation which must undergrid us as we move forward."

Okay then. Dr. Ada Fisher, bless her heart, trying to talk a little racial sensitivity to the likes of Chip Saltsman ... not that that's going to help. And indeed, the next shoe to drop dropped just minutes ago, when Thunder Pig, a conservative western NC blogger, accused Fisher of a kind of partisan treachery with a posting headlined "Ada Fisher Joins Lefties, RINOs in a Racially Motivated Attack on RNC Chair Candidate."

Ada Fisher ought to be ashamed of herself!

For the record, Fisher herself had already come out in support of South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson as the new RNC chair. Also for the record, until approximately 38 minutes ago, Dawson was the member of a country club that wouldn't allow Dr. Ada Fisher through the front door.

Never mind that. And never mind, too, that Thunder Pig's high dudgeon directed at Ada Fisher for criticizing Saltsman does not so far seem to extend also to Mike Duncan and Newt Gingrich. Are they RINOs too?