Republicans Cling to Racism Strategy

Republicans Cling to Racism Strategy

Nation contributor Melissa Harris-Lacewell weighs in on the troubling trajectory of right-wing race-based attacks on Obama.

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Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University
professor and contributing writer for The Nation, talk about Republicans
going back to the old strategy based on racism as the GOP is starting to
prepare for midterm election in 2010. “The art of republican politics,”
as Maddow puts it, consists of shifting the focus of political debate
from real problems that the country is facing to the “wise Latina”
comment and to what Rush Limbaugh referred to as a “militant black
reaction” of President Barack Obama to the arrest of a leading
African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Olga Razumovskaya

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