MS-01: Racist Attack Ad

Greg Davis is further showing the racist tent of the white suburbia Republican party. They are going back to their old tatics, scaring people. I have to wonder why they are a party, if they only way they feel they can ever win an election is not on the merits of their own positions or ideas, but on scaring people with misleading attacks on their opponents.

In this ad he slams Childers for not speaking out against Obama and not rejecting his nomination, pointing Obama’s preacher, and his bitter comments, trying to use the bitterness of the National Democratic Primary to hold on to seats. But it’s hard not to miss the underlying racism in it, and from Greg Davis, who accepted an award from White Leadership Council we can expect no less.

This ad makes me think two things. One, is that this could really back on Davis. It could fail to stoke up his conservative base completely, and it could, (and I see it going down this way), get the black vote stirred up this time and out to the polls. Last time Childers failed to win before the runoff because the black vote failed to come out, Davis won a county with a population that was almsot 50% black, and that normally leans Democratic.

It also makes me more frustrated over the negative nature of the Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton’s attacks are getting so vile and false that McCain is starting to repeat them to hurt Obama. She’s splintering our base into pieces, hurting our likely candidate with moderates, and at the same time ensuring that if she is the nominee many Obama supporters will not likely stomach voting for her, she would depress Democratic turnout. So she’s doing herself no favors, she’s not even looking ahead in the long run, and just trying to scrape through the primary no matter what the costs.

Here’s the ad as it was posted on Chris Cillizza’s “The Fix”, which is a really good blog, but I would only suggest checking it every month or so because he doesn’t post profolicly. http://blog.washingtonpost.com…

I, as a white, southern male, the most suspect group, found that the it was sly bit of racism, and a fear ad. An ad trying to tie the local candidate to some scary, offensive outta town guy trying to destroy your way of life, ad. My thought, though, is just how much people will buy into this one, trying to connect Childers to a retired Pastor living a thousand miles to the north of the district, a man he’s never even met, is suspect at best, and an accusation he easily defend. Mississippi has come a long way since 1959, when everyone from Memphis to Jackson called Faulkner “nigger lovin Willie”, for saying that we should gradually integrate, starting with the next generation, and when white men got away with murdering black teenagers for absolutely no reason. But Davis has shown as candidate, that’s there’s still a big place for it, especially in the wealthy white suburbs of Memphis.