Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness." -- Mary Frances Berry, the liberal former Chairwoman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights

"Liberals claim Republicans speak in racist code words for the simple reason that Republicans aren't saying anything that's objectively racist." -- Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama

10) Accusing Obama of saying something untrue: Witness a July 23 column published at the Christian Science Monitor website by Charlton McIlwain and Stephen M. Caliendo in which our helpful liberal guides explain that, “in the presidential election, it’s not a matter of whether racism will appear in campaign messaging, but when”...

Caliendo and McIlwain claim that “A recent ad from the Romney campaign, for instance, has the effect of presenting the untrustworthiness stereotype, calling Obama’s statements “not true,” and “misleading.” Then the ad goes a step beyond, by saying, “but that’s Barack Obama,” that is, the kind of person who misleads and says things that are not true.”

They explain that”charges of criminality, untrustworthiness, and the like are standard attacks on white candidates, there is no stereotype associating whites, as a group, with criminality, untrustworthiness, freeloading, or laziness, so the potential effect is not the same.”

...Caliendo and McIlwain also claim “in the same ad mentioned in question No. 1, while featuring the image of a smiling Obama, the announcer says, he also attacked Hillary Clinton with vicious lies.” This provides the opportunity to make the association: Obama, who is black, with “lying,” not to mention the descriptors “attacked” and “viciousness,” which also conjure the association with stereotypes of black aggression.”

9) Angry: Angry. On the campaign trail this summer, President Obama has become — in the words of the mainstream Associated Press — more “aggressive.” But don’t you dare call him “angry.” According to MSNBC host Toure, that’s racist!

“You notice he said ‘anger’ twice,” Toure fumed in response to a speech last week by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “He’s really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man.” Or maybe Romney is just accurately describing the singular temperament of the growling, finger-jabbing, failure-plagued demagogue-in-chief. It’s about the past four years, not 400 years. Sheesh.

8) Saying "We own this country....It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.": Watching Eastwood act out his fantasy of standing over the president and lecturing him like he was an errant schoolboy in need of correction brought forth all the unsavory aspects of modern conservatism Romney desperately wanted to spend last night minimizing. Romney wanted to paint a picture of a conservative movement that has room at the table for the voices of people of color and women. Eastwood looked out at the crowd and said, to wild applause, "I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we—we own this country." Despite the incoherent, bumbling aspects of his speech, this sentiment—that we, not they, own this country—came across loud and clear. And with that, all of Romney's hard work putting together a list of speakers that screamed "diversity" and "milquetoast" collapsed, and all before the candidate himself had a chance to speak. -- Amanda Marcotte

7) White liberals voting against Obama: Electoral racism in its most naked, egregious and aggressive form is the unwillingness of white Americans to vote for a black candidate regardless of the candidate’s qualifications, ideology or party. This form of racism was a standard feature of American politics for much of the twentieth century. So far, Barack Obama has been involved in two elections that suggest that such racism is no longer operative. His re-election bid, however, may indicate that a more insidious form of racism has come to replace it.

...Still, electoral racism cannot be reduced solely to its most egregious, explicit form. It has proved more enduring and baffling than these results can capture. The 2012 election may be a test of another form of electoral racism: the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts. If old-fashioned electoral racism is the absolute unwillingness to vote for a black candidate, then liberal electoral racism is the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors. -- Melissa Harris-Perry

6) Breadbasket: "Ryan just called Florida ‘the breadbasket of the South’ ... phrase has Civil War origins. Florida a major supplier food to the Confederacy." -- CNN's Peter Hamby

5) Kitchen cabinet: Radio talk-show host Mark Thompson jumped on Romney for using this phrase — coined to describe Andrew Jackson’s administration in the 1800s — at the NAACP convention in July. Romney was referring to a close member of his staff during his tenure as Massachusetts governor.

“To talk about being in the kitchen and not talk about an African-American actually being in your cabinet is really not a good metaphor to use with African-Americans,” Thompson blasted. Is it racist to ask: Huh?

4) Mitt Romney mentioning his sons: ..."I've got 5 boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true but just keep repeating it and ultimately hoping I'll believe it," Romney said.

..."Yet there [Obama] was, giving a presentation devoid of substance, vision, principle, or even basic coherence. He didn’t show a spark of anger, even when Romney slyly found a way to call him a boy, comparing Obama’s statements to the sorts of childish lies his 'five boys' used to tell," Kevin Baker wrote at Harper's.

"How the right’s hard-core racists must have howled at that! Mitt, at long last, has secured his base," he added.

3) Calling Barack Obama "Cool" and/or opposing him in any way: Angela Rye, Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus, argued that President Obama has struggled during his first term due to racially-motivated opposition from conservatives who dislike having a black president.

...She said that “a lot” of conservative opposition is racially-charged, citing the use of the word “cool” in an attack ad launched by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS superPAC.

“There’s an ad, talking about [how] the president is too cool, [asking] is he too cool? And there’s this music that reminds me of, you know, some of the blaxploitation films from the 70s playing in the background, him with his sunglasses,” Rye said. “And to me it was just very racially-charged. They weren’t asking if Bush was too cool, but, yet, people say that that’s the number one person they’d love to have a beer with. So, if that’s not cool I don’t know what is.

She added that “even ‘cool,’ the term ‘cool,’ could in some ways be deemed racial [in this instance].”

2) Golf: “For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation’s problems, he hasn’t been working to earn re-election. He has been working to earn a spot on the PGA Tour,” Sen. (Mitch) McConnell said.

...“Well, we know exactly what he’s trying to do there. He is trying to align to Tiger Woods and surely, the — lifestyle of Tiger Woods with Barack Obama,” said MSNBC host (of course) Lawrence O’Donnell.

...“Martin, there are many, many, many rhetorical choices you can make at any point in any speech to make whatever point up you want to make. If he wanted to make the point that you just suggested and I think he does want to make that point, they had a menu of a minimum of ten different kinds of images that they could have raised,” O’Donnell argued.

“And I promise you, the speech writers went through, rejecting three or four before they land order that one. That’s the one they want for a very deliberate reason. That — there’s — these people reach for every single possible racial double entendre they can find in every one of these speeches,” he added.

1) Chicago: Chris Matthews: Yea, well let me ask you about that gentleman. What about now, is this constant barrage of assaults, saying the guy is basically playing an old game of demagoguery politics, where you take the money from the worker bees and give it to the poor people to buy votes. That’s basically what they’re charging him with. Old big-style, big-city machine of 50 years ago.

They keep saying Chicago by the way, have you noticed? They keep saying Chicago. That’s another thing that sends that message – this guy’s helping the poor people in the bad neighborhoods, screwing us in the burbs.

John Hielemann: There’s a lot of black people in Chicago.

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