What does he mean?

[TomClash]

Last night I was reading work emails and halfheartedly watching the election results. After the trite Romney speech, MSNBC switched to Santorum. More pablum.

But I perked up when heard an extraordinary statement. Santorum claimed "this is the most important election since 1860."

1860 was the election between John Breckinridge and Abraham Lincoln that foreshadowed and preceded the Civil War. The election was, in large part, about slavery. We have an African-American President running in this election. I think Santorum's statement is both code and a warning. It is code for "de-nig." It is also a warning that there will be violence and/or civil war if Barack Obama is re-elected. It's a threat.

Think I'm off target? Maybe so. But consider this: in 2012, after being told to stand down by police, a white man on neighborhood watch in a southern town shot an unarmed African-American kid doing nothing illegal. He was killed for walking in a gated community and having a darker skin color. Not in 1963 or 1863, but 2012. You know what the shooter was really doing? Enforcing segregation.

Yesterday a woman State Senator's office was firebombed in Texas. Firebombed.

I don't think these are individual isolated incidents. I think there is more to it than that. I think much of it stems from Fox and the increasingly rightist tone emanating from the Republican Party and the teabaggers. But I wonder if there isn't more to it than that.

Who's next?

[TBF]

1. FAUX news seems like a joke to those of us who watch politics closely,

but it really is a pretty serious thing that uneducated folks are watching it and thinking it is their nightly news show. They don't view it as (bad) entertainment as we do. Isn't there something the FCC could do about this? It's sort of like the game shows in the 1950s that were all fixed - there should be some type of truth in advertising regulation that applies here.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. Political And Cultural Civil War

I have been thinking for a long time now that we are in the early stages of a political and cultural civil war. That we are no longer in a debate over the general election. The voices and divisions seem to be more incendiary and divisive every day.

Every day the GOP comes up with some even more extreme plan. Ryan's budget is a model for what the GOP will do if they get the kind of control they had under Bush.

They have a very brutal and antithetical vision of the country compared to the Democrats. And the Democrats seem to keep moving right every day. When you listen to all the GOP being thrown out and process it, there vision is a very dark, mean and hateful one.

[Cirque du So-What]

3. I'm reminded of Trent Lott's lickspittle fawning over Strom Thurmond

Trent Lott spoke on December 5, 2002 at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a long time conservative leader. Thurmond had run for President of the United States in 1948 on the Dixiecrat (or States' Rights) ticket. Lott said: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37288-2002Dec10

This statement from Frothy Mix goes even further beyond the pale IMO. He evokes a yearning for the days when slavery was still institutionalized in the good ol' US of A.

[TomClash]

5. That's right

Santorum's statement is worse: there is an implied threat of civil war.

[tk2kewl]

4. I think it is code for the anti-abortionists

same as Bush used to invoke Dred Scott

abortion rights equates to slavery in their twisted minds

[TomClash]

6. That's a good point!

I had forgotten about the abortion/slavery faux angle.