So here’s what Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said yesterday in New Hampshire:
I will go to the NAACP convention, and tell the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.
For a self-proclaimed “historian,” this is appalling ignorance. Or, at least, ignorance would be the most charitable possible interpretation. But it strains credulity to believe that Newt Gingrich really believes what he said — that he is really so profoundly stupid as to believe that the NAACP has spent the past 103 years “demanding food stamps.”
No, he’s not that ignorant. He’s just race-baiting. The Georgia native is just transparently trolling for white votes by portraying all black people as lazy, undeserving parasites stealing from put-upon white folks.
That’s despicable.
And it’s creates a huge opportunity for Gingrich’s opponents in the Republican primary race.
Here is Mitt Romney’s chance to put the final nail in Gingrich’s coffin. Here is Rick Santorum’s chance to solidify his position after leap-frogging past Gingrich in Iowa to become the leading anti-Romney candidate. Here is Ron Paul’s chance to expand his fervent, but narrow, base of support. And here is Rick Perry’s chance to finally do something, anything, effective or honorable in this campaign.
Slapping down Gingrich’s brazen racism ought to be easy and obvious for any of those four candidates. It’s a chance to look presidential — to speak as a unifying national figure and thereby to draw a stark, flattering contrast with Gingrich’s cramped, divisive attempts to wedge apart an ugly faction of support.
The easy and obvious response is something like:
I’m appalled by my opponent’s ugly comments demeaning the NAACP and the African-American community. I’m proud to have represented African-Americans in [Massachusetts/Pennsylvania/Texas] and I know from that experience that my black constituents want the same exact things that my white constituents want, what all of us as Americans want, and that is [platitudes about hard-work, American Dream, etc.] which they’re being denied by the current president who [lying attacks on Obama’s record on jobs, economy, etc.] …
And, of course, denouncing Gingrich’s racism and/or race-baiting would be the right thing to do.
The right thing to do is not always the same as the thing that will get the most electoral support, but in this case it would be — even if Romney, Santorum, Paul or Perry chose to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. White Republicans, like all white Americans, want to be reassured that they’re not racists. Grandstanding against Gingrich’s vile slurs would be a way to rally those white Republicans by telling them, “We’re better than that. We’re good people and therefore we disagree with Newt Gingrich.” Even if this were spoken as an insincere and cynical ploy, that would be better than saying nothing.
And, so far, nothing is exactly what Romney, Santorum, Paul and Perry have said. So far, it seems, it hasn’t occurred to them that anything ought to be said or needs to be said or demands to be said.
It may be that none of those four thinks he could get away with saying what needs to be said in response to Gingrich. It may be that each of them has, himself, said too many similar things in the past to be believed if they were to condemn Gingrich now.
It may be that Romney, Santorum, Paul and Perry all agree with Newt Gingrich.
Maybe they agree with the substance of his statement — believing in the inherent, parasitic inferiority of non-whites. Or maybe they just agree with the demonically cynical electoral calculus Gingrich has made, believing that vicious racial slurs and appeals to white racism are a winning strategy in a Republican primary. (South Carolina is just ahead, after all.)
But their silence, so far, is telling.
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