Newt Gingrich and "the food stamp president"
He didn't call Obama a "strapping young buck," but his slur is coded racism (and not very Catholic) just the same.
Newt Gingrich doubled down on his clever new slur against President Obama as "the food stamp president." He tried the line in a Friday speech to the Georgia Republican convention, and he used it again on "Meet the Press Sunday." It's a short hop from Gingrich's slur to Ronald Reagan's attacks on "strapping young bucks" buying "T-bone steaks" with food stamps. Blaming our first black president for the sharp rise in food-stamp reliance (which resulted from the economic crash that happened on the watch of our most recent white president) is just the latest version of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that Obama's social policy amounts to "reparations" for black people.
But when host David Gregory suggested the term had racial overtones, Gingrich replied "That's bizarre," and added, "I have never said anything about President Obama which is racist."
Republicans have done well with their quest to stigmatize social welfare programs as handouts to the undeserving, and to pretend that most of the undeserving are black people.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2011/05/15/gingrich_food_stamp_president/index.html
- 86 47 -
| 