The Republican Party... 2013

When is enough enough? After Barack Obama was elected president, we were treated to a barrage of e-mails of black face pictures, caricatures of the president and his wife as monkeys and many other assorted veiled racially tinged attempts at humor. The common thread in all of these was that the people sending them were associated with the Republican Party at either federal, state or local levels. What was also common was that we never heard from our nationally elected GOP leaders a word of real condemnation. Never once did we hear them step to a bank of microphones and declare what most people knew... that these attacks were not politically motivated, but rather racially motivated. Put simply, President Barack Obama and his wife were not being caricatured because of their political stances, but because of the color of their skin. You don't like a politicians stance on an issue, that's fair game, but in 2013, we should not be seeing the kinds of racial political stunts that were common in a less enlightened era.  But perhaps that is to be expected in a country that has a rich history of racial tension and animus. Which brings us to todays little ditty, pictured above... courtesy of the Chairperson of the Republican Party of Yellowstone County in Montana, Jennifer Olsen.  Now I am certain that in a day or two Ms. olsen will make a heartfelt apology, claiming she is not racist and was just passing along what she thought was a funny little joke. But really, would this picture have tickled her fancy if the president was white? And so I ask, at what point will the national leaders of the GOP step up to the plate and publicly condemn this type of behavior? At what point will they go beyond the "It's a local issue" and "I would not have done that" boilerplate responses and call this what it is... a pure and blatant example of racial politics from a Republican leader? For weeks since the election last November, we've heard GOP leaders saying they will not win elections being, as Bobby Jindal put it, the party of stupid.  And for weeks, the rank and file state and local leaders have kept right on going, with nary a word from John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Linsey Graham or anyone else. After the US was attacked on 9/11, many in the GOP dominated Congress and Senate asked why moderate Muslims remained silent as the more militant branches of Islam struck time and time again in cowardly terroristic attacks across Afghanistan and Iraq. Right-wing bloggers joined in the chorus along with many FOX television personalities to say that a reluctance of moderates to be critical of extremist Islam signaled acceptance and agreement with what the terrorists were doing. To them, there were no moderate Muslims. Isn't it fair to judge the current national Republican Party by the same standards? You tell me?