The GOP shits on non-profit workers — will it backfire?

Last night during the Republican convention I marveled at the speechwriter’s decision to shit on Barack Obama’s past as a community organizer during Vice Presidential puppet nominee Sarah Palin’s speech. Another Republican did it, too, but I can’t remember which one right now because I haven’t had enough coffee and because Republicans all vomit out the same talking points, so they blur together. Anyway, as the be-cheetoed hands clapped and the gullets hollered in the auditorium at Palin’s line about a “small town mayor bein’ like a community organizer, but with responsibilities, dontcha know,” (slight paraphrase) I asked myself, “Wait, is it that the Republican delegates are so uneducated/stupid that they don’t know what a community organizer is?” Later, it was pointed out to me that this is just another one of those racist dogwhistles for Republicans…as Lee Atwater famously explained, you can’t say “nigger, nigger, nigger” anymore, so this dig essentially means, “community organizers help nigras, small-town mayors help whites.” So, in the interest of reminding good, decent, non-racist people who aren’t at the Republican Convention, TS made a little list of other notable community organizers:

Jane Addams
Samuel Gompers
Jane Jacobs
Mother Jones
Martin Luther King Jr.
John Lewis
Paul Wellstone
Carrie Nation
Susan B. Anthony

Now, granted, half of the delegates in the room last night probably still refer to King as “Buckwheat.” I grew up in the South, I know that of which I speak. But wow. Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, Mother Jones, Dr. King…what company Obama kept in choosing to travel the path of the community organizer.

TS also asks:

GOP: Is this the hill you want to die on? You do realize, I hope, that a lot of people who saw last night’s speeches, those who aren’t already predisposed to vote for McCain, will hear you slag community organizers and think, “Gosh, what a bunch of fucking assholes.”

Exactly. I was talking to a friend while watching Sarah Palin’s speech, and when she dropped that line, he immediately said “way to shit on every non-profit worker in the country, Sarah.” What’s funny is that supposedly Republicans support letting the private sector help the poor, etc., rather than the government, so you’d think that Republicans would be praising the work of a community organizer.

But nah — the GOP doesn’t have consistent morals like that. This year everything is new. Knock up your girlfriend? YOU get to stand onstage at the Republican Convention! The talking point on the GOP ticket is that they have the experienced candidate on the top of the ticket, where he belongs, which requires us to forget who is currently president, and how that ticket worked. By the GOP’s current logic, John Kerry should have won in 2004. After all, the candidate with experience was on the top! And if in 2012 they put a newbie on top and an old hand on bottom, suddenly that will be the way again!

I would hate to belong to a political party that demanded so little from me intellectually.