UK: Republican tactics

PJ: It should be surprising that people from other countries know more details about President Obama's life than many Republicans in the US. It is not that foreigners have access to more information, it is because they are not blinded by irrational hatred and prejudice.

The Telegraph

Republicans must ditch suicidal smear campaign
By Alex Spillius

Here is my guest appearance in the American Way slot in today’s Sunday Telegraph, on Mike Huckabee’s outburst against Barack Obama:

Mike Huckabee may or may not win the Republican presidential nomination, but he is certainly giving Sarah Palin a run for her money as chief conservative controversialist.

The former Arkansas governor, who consistently polls among the top three potential Republican contenders for 2012, last week matched the former vice-presidential candidate’s knack for grabbing negative headlines when he erroneously claimed Barack Obama was raised in Kenya.

He surmised that Obama had, as a youth, been instructed in the evils of British conduct during the Mau Mau rebellion, becoming infused with an anti-colonial, anti-Western attitude.

Apart from the fact that Americans, of all people, should not have a problem with anti-colonialism, Obama did not visit Kenya, the land of the father he barely knew, until he was well into his twenties.

Under pressure the next day, Huckabee explained he had “misspoken” – a familiar excuse used by American politicians after a colossal gaffe. Rather than Kenya, he claimed he had meant to say Indonesia, where Obama lived from the age of six to 10.
No one bought that for a minute, despite Huckabee’s affable, southern mien. But rather than retreat, the former Baptist preacher dug an even deeper hole for himself as he continued a tour to promote his latest book.

Obama, he said, had “a different world view”, which was “moulded out of a very different experience”.

“Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas,” he added. “This is not a guy who grew up playing little league baseball in a small town.”

Some fact-checking is required here. Not all young American males join the Boy Scouts. The Rotary Club in Honolulu, where Obama was raised, was chartered in 1915, just one year after its equivalent in Little Rock, Arkansas. Obama’s main school in Jakarta was run by a Roman Catholic Dutchman. When the future president returned to Hawaii, he was raised by his white maternal grandparents; one worked at a bank, the other sold insurance. As for sports, Obama was a high-school basketball player and is now, by all accounts, something of a stat-bore.

What Huckabee was doing is called dog-whistling, sending out high-pitch, socio-political signals – Kenya, rebellion, madrassa, rotary, scout, baseball – that transmitted the following message to his keenly tuned audience: Obama is not quite the right sort of American. Such undermining of Obama is not based on plain racism, as some might conclude. But it may betray a cultural discomfort with Obama’s unconventional background and, in Huckabee’s case, a resentment of his liberal “elitism” – Obama went to Harvard Law School, while the Arkansan attended university in his home state.

For sure, the governor’s stance showed opportunism. He was plainly seeking to exploit the conspiracy theory that Obama was born outside the US and is therefore not entitled to sit in the Oval Office. This goes down well with Republican primary voters, many of whom are either “birthers” or believe that Obama is a Muslim, or both. They are also Huckabee’s main book-buying audience.

Very few other senior elected Republicans are ever prepared to issue outright denials of either rumour about Obama, or to quiet those who wantonly perpetuate insinuations. Karl Rove, the George W Bush guru who knows a thing or two about winning elections, is among Republicans now warning that encouraging this whispering campaign against the president could be suicidal for the party in 2012.
It will, they believe, alienate independent voters, who have decided the past few elections, and will also help drive any fence-sitting Democrats to the polls. The cultural prejudice inherent in questioning the legitimacy of a non-scouting, black president offends not only African Americans but also others who don’t tick every all-American box, such as Hispanics, who now form the largest minority and vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. The country is changing, even if Mike Huckabee isn’t.
With the economy improving only at a glacial pace, the country steeped in debt and the war in Afghanistan dragging on, Republicans have plenty of legitimate material with which to tackle Obama, without impugning his patriotism and his validity.
As the renowned Republican campaign advisor Mark McKinnon wrote: “The only way Republicans will beat President Obama is with the power of ideas. If candidates continue to try to smear Obama with innuendo about where he comes from, then the President will be staying right where he is for another four years.”

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/alexspillius/100078688/republicans-must-ditch-suicidal-smear-campaign/