Lets be clear. Newt has explicitly connected blacks to his use of the food stamp attack line. When he spoke in NH at a senior center, he gave the line about Obama being the food stamp president and then followed it by saying he would go to the NAACP and tell them blacks should demand paychecks instead of food stamps. So while ODonnel may have made her point talking about food stamps generically, Newt specifically conflated blacks and food stamps together in his rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Actually, I would expect the NAACP to call out BS from the Nation. That they fail to do so reflects poorly on them. So to with the Tea Party/GOP et al. When Santorum and Newt can make outrageous statements and get a pass or even worse be applauded and defended for them, that reflects poorly on the GOP/Tea Party and the principles they claim to support.

I take your point on the ethanol subsidies assuming the author of the article is correct in ascribing the impetus for letting them die to the Tea Party. I will note that farm subsidies are still very much a part of the agricultural industry landscape and you don't see Tea Party types opposing them by cosigning the same sorts of dog whistle rhetoric that gets pointed at blacks.

It shouldn't. Blacks were historically republican until the GOP through us under the bus. I think what should confuse you is why black folks demand so little accountability or real results from a party to which we have given unswerving political loyalty.

Democratic, progressive policies have not worked. Conservative principles are a better basis for policy that benefits us. The GOP's political practice leaves much to be desired, but so does the Democrats. Black folks have got to start playing their political cards better and stop being a democratic voting bloc by default.

Wasting resources implies you actually expended some in the first place. That hasn't happened. And as I said, GOP dog whistle behavior is common, I document it often enough here and I'm not going looking for it, it finds me. You have a point that black folks largely tune out GOP policy positions after they hear one of those whistles, but you and I both know that the most voters are low information (its why neg attacks work). If GOP/Cons use insulting memes repeatedly on the black voting population, memes they already know are an issue, how are blacks to blame. As a movement, we don't go around insulting voting constituencies we actually think are important to our aspirations for government. The fact that we do it with blacks so routinely says volumes.

Good on them, though I notice they don't go around insulting those beneficiaries as society draining laggards. Now, if they start going after dog whistle behavior emanating from their side of the aisle as consistently as they did those subsidies, I'll say nothing but nice things about them forever.

There's an irrational factor there? Really? Your argument would bear more weight if what we are describing were an isolated incident, but its not in any way. It's not just Santorum's "two times". You can go back through posts on this very blog and see the number of times I've called out insulting language and aspersions directed at black folks by GOP pols up and down the hierarchy of the party. This dog whistling behavior is COMMON. And it IS an indictment not only of the party, but the conservative movement itself that it is not confronted when it appears.

Conservative principles are better. The GOP's practice of them in implementation and messaging when it comes to engaging black folks is abysmal.

Black people are disproportionately on welfare? Really? Only if you want to talk about welfare as WIC or public assistance payments, or put another way, only if you want to talk about forms of welfare where blacks are large beneficiaries. But if we're going to talk about welfare, then lets talk about welfare. Farm subsidies, corp. bailouts, Social Security. Those are all welfare, all breaking the bank, all costing FAR MORE than public assistance transfer payments that blacks receive and the beneficiaries of those welfare programs are overwhelmingly white, in raw numbers, proportionally or however you want to count it. Whenever this conversation about welfare is to be had, its curious that we only focus on welfare programs where blacks have large representation among the beneficiaries, never on the ones where they don't. But welfare is welfare.

Thats why the GOP is in a trick bag as you suggest on race and welfare, because they only want to focus on welfare where the beneficiaries are black. If conservatives and tea partiers were really consistent on this issue of dependency on government welfare, they would be equally as interested in pulling the beam out of their own eye as they are the splinter out of ours. The difference isn't lost on blacks and undermines conservatives who want to raise this as an issue because the inconsistency is so utterly glaring.

It is disturbing to me that these memes circulate widely and completely unchallenged within the conservative movement. As a conservative and a card carrying republican, its damn frustrating. I call it like I see it and make the case for accountability. We still have a very long way to go though.

Being a conservative doesn't mean i abdicate to foolishness. The "progressives" have a pretty real Bantustan they seem to have black folk penned up in. Calling me a "NegroeCon" strikes me an as indicator of the plantation you might be living on. I'm an African American and a citizen and there ain't no conflict between those two things.

No, I disagree. Their targets are financial sector companies, to the extent they articulate that. Its not Occupy Hollywood. I don't think those folks are scared either, but the issue for OWS is whether they are going to get serious about the hard work of change. The Tea Party folks buy into a principles narrative thats good, but just like the GOP, their political practice leaves much to be desired often.

OWS has gotta grow up and decide if they want to get real and effective, or just act out and settle for that as their contribution to changing the world. Are they gonna grow up and be activist citizen adults or remain civic adolescents. They have to decide.