This should not be surprising, at least for long-time readers:
Last week’s fact-free diatribe from Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., about the KKK supposedly being a leftist organization is a prime example. As I recently wrote, Republicans have used the Justice Department’s dubious indictment of the anti-racist Southern Poverty Law Center to falsely portray racist extremism, which the SPLC tracks and investigates, as either nonexistent or a liberal contrivance. This tactic mirrors rhetoric deployed by conservatives who sought to deny the threat of the KKK during its rise, or even its mere existence.[Ja’han Jones, MS-NOW]
The Republican Party has become populated by people who lean further and further right, and they do realize that organizations such as the ultra-conservative KKK, defender and devotee of the status quo of black servitude, have an undesirable reputation that will repel the critical independent voters.
What to do?
Blame the Democrats, and further left, for the invention of these classic ultra-conservative organizations.
Of course, when the Republican Party members sympathetic to these causes are caught mouthing the sentiments, they run the risk of being accused of being, well, Democrats. Sad for them.
But personally the day cannot be far off when the prosperity churches accuse Democrats and the left of using the Southern Baptist Convention as proxies for their devious plans.
Ahem.
