While Democrats continue gathering in Charlotte Monday, half of the Republican ticket will be on the other side of North Carolina.
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP's vice presidential nominee, will visit East Carolina University in Greenville, 230 miles away. It will be his third trip to the state since Mitt Romney named him to the ticket last month.
Paul who?
ReplyDeleteThe other component of GOP fakery Ryan exemplifies is the notion that a pampered
ReplyDeletescion of a construction empire who has spent his life supported by government
somehow represents the “white working class,” by virtue of the demographics of
his gradually gerrymandered blue collar district. I write about this in my book:
guys like Ryan (and his Irish Catholic GOP confrere Pat Buchanan) somehow become
the political face of the white working class when they never spent a day in
that class in their life. Their only tether to it is their remarkable ability to
tap into the economic anxiety of working class whites and steer it toward
paranoia that their troubles are the fault of “other” people – the slackers and
the moochers, Ayn Rand’s famous “parasites.” Since the ’60s, those parasites are
most frequently understood to be African American or Latino – but they’re always
understood to be the “lesser-than” folks, morally, intellectually and
genetically weaker than the rest of us.
Today, though, the “parasites” Republicans rail against also happen to be white.
Ryan’s intellectual soulmate Charles Murray, of course, has shown that the
struggling white working class is now besieged by the same bad morals that
dragged down African Americans – laziness, promiscuity and a preference for
welfare over work. Ryan himself rails against the “takers” who are living off
the “makers.” And while in the realm of dog whistle politics, many Republicans
hope working class whites still see the takers as “other,” in fact, Ryan’s
definition of “taker” includes much of the GOP base. It’s up to Democrats to
make that plain to the electorate.