Young Republicans: Racism, Hate, Psychotic Paranoia and Intimidation; Just Like the Old Republicans!

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

Sarah Palin and Audra Shay span the United States from North (Alaska) to South (Louisiana), but they share the emotional molten core of the last Alamo stand of the white GOP: "we'll fight to keep the government white."

Audra Shay, nearly 40, just won the Presidency of the Young Republicans over a real young Republican, a woman in her 20s.  Shay became infamous last week for the discovery of her racist rants and Michele Bachmann-Glenn Beck style proclamations of a nation near an Obama Armageddon meltdown.

Yet, through bullying and procedural foul play, Shay managed to eke out a win in this year's convention in Indianapolis to prove that the younger Republicans are just like the older ones: racist, bitter, white and hateful.

Frank Rich writes in his June 12th column about Sarah Palin:

Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind....The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.That resentment is in part about race, of course....She puts a happy, sexy face on ugly emotions, and she can solidify her followers’ hold on a G.O.P. that has no leaders with the guts or alternative vision to stand up to them or to her.

Audra Shay, who is just a few years younger than Palin, is proof that the future of the Republican Party is its past: Racism, Hate, Psychotic Paranoia and Intimidation.  And we might add an abundance of mediocrity.

Think of the San Andreas fault. The corporate wing of the Republican Party aside, the populist wing is primarily "white firsters" -- whether of the Baptist/Evangelical variety or just plain Neo Confederates (someone like Audra Shay appears to be the combo-deal).

The dust up a couple of months back between whether Limbaugh or the RNC/Republicans in Congress led the Republican Party was a battle between the populist "white firsters" and the the Oligarchy/corporate branch of the GOP.

What the victory of Audra Shay as the new head of the Young Republicans and the continuing national obsession with Sarah Palin indicates is that the populist wing continues to be in ascendance, it would appear.

The "white firsters," as Frank Rich points out, are a diminishing demographic, which makes them all the more angry and bitter.

They are going to put up one Hell of a fight to force upon us -- promoters of the Constitution and a democracy decided by the majority -- to force upon us a white right wing Christian government.

Wasilla, in racist outlook, isn't really that far from Shay's Louisiana; in fact ideologically, they are next door neighbors, ready to throw a brick through the window of the first black to move into the neighborhood.

Or the first one to occupy the White House.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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