Chris Matthews continues to be MSNBC’s unending source of enlightened commentary on race relations and Republican guilt. This time on Thursday’s edition of The Reid Report he suggested that conservative opposition to executive amnesty is rooted in southern racism and was sure to remind everyone that Republicans alone will be blamed if Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shuts down “because they don't like government.”
He took on rural-state conservatives. “Just remember if you come from a rural district, there are very few Hispanic people in your district. That’s the way these districts are broken up. And they don't have minorities in them either. So their not going to take much heat. This guy talking about cantaloupes, cantaloupe legs,” a liberal reference to Rep. Steve King. “He’s making personal physical insults of human beings, and he knows it won't hurt him at home. It’s that bad.”
We should not despair over Republican xenophobia, however. According to Matthews, this racism is not found in “every Republican. It’s not Peter King. It's not the eastern guys. It’s rural people, southern people. You know. You know....They don't speak for every American. They speak for the whites basically. The Anglos. A stupid term, we’re not all Anglos if we’re not Hispanic, but it’s the term used. And I think it's politics. I think the Tea Party is still very strong in the Republican Party.”
Note the Hardball host’s emphasis on the common knowledge that racism is a uniquely southern phenomenon. It is only logical that it would be the single reason for the opposition to the executive overreach. Otherwise, we would be forced to think that they actually care about that nation’s security and just disagree with the president.
Should one be afraid of this racist element coming out on top in this DHS funding debate, Matthews calms our fears with the reminder that “we learned something from Bill Clinton. Republicans get blamed for government shutdowns....They just do. They deserve it in most of the cases, but they do get the credit for being the guys who screwed it up...because they don't like government.”
With this in mind, Matthews says this fight will only end when the Republicans decide “how many hours [they are] willing to risk that nothing bad happens” following the shut down of DHS.
Take heart fellow citizens. President Obama may be the one who upends our homeland security with his executive action, but those southern racist Republicans be discredited when DHS (partially) shuts down.
