Via Blue Virginia, we find that racist Audra Shay won the race to become the Young Republican’s leader.
Audra Shay, the Young Republican leader who became the subject of a national controversy after The Daily Beast uncovered racist comments she wrote on Facebook and other social networking sites, won the race to become head of the Young Republicans by approximately 50 votes (out of about 950 voting delegates) at their national convention this afternoon in Indianapolis.
Shay faced calls to remove herself from the election after appearing to laugh at a racial slur about President Barack Obama, The Daily Beast’s John Avlon exclusively reported. The comments, in which Shay responded to a comment calling blacks “coons,” were quickly deleted, but prompted fellow Young Republicans to urge her to take her hat out of the ring for the national election. And though Shay issued a statement that neither she, nor her Young Republican slate, “condones the use of racial slurs on my wall,” Avlon reports that Shay has a history of racial comments, encouraging extremism and partisan hate online.
Before the election, Meghan McCain urged the group not to choose hate by electing Shay: “What exactly do the Young Republicans expect to achieve by electing a 38-year-old woman who thinks racial epithets are acceptable?”
Here’s my answer to Meghan McCain…perhaps Audra is following in the footsteps of the TNGOP, which has a long history of using racism. Here are some examples that received national attention:
- The republican staffer that sends out a racist email of our President, claiming she sent it to the “wrong” list (is there a right list to send this shit to?), and has kept her job.
- The RNC-supported ad for Corker depicting a white woman telling Harold Ford Jr to call her. The overtones in this ad were just as heinous as the 1988 Willie Horton ad.
- The Bill Hobbs press-release smearing Obama, by attempting to link Obama with anti-semites and terrorists, and which the then TNGOP chair, Robin Smith, defended. (As a caveat, Robin Smith is running for Zach Wamp’s House seat)
- Then there was the “Barack the Magic Negro” tune on a CD sent to RNC Committee members by former TNGOP chair, Chip Satlzman during his bid to head the RNC. Not so amazingly, there were quite a number of highly visibile GOP’ers that supported Saltzman.
Of course, the list is much longer, let me reiterate this list is just a few of the more recent racist incidents that attracted national attention.
So, yeah, the Southern Strategy is still working for the GOP and has even been rachetted up. The real question is how can progressives combat the overt racism in the south?
