Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife in Orlando, had a few words to say about Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”:
He says that Donald Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” is a racist codeword. “If you’re a white southerner, you know exactly what it means,” Clinton said.
“I’m old enough to remember the good old days,” he said. “And they weren’t all that good in many ways.”
“That message — I’ll give you America great again — “If you’re a white southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you? It means I’ll give you the economy you had 50 years ago and I’ll move you back up the social totem pole and other people down,” Clinton said. “What Hillary wants to do is take the totem pole down and let us all go forward together!”
https://youtu.be/a7NewiYjaUI
I just love it when liberals accuse the right of using “code words” as a way of signalling their support for oppressing black people. It really is an elegant political ploy. You can take any slogan or innocuous saying and, without any proof whatsoever, claim that the words are code for racism.
Related to that, how about the chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights coming out with a document that says the terms “religious freedom” and “religious liberty” don’t really exist. They are code words for “intolerance.”
See how easy that is?
The only problem with Clinton’s criticism is that he also used the words “Make America Great Again” when he was running for president.
He used it repeatedly while running for president in 1991 and 1992, declaring at one Little Rock, Ark., event, “Together, we can make America great again.”
And in a campaign ad for his wife in 2008, Bill Clinton said, “It’s time for another comeback, time to make America great again.”
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pointed to the inconvenient footage in calling the former president’s allegations about Trump’s slogan a “disgrace.”
“That performance is really something,” she said Friday on “Fox & Friends.” “Bill Clinton is known as a very strong campaigner, a great voice in politics — but not this cycle.”
Proposing that some terms and phrases are psychological dog whistles that only whites can hear is loony. But as a political ploy, it is inspired lunacy. It suggests conspiracy — sort of like all whites knowing a secret handshake. In the case of Clinton’s suggestion, it smears all southern whites as racists.
I guess he doesn’t want any of their votes.
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