South Carolina Democrats: Racist Idiots

The South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman, Dick Harpootlian, is — not to point too fine a point on things — a racist idiot for launching his latest inane attack on Nikki Hailey. And because his party faithful elected him to that post, they are also racist idiots if they go along with it. But South Carolina Democrats have a very very long history of being racist idiots, don’t they. (Just like Texas Democrats, by the way with their “white primary” and current two-step primary/caucus system.)

What box should Gov. Nikki Haley check when it comes to her race?

The South Carolina Democratic Party tried Thursday to make Haley out as a liar for checking “white” as her race on her 2001 Lexington County voter registration application.

But the application had no specific option for “Indian.” Her options were “white, black/African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American or other.”

Dick Harpootlian, the Democratic Party chairman, said whether Haley listed her race as white or not doesn’t matter to him. The point is, he said, that the governor has a pattern of twisting the truth.

“Haley has been appearing on television interviews where she calls herself a minority — when it suits her,” Harpootlian said. “When she registers to vote, she says she is white. She has developed a pattern of saying whatever is beneficial to her at the moment.”

I don’t think those boxes and racial classifications belong in our modern republic at all, and I say this as half of a mixed marriage myself. But in the case of the one Hailey checked, she’s of Indian ethnicity, but that wasn’t an option on the piece of paper. What was she supposed to do, Dick?

The notion that this would even be a salient issue in Dick’s mind says quite a lot about him, and what he thinks of his own party faithful who elected him. He thinks something this stupid and transparently racist will rile them up against Nikki Hailey? Then he has even more contempt for them than I do (and that’s saying something).

This, by the way, is not the first time Democrats have attacked an Indian-American who happened to be a Republican on the basis of race. When Bobby Jindal was running for governor of Louisiana, the Louisiana Democrats ran around calling him “Piyush.” That’s his given name, but he hasn’t gone by it in years — he has been known as “Bobby” from the time he was a kid. That racist attack failed; hopefully the South Carolina Democrats’ racist attack will fail too.

(via Instapundit)