We’ve been so busy laughing at all the conservative denials over the amount of racism on the right that the anti-Semitism on the right has been ignored lately. Rachel Weiner points out an example.
Two South Carolina County Republican Party chairmen stepped up to rebut criticism of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in a newspaper editorial Sunday. But their defense of the senator might be overshadowed by their use of an anti-Semitic stereotype to praise him.
After a Democratic state senator wrote in The State that DeMint didn’t bring enough money back home, Bamberg County GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin and Orangeburg County GOP Chairman James Ulmer responded that he was just looking after the nation’s pennies — like a Jew would.
“There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves,” Ulmer and Merwin wrote in a joint letter published by The Times and Democrat. “By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.
And the Republican Party wonders why their optimistic predictions of picking the Jewish vote aren’t working out. The Republican Party has become primarily the party of southern white men–complete with all the baggage that carries.
I’m really having a hard time with this. I can’t believe that even a rag sheet in S.C. would print something despicable.
This kind of attitude is so common and widespread that they didn’t think twice about putting this out in a press release.
‘I’m really having a hard time with this. I can’t believe that even a rag sheet in S.C. would print something despicable.’
Catholic, Jewish, and Mormon conspiracy theories are really popular in my neck of TN. Even people who are probably not bigoted on an individual level subscribe to all kinds of cultural baggage.
And of course, the far right of the evangelical movement is VERY anti-Semitic, anti-Mormon, and anti-Catholic.
So I’m not surprised at all.