Opinion: Republican calls for condemning the ‘birther’ attack on Kamala Harris
As news of Kamala Harris’ selection to be the Democratic vice president broke, Democrats were warning that racist and sexist attacks on Harris would be coming. As a Republican who saw how Democrats often stayed silent when Sarah Palin was caricatured as a “Caribou Barbie” doll, and sees how Democrats seem to call every Republican policy or criticism some kind of microaggression or outright racism, I was prepared to roll my eyes.
Except, they were not wrong.
I did not expect that the Oakland-born Harris would be subject to a reprise of the “birther” attacks used to falsely question Barack Obama’s legitimacy. But having had a front row seat to watch what my party has devolved into over the past decade, maybe I should not have been surprised.
And in the basement of the Capitol, at the House Republican Conference, I watched as one Republican member, Louie Gohmert, joked at an “open mic” to his colleagues, “Kenya hear me?”
Yes, there were groans — there usually are when Gohmert addresses his colleagues — but not universally. And while serving as the communications director for the Republican National Committee and its first African American chairman, I had to deal with an otherwise well-meaning staffer who posted a sarcastic joke on Twitter — a place where sarcasm does not work — about our President being Muslim in 2010.
But did it put a dent in any of this? Sadly, no. And the worst was yet to come.
All of those anecdotes have a common thread. For a Panamanian-born John McCain, the son of a Mexican-born father Mitt Romney and the Canadian-born Ted Cruz — no problem. But for the first Black President, and now for the first Black nominee for vice president, the signal is clear: they’re not “one of us.” They don’t belong here. It’s been a time-tested refrain, one my first political boss, Jesse Helms, used successfully. But those days should be long gone.
If Trump and Republicans choose to go after Harris instead of Biden, there is plenty of substance to go after — her outspoken support of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, for starters. Just as there was plenty of substance to go after Obama.
Republicans, stick to that, and stay far away from the “birther,” 9/11 truther and other conspiracy nonsense — except to condemn it. It hasn’t helped the party in recent years — and it won’t now.
