Still In Town: That Racist Republican Tent...

"As you grow older, you'll see white men
cheat black men every day of your life,
but let me tell you something and don't you forget it
- whenever a white man does that to a black man,
no matter who he is, how rich he is,
or how fine a family he comes from, he is trash..."
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - The mood of the country is not good. Too many angry white men on the loose, all of them interested in seeing the president of the nation in another setting, perhaps hanging from an Alabama tree. We are our own worst enemies, that remains true. You get a little fearlful in this country and we all know it's time to scoot back to our own. That is understandable, but even more so when the country's economy is in the dumps.

Last night, four white Americans seeking the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination took turns whacking each other in an effort to clear the field, to win. In between, they all took jabs at Democratic President Barack Obama. Nothing wrong with that; it's politics at its rawest.

But another cloud hangs over America. The popular president who has taken the country's poor under his wing, who has rid the world of the terrorist Osama Bin Laden, who has tirelessly stayed on task in the fight against evil emanating from the Middle East, who has calmed the brain-dead economic missteps by former Republican President George W. Bush...is still under attack for the color of his skin.

If it isn't the crazies still wondering about his birthplace, his Kenyan father, his white mother or his singing, it's what you would want to call the somewhat-sane within that party saying he is a socialist, someone who favors Muslims over Christians, who listens to psycho preachers, who has anarchists as advisors. It's all unrefined crap, of course, but there it is.

When will it end? When will we as a country, a country of immigrants, of people of all skin color under the sun, accept ourselves?

In the Republican tent, the clear answer is: Never.

Republicans are okay with their massive failings. They accept adultery (in the form of candidate Newt Gingrich) and they accept defeat (George W. Bush's failure to hunt down and kill Bin Laden). It is documentable, only Republicans love to gloss over their cancers, their open wounds. It is a drag for the country, a shame for all Americans and an anvil on hard-working shoulders that ought to be plowing better ground. That a Republican like candidate Rick Santorum has even one cross word to say about the president is ridiculous. Santorum is a political loser on many levels, and we don't just mean his last election night loss, when his U.S. Senate opponent in Pennsylvania stomped him by 18 percentage points - a literal landslide.

Santorum is not the answer for today's America. None of these flawed Republicans has a clue. The super-millionaire Mitt Romney is the proverbial country club candidate, at last check praising Michigan for having trees of just the right height. Gingrich is an awfully-soiled man and Libertarian Ron Paul, bless his heart, is simply performing in the wrong circus tent. President Obama, in comparison, looks like a million dollars. Obama has no family scandal chasing him. He has not eliminated one job as CEO of a private company. He has not been ousted by voters to the degree that voters rejecetd Santorum. He has not talked about abolishing the IRS or any major federal department. He has moved toward higher ground.

America is down a bit.

But this president is not ready to say all is lost. Instead, he works at improving everybody's lot, not just that of the wealthy Romneys of the world. High Society roustabout Romney does not need the presidency; The United States needs President Barack Obama...

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