by Craig Rhodes

(Brookport, IL) Since Republicans are obsessed with Obama's guilt by association with any number of nefarious characters they open themselves to the same charge except that the nefarious characters are their own. More to the point, the two main factions of the Republican Party are now in the process of distancing themselves from each other and forming the infamous circular firing squad in an effort to avoid future guilt by association. But neither will be able to avoid the racism of the Republican Party because both are guilty of it.

Much is being made on both the left and the right as to what the Republican Party is going to become after the November tsunami splinters what is left of it and long after the raw wound of George Bush has disappeared from the scene. On the one side we have the intelligentsia of the GOP who represent the traditional tenets of fiscal conservatism, smaller government, business both big and small, and resistance to foreign entanglements. On the other side we have what has become known as the base of the Republican Party as represented by the knuckle dragging, hate mongering, know nothing "Christian Right" for lack of a better term. Both are in tension with each other at present and many Republican insiders are predicting a coming "civil war" within the ranks.

The Republican base at present is represented by Sarah Palin who seems to be preparing for her future political career by her obvious distancing from McCain. I believe that the fight for the base will be between Palin and Huckabee with Huckabee coming out on top. The fight for the "moderate" wing of the Republican Party will be between the neo-cons and the traditionalists. Already the neo-con/traditionalists have begun to distance themselves from the base, if for no other reason than to disassociate themselves from the extremist values and policies of the Rush Limbaugh wing of the Party.

However, what is undeniable is the fact that the modern Republican Party including both wings is founded on and runs on racism. Neither will be able to disassociate from the other until this malignancy is addressed. The evidence is everywhere including the original strategy under Nixon that goes by the term of the "Southern Strategy". The Southern Strategy was the deliberate tactic of appealing to southern racism due to Lyndon Johnson's pushing through the Civil Rights Act. This is why the South is a Republican stronghold to this day.

Today we see it in the form of robocalls, voter suppression, the attacks on ACORN, rigged machines in minority districts and worse. All of this and more is outlined in "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative" by Allen Raymond. Raymond should know because he served time in federal prison for pleading guilty for his dirty tricks while employed by the Republican National Committee. And he's not the only dirty Republican to come forward. "Confessions of a Political Hitman: My Secret Life of Scandal, Corruption, Hypocrisy and Dirty Attacks That Decide Who Gets Elected", by Stephen Marks corroborates what Raymond has documented. But we don't need books to tell us about the depraved racist tactics of the Republican Party when we can see it happening on a daily basis before our eyes.

So it would seem that the one main value common to both factions of the Republican Party is their racism. When mainstream Republicans begin to distance themselves from their ditto head base so as not to be guilty by association, they will still have to address the racist policies that infect both wings. Given changing demographics, until the Republican Party admits to and finally disavows its racism it will continue to slink further into the void.