Coloring the truth (3/21)

By Brendan Nyhan
[First published on Salon.com (Salon Premium subscription required)]

In remarks Friday to the National Association of Hispanic Publications, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe took the low road yet again, implying that Republican primary voters are hostile to Hispanics and suggesting that the GOP is racially biased. Even for statements by a professional partisan, they were wildly unfair.

The speech contained scary-sounding but vague denunciations of what he called "ultra-conservatism." McAuliffe entered into a discussion of how Republicans "just can't help themselves" and "always show their true colors by choosing the extremists on the right." After citing Bill Simon's win over the more moderate Richard Riordan in California's Republican gubernatorial primary, McAuliffe turned to the campaign for the GOP nomination for the state Supreme Court in Texas.

"It happened in the Texas primary too. There was only one Latino Republican on the statewide primary ballot -- Xavier Rodriguez. And he lost, even though he is a sitting state Supreme Court justice," McAuliffe said. "Republican primary voters, not surprisingly, preferred the Anglo candidate, who was the plaintiffs' lawyer in the Hopwood case, which ended affirmative action in the Texas university system." The result, McAuliffe clearly suggested without citing any evidence, was that (presumably white) Republicans voted for Smith purely because of his race.

McAuliffe tried to qualify the suggestion by noting that the candidate, Steven Wayne Smith, was the lawyer who organized the successful Hopwood suit against affirmative action practices at the University of Texas School of Law. But, as President George W. Bush knows from two successful gubernatorial campaigns in Texas, many Latinos oppose affirmative action, too; indeed, some are among the very conservatives that McAuliffe derides. So why is it relevant that Rodriguez is Latino and his opponent white?

Affirmative action and related issues of ethnicity and race did play at least some role in Rodriguez's defeat, which shocked the Texas political establishment. Smith focused his underdog campaign on his role in the Hopwood case and criticized his opponent for not taking a strong-enough stand against racial preferences, among other things. In published accounts, Texas political observers have cited a number of possible explanations for Smith's victory, including his "simpler" name (a view shared by Rodriguez); Hispanic Republicans crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary (which featured two Hispanic candidates); and the contrast between Smith's conservatism and Rodriguez's more moderate positions. But none of this justifies McAuliffe's implicit stereotyping of Republican voters.

Earlier in the speech, McAuliffe took a similarly inflammatory swipe at Republicans for supporting a proposed requirement that first-time voters who register by mail have to prove their identity with photo identification when they arrive at the polls. Again linking Republicans to racial animus, he said that the proposed requirement is a "direct descendant of the poll taxes and literacy tests of the segregationist South," and suggested sarcastically that "[t]he next thing you know they'll want you to present your country club membership card in order to get a ballot."

This is far from the first time McAuliffe, the titular head of the Democratic Party, has played on racial issues in his public remarks. In a press release earlier this month, McAuliffe claimed that by nominating District Court Judge Charles Pickering to a court that presides over a region heavily populated with minorities, "Bush is attempting to disenfranchise this community." As we have pointed out before, attributing this motivation to Bush based solely on Pickering's views on the Voting Rights Act is outrageous.

Partisan discourse is one thing, but resorting to such nasty racial attacks, which are meant only to conjure crude images of Republicans driven by the worst possible motivations, is nothing short of demagoguery.

[This post was exclusively available for two days to members of Salon Premium, which requires a paid subscription. We hope that you'll join Premium through our affiliate link (also posted in the "Currently on Spinsanity" box) for immediate access to our newest work and to all the other good stuff on Salon.]

[Email this to a friend]     [Subscribe to our email list]

Related links:
-McAuliffe's week of jargon (Bryan Keefer, 3/8/02)
-Terry McAuliffe's ridiculous extrapolations (Brendan Nyhan, 8/9/01)

3/21/2002 05:58:01 AM EST |

Letters to the Editor (3/18)

To the editors--

So you're going to educate us on spin. Why not start with your own? You reference praise for your endeavor from the right and left. But your mission statement glaringly omits a commitment to nonpartisan analysis. Wonder why? Could it be that your founders, a Salon and Variety journalist, a union research assistant, and a social do gooder, have only the intention of appearing nonpartisan? Why not disclose the sources of funding for the Spinsanity website? Your disproportionate exposure of alleged spin by conservatives is giving your own intended spin away. If you had the courage of your convictions, you would state your genuine intentions, and then honestly argue your convictions, without spin. Instead, you give us spin. I have absolutely no doubt who your founders voted for in the last three presidential elections. Nice try, but folks like you are all too predictable.

Sincerely,

Edward Kallas

Edward,

We get a lot of questions about our personal political views and how people think they may be reflected on the site. So I'd like to take this opportunity to answer your letter and hopefully in the process address similar concerns voiced by a number of other readers.

First, if you re-read our mission statement, you'll find that it explicitly includes a commitment to "rigorous, non-partisan analysis"Our goal is to be a watchdog of manipulative political rhetoric from both sides. Despite your allegation that we give "disproportionate exposure" to spin by conservatives, I think a fair overview of our work shows we have criticized both conservatives and liberals when it is appropriate I would point you, for instance, to the time and effort we have spent debunking manipulative rhetoric from liberals like Robert Scheer, Julian Bond and Bob Herbert, and our extensive coverage of Democratic Enron spin. It is also notable that we have been praised or cited by a number of conservative commentators and publications, including Andrew Sullivan,Ramesh Ponnuru of The National Review, and The Washington Times.

As we state in our background analysis, it is our honest intellectual belief that while both sides use sophisticated, non-rational public relations tactics, conservative pundits and politicians do so more often and effectively at this point. But our purpose is to criticize this egregious spin wherever we see it, not advance an agenda. We strongly believe that our criticism is proportionate to the spin that exists in the public discourse, no matter how you divide it up.

You are correct to point out that Brendan, Bryan and I have all worked for liberal or Democratic causes, which we disclose fully on our "About the editors" page. Like most politically interested people, we have strong personal views, but we have made a commitment to our readers that our analysis for Spinsanity will be non-partisan . Given that, we think the best policy is to disclose our backgrounds and let our readers judge our work with the knowledge that we are not hiding anything.

Finally, we don't hide the funding sources for Spinsanity, although you are correct to note that we don't disclose them on any one page of the site. We receive the funds to operate the site and email list, as well as small stipends for ourselves, from two sources. The primary source of funds has been reader donations, which we discuss on our donations page. So far, all of this money has been used to pay site-related costs. In addition, our new distribution agreement with Salon.com provides us with small stipends and may be used to support the operations of the site. Most of our reader donations are anonymous, and we are in the process of setting up a system under which they will all be anonymous to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

We believe that our purpose is clear, our backgrounds appropriately disclosed, and our analysis fully non-partisan. Readers, of course, are free to disagree; in fact, we encourage you to do so. In particular, we invite readers to note specific instances where they think we have been unfair in our analysis or lack thereof. I hope you'll do just that.

Best,

Ben

To write a letter to the editors, email letters@spinsanity.org. We reserve the right to edit all letters for clarity and brevity, but we will not alter your meaning in any way.

[Email this to a friend]     [Subscribe to our email list]

3/18/2002 07:04:57 PM EST |

This website is copyright (c) 2001-2005 by Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan. Please send letters to the editor for publication to letters@spinsanity.org and private questions or comments to feedback@spinsanity.org.

Comments by YACCS