CNN's Erickson: Forget about African-American voters, GOP should start running new “Willie Horton” ads

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published

In a July 13 blog post, “King Samir Shabazz Should Be 2010's Willie Horton,” CNN contributor and RedState.com editor-in-chief Erick Erickson wrote of the manufactured scandal over the Justice Department's handling of the New Black Panther Party case: “Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls.”

Erickson added: “The Democrats will scream racism. Let them. Republicans are not going to pick up significant black support anyway.” From Erickson's post:

Had Horton been white, the Republicans still would have used the ad. But Horton was black and the ad was powerfully effective -- so effective that it and Dukakis's stupid answer about opposing the death penalty even if his wife were murdered destroyed the Democrats in 1988 -- the Democrats screamed racism at the top of their lungs and their accomplices in the media have forever agreed. Willie Horton = racism.

Nonsense. The ad worked. It was powerful. It was the truth. That's why the Democrats screamed racism so loud. It was the only way to stop the GOP from going this direction again. They know the GOP lives in perpetual quixotic quest for the day it gets a significant share of the black vote.

Now we have King Samir Shabazz. He showed up at a polling location in Pennsylvania and intimidated voters going into the polls. The Justice Department pursued the case and, having received a verdict it the government's favor, Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder stopped pursuing the New Black Panthers.

Video has subsequently come out of King Samir Shabazz encouraging the murder of white children.

Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls.

The Democrats will scream racism. Let them. Republicans are not going to pick up significant black support anyway. But here's the thing: everyone but the Democrats will understand this is not racism. This isn't even about race. This is about the judgment of an administration that would rather prosecute Arizona for doing what the feds won't do than prosecuting violent thugs who would deny you and me the right to vote while killing our kids.

Erickson's employer, CNN, notes that the Willie Horton ad “played to racial fears and portrayed Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as soft on crime.”