perry and his 'niggerhead' problem

the dynamic of the political campaign for the GOP presidential nomination continues to be played out over the merest of ephemera, with this week's shit-bomb revelation that rick perry's hunting camp is known as "niggerhead".

the controversy swirls around when the name of the camp was painted over on a rock at the gateway to the retreat. no mention is made of the underlying racist impulse that animates most GOP politics, but that's what it is. ever since the "southern strategy" was cranked up to 11 down south, this is the mainstay weapon for amalgamating stupid white support for the oligarchic agenda of the republican party.

in the press, it gets broken down like this:

RealClearPolitics - Can Perry Put His Hunting Camp Problem Behind Him?: "The weekend revelation that Rick Perry and his father once leased a Texas hunting camp known by a racist term has further hurt his already troubled bid for the presidency, and is a reminder that the glare of scrutiny at the presidential level is much more severe than in the Lone Star State.
Though he rapidly became the GOP front-runner after entering the race just six weeks ago, Perry has played catch-up with his rivals in terms of presidential campaign experience and, perhaps as a consequence, his performance suffered in a trio of candidate debates. The fallout from his missteps was just one challenge associated with moving to the national stage late in a campaign. Perry has served as Texas governor for nearly 11 years, but in the short time between now and primary balloting early next year, the national media will turn the microscope on him in a way he has never experienced."

that's "real clear politics," in case you didn't catch on. we can just gloss over the more substantial elements of what makes perry such a phenomenon in the GOP presidential firmament, and go right to the heart of his perception management problem.

it's always been with relish that candidates since ronald reagan could go down to alabama or some other god-forsaken backwater, reel off the coded message of race resentment with aplomb, and ride the rush of good vibrations to primary victory and then the presidency.

the only no-no is that your GOP candidate never admit in plain words what he and his audience both implicitly understand: the problem with america is the niggers. any way you slice it, the bottom line in the south's politics is always precisely that -- you just can't say it. you can say anything but that, but you can't acknowledge the ugly truth.

which is why glenn beck was so successful pitching the nostrum that barack obama is a racist who hates white people. it resonated with an audience that hungers for validation, justification for its' paleolithic mindset. that obama is quite the white, moderate republican in real life is of no consequence, as long as generic hatred of the man's racial heritage provides a bulls-eye for the yahoo mentality to fixate upon.

will perry overcome his problem? in the long haul, it isn't really as much of a problem as it appears at the moment, as it can be easily parlayed into a massive reaction of sympathy for the white victim of liberal media bias (the WaPo being source of the original story). rick perry may be down, but he's hardly out. the racist impulse is alive, and its primal ambassador may have taken a hit, but he ain't going to let the blacks tear a good cracker down.