While the controversy over would-be RNC chairman Chip Saltsman's distribution of a CD featuring a song titled "Barack the Magic Negro" continues, the transformation of the GOP into a Southern rump party appears to be virtually complete. After four decades in which race-baiting became a central Republican electoral strategy, Saltsman's gambit is finding both quiet supporters and vociferous defenders within the Party of Hate.
That Mike Huckabee's former campaign manager would cap the 2008 election with a racist parody which first appeared on the Rush Limbaugh show seems altogether fitting. After all, attendees of the Texas Republican convention in June could purchase buttons bearing the question, "If Obama is President...Will We Still Call It the White House?" (The same vendor also reached out to McCain supporters by offering anti-Hillary gear with the slogan, "life is a b*tch, don't vote for one.") And at the so-called Values Voters Summit in September, the conservative Christian faithful could purchase "Obama Waffles," an obvious racist mockery of the old Aunt Jemima packaging which led an admiring Lou Dobbs of CNN to proclaim, "My wife will love this."
Judging by the reactions of the leading lights of the conservative movement, it seems Politico was right to conclude that the "'Magic Negro'" flap might help Saltsman" capture the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.
Those reactions seem to fall into four groups, with the ranks of supporters apparently the largest and most vocal. The first, including Florida Governor Charlie Crist and current RNC head Mike Duncan, denounced Saltsman's tactics as both wrong and damaging to the GOP effort to expand its appeal. As Duncan's Captain Renault impersonation suggests, these few voices in the wilderness can be called the Appalled:

"The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party. I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."

But the Appalled are vastly outnumbered by the Apologists. Fearful of alienating the conservative base among whom "Barack the Magic Negro" plays so well, the Apologists engage in gymnastic contortions to rationalize, explain away and otherwise withhold condemnation of Saltsman's race-baiting. Unsurprisingly, Saltsman's former boss Mike Huckabee ("Chip should have been more careful in his selection of Christmas gifts, but no one who knows him would ever suggest that he in any way would purposely disparage other people") is in this camp, as is Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. Ironically, the most ironic - and pathetic - proponent of this view is Kenneth Blackwell, one of the GOP's troika of failed African-American candidates in 2006. To protect his own chances of securing the RNC leadership mantle, Blackwell quickly got in line at the back of the Saltsman bus:

"Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president. I don't think any of the concerns that have been expressed in the media about any of the other candidates for RNC chairman should disqualify them. When looked at in the proper context, these concerns are minimal. All of my competitors for this leadership post are fine people."

More numerous still are the Defenders of the Faith. These legions of angry right-wingers may or may not actually condone Saltsman's racist rhetoric, but as a matter of reflex rushed to his support. Combining their knee-jerk denunciation of supposed political correctness with the omnipresent conservative belief in his or her own victimhood, these goose-steppers in the GOP commentariat protest that they are under siege by the elite liberal media. This view was expressed by the ever-execrable Michelle Malkin, who compared the outcry over Saltsman's base politics over the immutability of race with admittedly unacceptable attacks on the inescapable stupidity of George W. Bush:

"Oh, give me a super-sized break...All of [the] sudden - after eight years of "F**k Bush" bumper stickers and "Kill Bush" assassination chic and Bush-or-Chimp parodies - the left is concerned about insulting the office of the Presidency?"

But if preservation of the Republican brand requires a ferocious response to any criticism no matter how valid, for the True Believers racism is central to Republican philosophy itself. Paul Shanklin, the performer behind the "Barack the Magic Negro" parody, isn't just a good friend of Chip Saltsman. His work is regularly featured on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. And judging by his massive audience, Limbaugh's race-baiting slurs (Obama as a "Halfrican-American," native Americans as "injuns," Philadelphia quarterback Donovan McNabb's success due to the media being "very desirous that a black quarterback do well" and Obama as "the Donovan McNabb of the U.S. Senate") are finding receptive ears among the Republican faithful (including, apparently, Fox News).
The Republicans' drubbing at the ballot box has led some in the GOP to question the party's continued alignment with Rush Limbaugh and his ilk. "Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh?" Colin Powell recently asked, adding, "Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?" Sadly, the answer from the leading lights of the conservative movement appears to be, "Yes." As I detailed back in 2006, the GOP's race-baiting of African-Americans, so central to the Republicans' "southern strategy" since 1968, continues unabated in ways large and small. And as their "Magic Negro" imbroglio suggests, that appears to be all the Republicans have left.
In November, the Republican Party lost among African-American and Hispanic voters by record margins. For more background on how they got there, see "The Amazing Race Card" (2006), "Divide, Suppress and Conquer" (2006), "The Party of Hate" (2007), and "RNC Orders Diversity Training" (2008).
UPDATE: Politico reports that Ken Blackwell's water-carrying on this issue, hardline social conservativism and infamous role in engineering the 2004 Republican victory in Ohio has won him the RNC chairmanship endorsement from James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Tim Lahaye and many of the Christian right's usual suspects.