No One Wants To Call The Future Of The GOP A Racist, But He's Almost Demanding It

Yesterday's Orlando Sentinel addressed the heretofore unspoken racism of radical right teabagger candidate Marco Rubio. Just as Rubio is running around bragging how the architect of Bush's bank bailout, duplicitous Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan endorsed him, many on the right are starting to get fed up with Rubio's have-it-both-ways attitude towards everything smacking of controversy. This Sunday Rubio will be featured in the NY Times Magazine, which asks if he's about to be the first senator from the tea party.

Before then, Rubio has something else to deal with. Though many of the angry teabaggers are just a bunch of scared racist slobs, it isn't spoken about in polite company, especially not when someone needs independents and moderates to win an election, like a general election-- if not a GOP primary-- in Florida. As you can see above, Marco Rubio's website currently features the headline "The Great Right Hope," a play on the phrase "great white hope," which has a long history traceable back to racist opponents of heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the first African American to hold the title. It later because the focus of a play and a movie starring James Earl Jones.

Rubio has been an outspoken opponent of Barack Obama-- even questioning his citizenship-- and would face Kendrick Meek, an African-American congressman, in the general election if he gets past Charlie Crist. Rubio must have been aware of the trouble Republican Lynn Jenkins ran into just a few months ago using this phrase in opposition to Obama. If this is his idea of a dog whistle, he's severely off-key, at least for Florida moderates.