Lunsford's Race Baiting

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has dropped a reference to Secretary of State Elaine Chao and her Chinese ancestry from its website republication of a memo from Bruce Lunsford's campaign. The Lunsford campaign memo dated October 27, 2008 complains of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's alleged ties to China. McConnell is married to Chao, who emigrated to America from China with her family at age eight.

The memo attacks McConnell for, in essence, selling out America to China, supposedly because he has a conflict of interest. A screen capture of the original shows that as of 2:00 Monday afternoon, the original Lunsford memo posted on the DSCC website contained a sentence that read,

1. McConnell is married to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, a prominent Chinese-American, and said that her connections were instrumental in raising money from Chinese-Americans.

That sentence is no longer on the website. The sanitized memo, as currently posted on the DSCC web site, reads:

McConnell has a Major Conflict of Interest When it Comes to China.

1. McConnell received contributions from donors with ties to Chinese intelligence agencies.

2. McConnell’s father-in-law was a schoolmate and close friend of the former head of the Communist Party in China, with whom McConnell worked to expand trade with China.

3. McConnell’s family owns a Chinese shipping company and profits from trade with China.

Note that there is no longer any reference to Chao. As originally posted on the DSCC web site, the memo contained four points under the "conflict of interest heading." The DSCC dropped point number one (regarding Chao, "the prominent Chinese-American") and renumbered the points two through four as two through three.

The Democrats rise up in outrage whenever anyone uses Sen. Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein. We are told that the country has "turned a page" and that we must not demonize Obama for having an "exotic-sounding name" and "not looking like" the Dead White Guys on our currency. We are reassured that just because Obama has a Muslim name, that is no basis to question his patriotism or portray him as Muslim or a Muslim sympathisizer.

It is equally despicable to campaign against McConnell for being married to a woman of Chinese ancestry, and to accuse him of casting votes because Communist China bought for or otherwise influenced his vote. In fact, the reference to Chao is even worse, because it calls to mind the statutes that criminalized intermarriage between races.

So the DSCC was correct to edit the reference to Chao from the memo; it's good to know that even the DSCC has its limits. The Lunsford campaign, on the other hand, is so desperate to win and so bereft of ideas that it has appealed to racisim as a basis for voting against McConnell.