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Young GOP Chooses Hate
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Audra Shay, the Young Republicans leader accused of endorsing racism on Facebook, was elected head of the group for GOP members under 40 this afternoon.
Audra Shay, who became the subject of a national controversy after The Daily Beast uncovered racist comments she wrote on Facebook and other social-networking sites, won the race to become head of the Young Republicans by approximately 50 votes (out of about 950 voting delegates) at their national convention this afternoon in Indianapolis.
Shay faced calls to remove herself from the election after appearing to laugh at a racial slur about President Barack Obama, The Daily Beast’s John Avlon exclusively reported. The comments, in which Shay responded to a comment calling blacks “coons,” were quickly deleted, but prompted fellow Young Republicans to urge her to take her hat out of the ring for the national election. And though Shay issued a statement that neither she, nor her Young Republicans slate, “condones the use of racial slurs on my wall,” Avlon reports that Shay has a history of racial comments, encouraging extremism and partisan hate online.
Before the election, Meghan McCain urged the group not to choose hate by electing Shay: “What exactly do the Young Republicans expect to achieve by electing a 38-year-old woman who thinks racial epithets are acceptable?”
Young Republicans insiders had expected the vote to be "very, very close" and said that many delegates were urging unity no matter who the winner turned out to be.
Shay defeated Rachel Hoff, who serves as the Young Republicans’ Director of Media Relations. She ran on a five-point platform that emphasized education, technology, and community outreach. According to George P. Bush, son of Jeb Bush, “Rachel’s professionalism, hard work, and leadership will well-represent the GOP.” Sarah Huckabee, daughter of Mike Huckabee, said, “Rachel Hoff’s approach to politics and life seems to be: ‘Stand Up and Lead.’”
Shay is a 38-year-old Army veteran and mother from Louisiana, who works as an event planner and serves as vice chairman at large for the Young Republicans. She ran on the platform of “Restore, Revitalize, Reinforce,” which emphasized rebranding the Young Republicans as more hip through Facebook and Twitter, and spreading "our message of lower taxes and less government to these corners and let people know that we’re here and we’ll hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire.” She was endorsed in the election by her governor, Bobby Jindal.
Shay came under fire for a Facebook exchange, in which she posted that “WalMart just signed a death warrant” by “endorsing Obama’s health care plan.” A friend named Eric S. Piker weighed in: “It’s the government making us commies… can’t even smoke in my damn car… whats next they going to issue toilet paper once a month .. tell us how to wipe our asses…” Two minutes later, Piker posted again: “Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons … and illegals.” Immediately after his post, Shay responded: “You tell em Eric! Lol.”
While Shay defended her comment as responding only to Piker’s first post, others on her Facebook page noticed the remarks. “Someone please help a naïve Seattle girl out, is Eric’s comment a racist slur?” asked Cassie Wallender, a national committeewoman from the Washington Young Republican Federation. A minute later, she answered her own question: “Okay, why is this okay? I just looked it up. ‘It comes from a term baracoons (a cage) where they used to place Africans who were waiting to be sent to America to be slaves.’ THIS IS NOT OKAY AND IT’S NOT FUNNY.”
Shay responded that the allegations against her were “political attacks” which “proves that my opponents will stoop to the lowest levels to steal this election from the jaws of victory.”
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We are doomed? This is one more step showing the country that this party is WAY out of step.
I say, YAY!
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@Char
You may be exactly right. But I am willing to bet that the faces of this new party will be the same faces we've become used to.
A third party is great... different faces in government would be even greater.
@charlestondover: BOTH parties? WTF?
I believe the GOP has, given all that transpired this week around the election of this atavistic knucklehead bigot, deliberately and perversely communicated loud and clear where it is and wants to go. And shame, SHAME on the Dems for, uhm. . . what again?
Indeed, we are not doomed at all. The young GOP is just showing itself to be so out of step with the world, so lost in whatever animosities they hold against Obama and the direction the world is going, that they have nothing to say. So they are resorting to hatred and animosity, which will not fly with anyone with a semblance of common sense and intelligence. The GOP, at all levels, seems to have sunk to the bottom. They are so far into the wilderness that the sun doesn't shine on them anymore. They are sounding like some far-out, nutty wing party, not the party of Lincoln or even regular Republicans. In fact, ole Abe is probably spinning in his grave at their antics!
Let them self-destruct. What rises in their place will be better, and they'll be better for the lessons learned. Recreating oneself is the most American of traits, after all!
Wow, now she, Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh can just fawn over each other everyday and tell each other how wonderful they are. Makes me nauseous!!
Is this a big surprise? I think it only helps the non (R) parties.
This is such a mistake. If the Republican party wanted to raise all their money from the KKK or John Birch Society, this would've been a wise move. Any African-American or Hispanic who continues to register themselves as a Republican is a fool.
Wallysmom; Trust me, the minorities who see this will rationalize this by saying, "this is much to do about nothing! We need to focus on leading our party in the 2010 elections. We must come together and look into the future"! They fail to realize that Ms. Shays future does not involve them, just their vote!
Mark my words, Wallysmom. This will be their lame excuse for justifying what Ms. Shay has said. They will never learn.........I agree with you wholeheardtley on your comment.
What I find particularly interesting/amusing is that the Elephant was chosen particularly for its long memory that the Democrats were the party of the South with it's attendant racist, secessionist, and general right wing nutty partisanship that marked the old Dixiecrat South.
I guess they forgot.
Young GOP choses hate.
Wow!, How surprising! Who would have thought that something like that can happen in the GOP?
Oh, for Pete's sake!
Does no one in the republican party understand that as long as they keep doing this sort ot thing, they will not be taken seriously by those who actually think about issues, instead of simply react?
It isn't the racism, or the hypocrisy that gets me. it is the utter stupidity of a person who would post such things online, thinking that it either wouldn't matter or it wouldn't be known.
Would people just please stop electing stupid people to office?
Please?
After what we heard at the Palin rallies and just recently from the Freepers about Malia, is anyone really surprised?
What are freepers??
Freepers=the people who frequent The Free Republic site, which is where somebody posted a picture of Malia that prompted a flurry of racist commets like 'ghetto trash' and 'when will she have her first abortion?' that caused them to pull the thread for review then restored the thread having only removed the few comments that condemned such talk as racist! In Freeper land everything is a conspiracy against them, they have tons of conspiracies on how to regain power, and they never take responsibility for anything their party members do as in 'Sanford cheated because he was so worn down by having to accept those socialist stimulus dollars' was a common meme there even though Sanford has been cheating since before W was elected yet somehow in their Freeper minds Obama caused Sanford to cheat just like he caused Palin to resign. If a Obama says it's night they will incessantly proclaim it is actually day and those who think it is night are traitors to the Free Republic. When a lone voice of sanity spoke out against the racist comments towards the black kids kicked out of the pool club was told that black kids are feral, that they were kicked out because there was no adult supervision of their feral behavior (they were there with their summer camp and indeed did have camp counselors with them to keep them in line), and 'You live in NYC so you know how out of control these people are so how can you apologize for their feral ways?' stupidity. Going to Free Republic is like going back in time a century and losing half your IQ.
Palin rallies were horrific. I live in the deep South and truly believed that as a nation we had moved beyond the bigotry and hatred only to see that it is hardly tied to a geographical area.
Look, we've always known the hard-core GOP are religious fanatics scared of losing their "white power". Now this proves it. I for one am glad, if you're a racist be proud to be one and let the American people vote for who you really are. If this signs the death warrant of the old GOP so be it, hopefully a newer and more modern version will rise from the flames.
Guess they'll all go out and have a good ol' fashioned cross burning, huh?
I'm sure we'll see more of the Young Racistpublicans doing stunts like this:
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Conservative Free Republic blog free speech flap after racial slurs directed Obama children/1782375/story.html
Bring your sheets, folks - we're going to a 'publican meeting!
Okay I read that Vancouver Sun article, and I am appalled at just how nasty the Republicans have gotten. I guess they DO want a racist in charge of their "youth group".
Well Meagan McCain, why don't you decide to come over to our side, or will you by your membership in the Republican Party endorse such filth.
That article is the most disgusting thing
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Conservative Free Republic blog free speech flap after racial slurs directed Obama children/1782375/story.html
Isn't it rather ironic, the National Republican Party has a black leader and a racist as leader of the Young Republican in Audra Shay. These people are really confused. One thing they have in common, they are mad as hell they are out of power and will do anything, anything to regain it.
I highly recommend watching the video footage of Morris Dees from the Southern Poverty Law Center giving an address to the National Press Corps on CSPAN video. Sorry I don't know how the include a link.
I couldn't be more delighted. Thank you, Young Republicans! Thank you!!!
The more open you are about who you are, the faster we'll be rid of this gang of deviates, miscreants, whack jobs and hateful old hate mongers who call themselves the Republican Party.
Looks like the "future" of the republican party is going to look exactly like what they are right now and that's not pretty.
Seems to me like there's about 400 republicans that might be better served by changing their party affiliation.
LOL.
Do the other 399 have any ideas of how to do any better?
After just being told by the White House volunteer persons to go out and do it myself, when I asked for help for gang abatement projects and the fifty percent and rising drop out rates, I don't thing the Dems are going to do anything either.
If there are only 400 decent Republicans, and how many decent Dems, we are lost. The real problem is that I think there are those described by President Bush as the haves and the have mores, who think they should have it all, and they are on both sides of the aisle, how do we unselect them?
By outlawing lobbyist money in DC. Right now lobbyists are spending 1.5 million a day to insure that we don't have health care for everybody. They claim massive reform isn't needed even though we spend twice as much on health care per person than those 'socialized' countries that cover everybody and on top of that we are spending that absurd amount and yet we have the WORST mortality rates out of all the industrialized country. If we spent all that money and had the best health care system in the world that'd be one thing but seeing how we spend all that money and have the worst health care system in the western world it is a disgrace. I don't know how those lobbyists sleep at night knowing their actions will insure people will suffer and die due to a lack of decent, easily accessed health care.
To paraphrase another Beast headline:
"Is the GOP in Heaven?"
The stupidity of the Republican party never ceases to amaze me. I had predicted she would win, because once her racism was revealed, the idiots on the right know no other response other than to claim victimhood. In her world, the controversy was a feature, not a bug.
Now, everything Shay touches is contaminated from the start. It's just like with Ensign, Sanford, Palin, Vitter, Craig, etc., etc. Republicans seem to wear their failure as a badge of honor. So going forward it's cheater Ensign, Appalachian Trail Sanford, Quitter Palin, Diaper Boy Vitter, Wide Stance Larry, and now Racist Shay.
It's great to be a Democrat, where guys like Edwards, Spitzer, and McGreevey are forced to resign when they bring shame to the party. Republicans, on the other hand, never take responsibility for anything. It's why they are now irrelevant.
Republicans, on the other hand, never take responsibility for anything. It's why they are now irrelevant.
========================
Excellent statement.
I, for one, applaud the Republican party's courageous new move to stay exactly the same. Dynamic!
Incredible. They are are fleeing from reason and intellect and have embraced their own destruction. Poor Jack Kemp must be spinning in his grave.
Sorry, Meghan McCain. This proves DEFINITIVELY that the McCain/Palin campaign rallies were representative of something VERY ugly in this country, no matter how hard you try to ignore or spin that reality.
Thanks so much for giving us Sarah Palin and "Joe the Plumber."
McCain = Most Irresponsible, Erratic and Reckless Republican Candidate for the Presidency OF ALL TIME
All part of the GOP's strategy to redefine and maintain itself as the party out of power.
Good Grief! I feel sorry for the Republicans who are fiscally conservative and socially progressive. There is no room for them in their own party.
You just described a Libertarian.
Libertarians I respect. Republicans, not so much.
I hope the Libertarians continue to grow. Ron Paul is an interesting candidate.
Republicans need to be a permanent 20% party.
Libertarianism is pretty much the only pure philosophy. I'd love to see a strong libertarian party that further marginalizes all the madness in the GOP.
Which is exactly why we need more than two parties.
Welcome to the new Klan - it's young. It's hip. It's nauseating.
Any person of color who has anything to do with this party is pathological. And any white person who has anything to do with them is either a swine or deeply troubled.
To her great credit, Megen McCain tried to stop this outrage from occurring. But it's really past time for her withdraw her membership in this group and the Republican party at once. The sight of that poor girl having to apologize for these vile and intolerable people is pathetic in the extreme, and loyalty to her father is no longer a plausible excuse. These people are hateful fascists and everyone knows it.
Finally. Seeing as Young Democrat leaders have beenelecting racists to their leadership for years...I guess they figured it was time to fight back.
Oh yes,and then we have a racist President who sat in the church of an avowed racist for more than 20 years but never heard a word he said?
Hmm.. look like more silly Daily Beast lying and elitism.
Temper tantrum... I find that amusing.
Obama didn't say anything racist during the campaign. The McCain/Palin campaign on the other hand had race-baiting and religious bigotry at campaign rallies which you can listen to on YouTube and stories about Palin's Real America word salads. It was very obvious they were trying to stoke the racists by repeating "Barack Hussein Obama" and making up hateful plays on his name which didn't do anything to help create a rational stage for political discussion that the American citizens are entitled to. I'm quite disappointed that the rhetoric from the Republican Party became so poor that Colin Powell, a fiscal conservative Republican whose son was a Bush appointed chairman of the FCC, decided to endorse Obama. If that didn't make them understand how narrow and exclusive the party had become of fiscal conservatives who don't want to vote for bigotry and intolerance of new pragmatic ideas, no rational argument is going to make them understand.
The racist you are referring to put his life on the line the U.S. in Vietnam.
Cheney, Bush et al ran from their responsibility, and then fabricated an illegal war sending thousands of their own people to their young graves. If this kind of treason that passes for a GOP Doctrine makes me mad enough for you to call me a racist, so be it.
Care to throw in a few more GOP buzz words? I think some of the people might still be getting the impression that you're not a Fox-News-watching zombie.
I have no idea of whether or not the Reverend is racist, but what bothered me was that the nominee would turn his back on friends, and then say he was not politicking.
Whether Black Panther, or Klansman, or Mexican Mafia, many people at least do something, as much as others find fault, however, the really bad guys are those who do nothing.
So you must have also been bothered when the President of the United States didn't even get to appear at his own swan song at the Republican National Convention in 2008? They also said they weren't politicking... and blamed it on a hurricane that wasn't particularly memorable.
That will always strike me as one of the most bizarre, forgotten moments of the 2008 Election. President doesn't get to speak at his own convention.
Weird.
I assume you have dropped out of the GOP so you won't be a hypocrite like the President? After all, it is pretty obvious the GOP is encouraging racism at this point so to remain in it would be like saying "Obama sat in that church for 20 years but never heard a racist word out of Wright's mouth." How long will you sit in the GOP 'church' and ignore the racist crap coming out of their mouths? Yeap, good job pointing out the manufactured racism of Obama and the real racism of Shays as equally racist; after all, if you say Obama is racist he must be racist even though there isn't a single shred of documented evidence of him saying anything racist unlike Shays who has a massive pile of racist comments under her belt that are easily retrieved to prove her as a racist. Wait, are you saying you aren't responsible for the racist things your fellow GOP say? That just because you didn't confront the racism in the GOP doesn't mean you endorsed it? Nice to know Democrats are responsible for what all Democrats say while the ruggedly individual GOPers are only responsible for what comes out of their own mouths. Also.
For those 400 plus young republicans who did not vote for Shay, please understand that you are welcome in the Democratic party. Yes we have differences but you might consider making changes in a party that, in spite of its deficiencies, values ethics and is responsive to change
The opposition couldn't have scripted this better. Cannon fodder until she resigns. I will bet that there are more emails, twitters, etc. that will surface.
HA! Likely that won't happen, as Audra Shay, the candidate who ran on "the platform of "Restore, Revitalize, Reinforce," which emphasized rebranding the Young Republicans as more hip through Facebook and Twitter" DELETED ALL HER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS!
http://theconservativist.com/2009/07/09/audra-shay-not-found-on-social- media/
After some research by John Avlon dug up MORE INCRIMINATING RACIST RANTS ~ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-10/the-gops-young-ha temonger/?cid=bsa:mostpopular1 ~ she likely realized it was impossible to scrub clean all her previous bigoted postings, so she did the next best thing...
Destroyed ALL the Evidence!
So much for the "more hip" Republicans. They apparently never noticed her "missing" Twitter and Facebook accounts.
To borrow a phrase from Alanis Morissette...
"And isn't it ironic... don't you think"
I went shopping today and all the white sheets were sold out!
The GOP youth choose their own blonde Sarah with a surge for marginalization.
Thank you.
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