Studies prove linkage between racism and seething hot Republican hatred of Obama

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Which of these two President Obamas is smarter, better, and more honest?

It should seem quite obvious, but it took scientists to finally bring the “mystery” of intense Obama hatred by some in the GOP, ranging from tea party members to Trump supporters, into full relief.

A new study clears up any lingering doubt that the Republican Party engaged in the tactic of dogwhistle politics in the 2008 presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. The study, which was published online this month in Public Opinion Quarterly, shows that the McCain campaign’s negative ads about Obama overwhelmingly featured him with a darker skin tone in a subtle attempt to appeal to voters’ racial prejudices.

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According to the study’s authors, 86 percent of the ads featured images of the president with a skin tone that fell into the darkest quartile of the ads they looked at.

As the Post reports, the closer the election got, the darker Obama’s skin became in McCain’s desperate ads. And while Obama’s skin darkened, McCain’s skin grew lighter and pastier.

During the 2008 campaign the McCain campaign appears to have cynically attempted to use digitally darkened images of Obama in order to stir potential bigotry against him and his campaign. Obama obviously overcame this to win that election and become president. But isn’t it somewhat plausible that this and other attempts to demonize the president and his supporterss for their race and ethnicity were actually at the heart of movement against him—such as the tea party, and Donald Trump’s rapid rise to the GOP’s presumptive nominee?

Many of you will say, “Duh!” But still, it helps to have the science to prove it.

Of course, racism isn’t the only reason some people vehemently disagree with and dislike the president. They’re always telling us it’s really because he's a Muslim. And a Kenyan. And a communist/socialist or worst of all, gasp—a damn dirty Democrat—and that it has nothing to do with him being (half) African.

Yeah, sure. Nothing at all to do with that one teeny, tiny, irrelevant factor. There isn’t a single racist left in the GOP or in America. They've all just miraculously—poofed! Hello thin air, how’s the weather where you are?

Yeah, but yet another recent study conducted at Stanford confirms the impact of the kind of shading the McCain campaign attempted on potential voters.

The research team interviewed volunteers who they separated into two groups. One group was shown photos of celebrities which included a photo of Obama with digitally lightened skin. The other group saw the same photos, but with an image of Obama with darker skin.

Among 255 white subjects, people shown the darkened picture of Obama were almost twice as likely to say that they support the Tea Party when questioned by researchers.

“The result suggests that some white Americans are more likely to oppose Obama solely because of the shade of his skin,” wrote the Post’s Max Ehrenfreund. “For them, the reality that someone with a dark complexion occupies the nation’s highest office could be a source of unease.”

Continue to Full Story at Daily KOS

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