By way of Raw Story:
In the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans may be returning to a game plan that has been effective at garnering the support of white voters while turning off minority voters.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow noted Tuesday at least ten incidents of Republicans intentionally or unintentionally race baiting during the 2010 campaign.
By way of background, Republican Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential race in a landslide. At the same time, he managed to win the southern states, something that no other Republican had done since Reconstruction. It is widely believed that Goldwater did this by promising to repeal the Civil Rights Act if elected.
Although the "Southern strategy" was in place in 1964, the phrase was not popularized until Richard Nixon's political strategist, Kevin Phillips, spoke to the New York Times in 1970:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Story continues below...
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele admitted this year that the Republican Party had been using the Southern strategy for decades.
"For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South," he told an audience at DePaul university in April.
In 2006, race baiting may have backfired when former Sen. George Allen lost his race after calling an opponent's staffer "Macaca," a slur used to describe the native population in Central Africa's Belgian Congo.
Maddow set out to highlight two or three occurrences of the strategy being used in this year's elections but instead found many more "1964 moments."
Republican Senate candidate from West Virginia John Raese has repeatedly mangled ethnic names. He called Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor "Sarah Morgan" and "Sarah Manorgan." He also referred to Energy Secretary Steven Chu as "Steven chow mein."
Read the whole thing.
I haven't written in about a week but I have been thinking. Obama is way ahead in the polls. This would be a great thing had the Republicans not used every method in the book to steal the last two presidential elections. For example, several states that Obama is leading are all either run by Republican Secretary of States, most notably Michigan and Colorado, which brings us back to the Ken Blackwell/Katherine Harris scenarios. Obama is leading in Florida but as far as I can tell there's nothing that's been passed at the federal level that would prevent thousands of Democratic Party votes from being stolen, again. There is a bright spot in Ohio because they elected a progressive Secretary of State in Ohio. The Republicans are attempting to strip about 200000 voters from the Ohio registration list. I'm going to guess that they come from mostly DNC strongholds. However, as I've been watching and learning from various voter's rights group our very own Pennsylvania is very likely to be stolen because in most precincts there simply won't be a paper record. In fact, in arguably the most important precincts in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia--where Obama needs to roll up big majorities in order to beat the bible belt T that makes up the rest of the state--the machines leave no paper trail. Its not unlike going to the robber and asking him to be honest about robbing you. You won't be able to verify it. If we lose Pennsylvania, then let's make sure we thank Dan Onorato, Ed Rendell and the Philly machine. 
