It takes a tough man to make a tender racism

I’m trying to decide whether it’s more disgusting to go the full George Wallace to try to win or going the full George Wallace because you know you’re about to get your ass kicked:

Former Senator David Perdue ended his Trump-inspired campaign for governor of Georgia with a racist appeal to Republican primary voters on Monday, accusing Stacey Abrams, the Black woman who is the presumptive Democratic nominee, of “demeaning her own race” in how she has described the state’s problems.

Speaking to an overwhelmingly white crowd, Mr. Perdue trained his ire on Ms. Abrams, who narrowly lost the 2018 governor’s race to Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican whom Mr. Perdue is vying to unseat in Tuesday’s primary.

Mr. Perdue’s remarks about Ms. Abrams transcended the typical Republican primary campaign fare about stolen elections and accusations of disloyalty to former President Donald J. Trump. In a state where segregationists once demonized civil rights leaders as unwanted interlopers, and where how to interpret the nation’s history of slavery and racism remains a contentious subject, Mr. Perdue cast Ms. Abrams as an outsider in a state that has been her home since high school.

As Parker Malloy says, you know comments are massively racist when the Times is willing to call it out directly rather than going with “racially tinged” or “racially charged” or “dusted with a light racial coating” or something:

Man, you KNOW the comment had to be bad for NYT to use the word “racist” in a headline, and… whew… it was. https://t.co/PBsA1Cydy5— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) May 23, 2022

Hell’s just a place for politicians who pander to assholes but everybody hates anyway.