The GOP Wants You to Be Terrified of a Black Woman President
NOT EVEN HIDING IT
Republicans are creating a fake narrative that Michelle Obama will replace Kamala Harris on the 2024 Democratic ticket—because they know their base will take the bait.
Kali Holloway
Updated Sep. 23, 2023 4:33AM EDT / Published Sep. 21, 2023 8:03PM EDT
By now, you’re likely well familiar with the GOP’s current 2024 election party line—the one about how a vote for (too old, nearly dead) President Joe Biden is really a vote for (too unprepared, heartbeat away) Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) kicked off his podcast earlier this week by pushing the same tired mantra—but then road-tested a prediction seemingly crafted for maximum fear mongering effect.
“In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers [will] jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama,” Cruz stated. “That ought to scare the hell out of anyone who is unhappy about the direction this country is going and doesn’t want us to go even crazier, in an even worse direction.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-clown-pundits-are-defending-a-racist-to-own-the-libs
I’ll spare you the details of Cruz’s nonsensical conspiracy theory, except to say that his explanation for how a shadowy cabal of Democratic power brokers will force Biden to drop out at the 11th hour in order to pull off a dramatic switcheroo during the party’s national convention rested precariously on his admission that, “how the Democrats execute that exactly, I don't know.”
Nonetheless, Cruz claims the former first lady’s selection as the Democratic nominee is “the most likely and most dangerous” outcome. This is, in no small part, likely due to Cruz’s certainty that former President Barack Obama is “the puppet master” who is “already running the Biden administration.”
As it turns out, Cruz wasn’t floating brand new nuttery he invented himself, but reading from a script Republicans have been passing among themselves for months, hoping it will gain traction with conspiracy-minded GOP voters.
Back in May, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy described the same delusional vision—in nearly verbatim language, no less—stating, “I think that Biden’s not gonna make it to the end and that Michelle Obama will be brought in. After all, the Obamas are pretty much running this administration.” She’s one of a lengthy roster of conservatives doing their part to help the completely baseless rumor gain legs, including Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Newsmax’s Eric Bolling and garbage U.K. newspapers such as The Telegraph.
How convenient that this emerging talking point comes after party boosters have used every given opportunity to malign Kamala Harris, Biden’s obvious and constitutionally ordained successor—and also a Black woman—as unfit to serve.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama
Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley, ostensibly running against Biden, has instead campaigned on the idea that the president’s age makes him a dead man walking, and that a resulting Harris presidency would be an existential threat to the country. “This is really me running against Kamala Harris,” Haley said recently, adding in yet another Fox News interview that “the thought of Kamala Harris being president should send a chill up every American spine."
It’s all too predictable that the GOP—which is today less of a political party than a vehicle for racial grievance—has settled on an electoral strategy that in large part consists of galvanizing white voters with the “threat” that a vote for anyone but a Republican will end with a Black woman, any Black woman, as the next president. (This is not an overstatement; both U.S. and U.K. conservative rags from the New York Post to the Daily Mail have lately been trying to make the idea of President Meghan Markle stick.)
On the one hand, the strategy allows conservative operatives to play on well-established, overtly misogynoir fallacies about the inherent incompetency of Black women.
