Ricardo J Gonzalez for a Better America

In a year when presidential politics are getting groundbreaking achievements in terms of race, sex, and even age, it's laughable to see how some people cling to xenophobia and racism as a campaign tactic. I'm referring to Buddy Witherspoon, a Republican running in the South Carolina primary against incumbent US Senator Lindsey Graham who has Sen. McCain's endorsement. I know little of the Buddy Whitherspoon's politics, but his latest campaign ad gave me a hint:
(video after the jump)



It seems that Buddy has uncovered the biggest skeleton in Sen. Graham's closet: people who speak Spanish like him. The absolute dearth of information in what I would guess is intended to be an attack ad is laughable. This ad isn't likely to do much to help Buddy win the election, at least I hope not,However, this ad does show exactly the kind of strategy you really can't afford to use in the "information age".

I assume that the point of the ad was to allude that Sen. Graham isn't tough enough on immigration. What the ad actually shows is that Hispanic people who like Sen. Graham, implying that these people, because of the fact that they're speaking Spanish, are illegal immigrants. As a native born American of Mexican descent, and a native speaker of both Spanish and English, I can't help but feel that this guy is spitting in my face. That hardly seems like a sound policy for a Republican party who, as the Pew Hispanic Center claims, owed the 2004 election of President Bush to Hispanic-American voters.

The saving grace for the Republicans in this state, as far as Hispanics go, is Sen Lindsey Graham himself. When I went to the official site of the Buddy Witherspoon campaign, I was able to find this post titled "Lindsey Graham wants the "bigots" to shut up. Again Buddy's campaign seems to hit way off the mark. Instead of making Sen. Graham look as if he's a nut in favor of illegal immigration, he looks like a surprisingly reasonable man. The video of his speech is below: