It’s been almost exactly 12 years since George Allen had his infamous, racist “macaca moment” – see here for the moment the story broke on Not Larry Sabato and here for my first post about it on Raising Kaine. Now, I realize that societal standards have declined precipitously since 2006 (I mean, serial sexual predator and corrupt Russian dupe Trump’s in the White House; need any further evidence?), and perhaps there will never again be an equivalent media event to “macaca.” Still, in a sane world — and even in one that’s not so sane, like…well, a world in which Trump can be “president” — the news breaking about Corey Stewart today was truly approaching “macaca”-level bad.
Check out the lunacy, first in InsideNOVA (bolding added by me for emphasis):
[Virginia GOP U.S. Senate nominee Corey] Stewart’s campaign staff issued a news release Thursday alleging reporter Stephanie Saul broke into [former Stewart campaign staffer and current volunteer Brian Landrum’s] apartment. Stewart spokesperson Noel Fritsch identified the former staff member as Brian Landrum, who is now a volunteer for the campaign and a serving part-time as an adviser to Stewart, chairman at-large of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.
Stewart’s claim about Saul is “entirely false,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, vice-president of communications for The New York Times Company, said in an email Thursday…
OK, so that’s bizarre. But wait, it gets worse. Much worse. Check out The Daily Beast and you’ll see how this whole things heads up to “macaca”-level lunacy (bolding added by me for emphasis).
A staffer for GOP Senate candidate Corey Stewart was a participant in a month-long group chat with people planning the next white supremacist Unite the Right rally, leaked chat logs reveal.
Brian Landrum is a county government staffer for Stewart, the Republican nominee in Virginia’s Senate race, as well as a volunteer for Stewart’s campaign.
Stewart, who won his party’s nomination and an endorsement from President Donald Trump last month, is closely linked with the racist right, and has attended events with Jason Kessler, the organizer of last August’s deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Stewart has campaigned in favor of Confederate symbols, endorsed white nationalist congressional candidate Paul Nehlen, and slammed his fellow Republicans as “weak” for condemning Nazi violence at Unite the Right.
Landrum also has a connection to Kessler: he and Kessler were two of 20 people in a Facebook message group dedicated to planning the next Unite the Right rally, according to chat logs first leaked by the media nonprofit Unicorn Riot…
Also see RTD reporter Graham Moomaw’s story, which notes that “Landrum and the Stewart campaign have repeatedly refused to confirm or deny that the account in the chat group belonged to Landrum, despite being given multiple opportunities to do so over two weeks,” that “Landrum eventually stopped responding to phone calls and text messages from the Times-Dispatch,” and that “Stewart did not return phone calls or text messages Thursday.”
To summarize, as RTD senior political reporter Jeff Schapiro tweeted:
“JUST IN @CoreyStewartVa Senate campaign attacks media, refusing to address staffer’s possible ties to white nationalist Jason Kessler chat group.”
The problem for Corey Stewart is that — just as how “macaca” wasn’t an isolated incident for George Allen, who had a long history with the Confederate flag, racist comments/actions, etc. — today’s stories are not a one-off event either. For instance, check out:
- So Who Is Corey Stewart Exactly? Here’s Who Corey Loves – and Who Loves Him Back. And Hates – and Who Hates Him Back. (Corey loves the Confederacy, neo-Confederates, telling women what they can/can’t do with their bodies, “white nationalists,” Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Roy Moore, Jerry Falwell Jr., assault weapons, bashing immigrants, threatening to lock people up, the NRA, pushing out crazy conspiracy theories and “birther” lies, threatening to rip his political opponent’s face off, and of course running a “brutal,” “ruthless,” “cutthroat” campaign against people he calls “enemies” of America. What a guy, huh?)
- Why Won’t Virginia Senate Candidate Corey Stewart Repudiate His ‘Hero’ Paul Nehlen, a Vicious Anti-Semite?
- VA GOP Senate Front-Runner Once Praised a White Nationalist and Named Apparent Neo-Nazi ‘Volunteer of the Week’
- GOP Senate candidate says Civil War wasn’t about slavery
In sum, Corey Stewart is a one-man demonstration of how far the Republican Party has deteriorated in just the past 12 years, as he almost makes George Allen’s “macaca” tirade look tame by comparison. And the bottom line is that Corey Stewart has even less business holding elective office – as Prince William County Board Chair, let alone U.S. Senator (!) – than George Allen ever did. So let’s just make sure that on November 6, Stewart goes down in a massive landslide, sending a crystal-clear message that Virginia has moved wayyyy past this kind of crap, whether it was “macaca” in 2006 or neo-Confederate Corey’s craziness in 2018.
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