Hey Democrats, I hope you’re writing this shit down.

President Bush installed Judge Charles W. Pickering of Mississippi on a federal appeals court today, defying senate Democrats who had stymied the judge’s nomination on grounds that he is unsympathetic to civil rights causes.

The president named Judge Pickering to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, through a device known as a recess appointment.

An appointment like Judge Pickering’s, which are made while Congress is not in session, simply bypasses the senate confirmation process. But the appointment is only valid until the next Congress is seated in January 2005.
. . .
Judge Pickering’s supporters and detractors hold such opposite views that they could easily be talking about a different person.

As a student, Judge Pickering, who is now 66, wrote a law review article that appeared to suggest ways to remedy problems in the state’s laws prohibiting interracial marriages.

He bolted the Democratic party in 1964, the year that a credentials challenge by a largely black group from Mississippi ultimately led most of the state’s all-white delegation to walk out of the party’s national convention.
. . .
Much of the debate over the judge has turned on his actions on the bench in 1994, when he went to lengths to reduce the sentence of a man convicted of burning a cross on the lawn of a mixed-race couple. Judge Pickering’s supporters said that he had sought to reduce the sentence only because he believed that others involved in the incident were more culpable and had received far lighter sentences.

And like last year’s affirmative action speech, this appointment of a racist judge is nicely timed to coincide with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Republicans always find new ways to throw a wink and a nod toward the most racist and hateful members of their party.

One of the reasons I support Howard Dean is that he’s one of the only Democrats I’ve ever seen call the Republicans on this tactic. Here’s an excerpt from Black Commentator that does a much better job explaining it than I can :

Howard Dean?s December 7 speech is the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years. Nothing remotely comparable has been said by anyone who might become or who has been President of the United States since Lyndon Johnson?s June 4, 1965 affirmative action address to the graduating class at Howard University.

For four decades, the primary political project of the Republican Party has been to transform itself into the White Man?s Party. Not only in the Deep South, but also nationally, the GOP seeks to secure a majority popular base for corporate governance through coded appeals to white racism. The success of this GOP project has been the central fact of American politics for two generations ? reaching its fullest expression in the Bush presidency. Yet a corporate covenant with both political parties has prohibited the mere mention of America?s core contemporary political reality: the constant, routine mobilization of white voters through the imagery and language of race.

Last Sunday, Howard Dean broke that covenant:

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way ? by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people.

They called it the “Southern Strategy,” and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like “racial quotas” and “welfare queens” to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America’s problems.

The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few.

To distract people from their real agenda, they run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us.

Dean?s Columbia, South Carolina, statement is equal in political import to Lyndon Johnson?s framing of the need for affirmative action, in 1965.

In short, Democrats need to start calling the Republicans on this early and often. It’s not enough to issue a quick statement in response to these incidents and forget about it the next day. They need to bring it up over and over again. The Republicans have been talking out of both sides of their mouths for too long. Americans need to realize that you can’t court racists and be committed to racial equality at the same time. Based on voting records alone, it’s pretty clear which side most Democrats fall on. It’s time for the Republicans need to pick a side and be honest about it.