Republican Party faces blowback after deranged attack against Beto O’Rourke

| 12:01 pm EDT March 18, 2019
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When it comes to the scumbag moves that the Donald Trump-controlled Republican Party increasingly makes toward various Democrats, we’re always left debating what to call out and what to simply ignore. When it comes to what the GOP’s official Twitter account tried to do to Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke yesterday, we feel like speaking up is a moral imperative, for a few reasons.

If you missed it, consider yourself lucky. The official @GOP account on Twitter posted this tweet: “On this St. Paddy’s Day, a special message from noted Irishman Robert Francis O’Rourke.” Attached was Beto O’Rourke’s years-old mug shot, with a leprechaun hat very poorly photoshopped onto his head, and the words “Please Drink Responsibly” tacked onto the bottom. Make no mistake: this is racist.

Yes, Beto O’Rourke is white. But he’s part Irish, and this tweet is specifically invoking his heritage while playing into a long-running harmful stereotype about people of Irish descent being alcoholics. Throw in America’s unfortunate past history of discrimination against Irish immigrants, and this is just plain ugly. This is racism, and it’s intolerable.

The Republican Party has long had a race problem. But in the past few years the Republican Party has become gleefully, consistently, manically racist, whether it be the lies about Barack Obama being a Muslim from Kenya, or the ongoing racist attacks on various Democrats in Congress. Now the GOP has even found a way to say something racist about a white Democratic candidate.

This tweet came from the official @GOP account, which is shameful beyond words. If there’s any saving grace here, it’s that the tweet was particularly poorly received. It received more comments than likes. When that happens, and the vast majority of the comments are negative, it’s often said that a tweet got “ratioed” – and it generally indicates a failed tweet. It’s time for the Republican Party to shut itself down and retire to the ash bin of history.