Has the party of Abraham Lincoln become the party of Rush Limbaugh? HELLO. You BETCHA.

Winning an argument, while losing elections
By Clarence Page

Has the party of Abraham Lincoln become the party of Rush Limbaugh? Stay tuned.

Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, brought strange new attention to the race with a compact disc he sent to committee members over the holidays. Quicker than you can say "Grand Old Party," a controversy erupted over one tune in particular, "Barack the Magic Negro."

The song, which first aired on Limbaugh's radio show in 2007, is a parody of "Puff the Magic Dragon." The composer, conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, performs the tune with a raspy impersonation of Rev. Al Sharpton that sounds about as black as the two white guys who used to perform "Amos 'n' Andy" back in the golden age of radio -- and the bad old days of racial segregation.

The lyrics start off like this: "Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C. / The L.A. Times, they called him that / 'Cause he's not authentic like me...."

Regular readers of my column may recall that I defended Limbaugh's right to air the tune after he broadcast it back in May 2007. Critics were trying to put Rush in the same stew pot as radio host Don Imus, who had been fired for describing the Rutgers University's women's basketball team with a brainless slur, "nappy-headed hos."

Imus' slur and Limbaugh's ditty aren't in the same league, I argued. Imus' offhanded remark violated three fundamental rules of comedy: It wasn't funny, it was not in any sense truthful, and the targets of the remark were a lot more sympathetic than the man who made it.

The Barack tune, by comparison, is fair comment, whether or not you agree with its slant or tastelessness. "Negro" is unfashionable, but not a slur or it wouldn't be featured so frequently in the speeches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., among others. Back in those days, "black" was about as taboo as "Negro" is today.

Context gives words their power, as Mark Twain might have said, like "lightning" compared to "a lightning bug." The real target of the song, in fact, is not Obama but Sharpton and others whose grievance-based approach to politics competes with Obama's coalition-building approach.

I took a little heat from my friends in the left's intolerant wing for defending Limbaugh in this instance, but that's OK. If you can't be politically incorrect from time to time, right or left, what's the fun of being a commentator?

But provoking an audience as a columnist is one thing, winning elections is quite another. In the past two elections, Republicans have lost the White House and both houses of Congress. They virtually gave up on competing for the black vote, leaving African Americans to give about 95 percent of our vote to Obama, instead of the approximately 90 percent that black voters have given to Democratic presidential candidates since the 1960s.

Hispanic voters, turned off in many cases by the ugly tone of some immigration arguments on the right, also voted two-to-one for Obama.

Post-election maps showed Republicans improved their turnout margins over 2004 in relatively few counties, most of which were in a thin, mostly southern arc of rural mountain districts from the Appalachian regions to the Ozarks.

With so much bad news behind them, it is not surprising that GOP leaders could use a few laughs. But at whose expense?

Party stalwarts who are circling their wagons around Saltsman should think twice. You can win an academic argument over who's in the right, but lose the larger battle for the party's future.

That's why Mike Duncan, the party's current chairman who is seeking another term, said sensibly that he was "shocked and appalled" that anyone would think Saltsman's CD moves the party in the right direction.

Defenders of Shanklin's little ditty seem to have forgotten a basic rule of ethnic etiquette: Political incorrectness goes down more easily in comedy and edgy commentary than it does in politics. They've also forgotten how easy it is to win an argument compared to winning elections.

Yet, the controversy actually may have inadvertently helped Saltsman's bid, judging by some other ho-hum reactions. "I had to ask, 'Boy, what's the big deal here?' because there wasn't any," one state chairman told Politico. Another was quoted as saying the song "didn't bother me one bit."

Maybe not, but the party already has their vote. To win elections, a party needs to care about what other voters think.

Clarence Page is a columnist with the Chicago Tribune. His email address is cpage@tribune.com.

Editor's comment: To the question of "Has the party of Abraham Lincoln become the party of Rush Limbaugh?", permit me to say: HELLO. You BETCHA!