And if someone buys button like this . . . can we go ahead and call them knuckle-dragging cro-magnon red-necks?

I don't imagine the party officials spend a lot of time reviewing buttons and other merchandise to make sure they pass decency standards. Maybe they just expected no one to be this stupid.

Of course they're based in Florida.......

I can see the flyers going through mailboxes as I speak: OBAMA PLANS TO RE-NAME THE WHITE HOUSE!!

The Repubs are so pathetic they don't even realize it.

How many are really surprised?

Crock tears no doubt. Extra advertising too.

It had to be Texas, innit?

*sigh*

The overt racism is awfully KKK - that's the kind of thing you'd expect to see on a banner carried by guys in white robes and pointy hats in one of their absurd "parades."

That sound you here is independents and disillusioned repubs shuffling into Obama's column.

Keep printing up those buttons, clowns.

Oh please - they're Republicans ... the Texas GOP would have bought the buttons at a bulk rate, marked them up 200%, and sold them on ebay. IOKIYAR.

I would hope TPM would rise about even having scurrilous threads that propagate this type of racial divisiveness.

Why do they even have a thread on this button? Why?

Ignore it and don't perpetuate the hate.

To answer the question posed by the button...I plan on calling it the White Crib. Just to, you know, watch the heads explode.

BARACKNOPHOBIA!!! Coming soon to a voting booth near you.

This is real interesting. I am not from Texas and am not a Republican. I will vote for Obama. But if I read between the lines racial steroetypes are bad but anti Texas Republican stereotypes and tarring whole groups is OK. At least for some.

I was beginning a post of contacts to the Texas Republican Party contacts but additional post shows that it was the past weekend and he button has since been pulled by the website RepublicanMarket.com

But I did contact the Republican Party of Texas and their voicemail is backed up.

900 Congress, Suite 300 Austin, Texas 78701

Phone: 512.477.9821 | Fax: 512.480.0709

E-mail: info@texasgop.org

An excuse that "we don't know what the vendors sell" is bull. In an application to be a contracted vendor each item is listed that will be sold.

I think I'll check to see how many were sold. I'm sure most will just end up in some memory box.

The four pillars of Republicanism as it is practiced today are fear, ignorance, stupidity, and greed. I think this button is supported by all four.

What Democrats should be saying is:

"We believe in the two-party system, and historically, we have respected and recognized the value to the country of Republicans and former Republicans such as Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Margaret Chase Smith, Henry Bellmon, Lincoln Chaffee, Chuck Hagel, Mike Bloomberg, and many, many more great American patriots. And let's not forget that the Republican Party's role in national politics began with Abraham Lincoln.*

But the Republican Party today is infected by a group of organized criminals operating on behalf of entrenched wealth and big corporations, with a slash-and-burn approach to both domestic politics and foreign policy.

Our accumulated financial and moral capital is draining away quickly, and we are becoming weak domestically and internationally; our economy is entering full debtor-nation status; and our infrastructure has been allowed to decay; all while the richest of the rich can get even richer faster than at any time since the Gilded Age of the late 1800s.

Starting in 2009, then, we think the Republican Party should purge itself of its criminal element, fire the Roger Stones and the Karl Roves, disavow the destructive and anti-American policies of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, adopt a party platform relevant to the needs of the American people and that upholds, rather than diminishes, their civil rights, and return to the people with honest and able candidates worthy of the peoples' vote."

*Joke: Why do so many Republicans not believe in evolution? Because they started with Abraham Lincoln and ended up with George W. Bush.

So, Hans Klingler, if you didn't know they were selling those buttons, where did you think they came from? Maybe they fell from the sky and magically attached themselves to people's lapels?

With all the lying these guys do you'd think they'd be better at it.

Just remember: If Obama loses, it will be because of race. I know many of you folks think the country has changed, but sad to say not enough.

This is why I wanted a Clinton/Obama ticket.

Now I fear all the racists will make sure we are stuck with President McCain.

I hope and pray I am very wrong about all this.

I think it is safe to say that if any vendor there tried to sell something that wasn't 100% pro McCain, they would have known about it and stopped it in ten seconds. This excuse is pure balony. How did all those purple heart bandaids make into the GOP 2004 Convention? This group has an over abundance of neandrathals.

RepublicanMarket.com still has an automated message saying "Your party is not answering..."

No shit. I wonder why.

Talk to the vendor himself. Republicanmarket.
from http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/republicanmarket.com

Alcox, Johnathan
1741 Cherry Ridge Dr
Lake Mary, FL
32746
US

Phone: +1 407 333 2983
Fax: +44 163 366 3706
jonathan [at] republicanmarket.com

Hi All: Please sign this petition and let the Texas GOP know what we think about their racist pin: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/322079918?z00m=15489513 Thanks!

I just want to let you all know that I'm offended. Deeply and personally, and not just about the button. The button shocked me, my stomach turned and I literally felt sick. In hopes of feeling a little bit better, I searched for more information and stumbled across this site. Now, I feel even worse.

It's unbelievably disheartening to see people respond to an obviously hateful and ignorant button with more of the same. And I thought "liberals" were open minded and tried to see things from all sides. I guess I was wrong.

What I can't understand is what you hope to achieve by bashing all republicans and all texans as if this is what they all stand for. It's the same ridiculous logic racists and other bigots have used for centuries to validate and reinforce their own closed mindedness and ignorance. Shame on all who posted hateful generalizations. You call yourselves liberals and yet you close your minds a vast number of ideas and perspectives simply because they come from a member of a different "team." But your rhetoric goes far beyond the typical battle cry --- in that it is not based in a hope and a desire to prevail --- but in hatred and a total lack of respect for your opposition.

And, I'm sorry to say that people like you do more to dissuade people from your viewpoints than to reel them in. In short, Obama neither needs nor wants your help. He's doing fine on his own, and your highly volatile comments will do him and his campaign more harm than good.

I have to say --- you've really hurt me. The only thing that tempers my grief at this sad sad display of inhumanity (both the buttons and this blog) is to know that most of it was written by imbeciles.

Right. See no evil, hear no evil. Speaking it is something else.

This reminds me of the 1980 (or '84) presidential race in Texas. I had just reluctantly voted for Reagan and came home to find a campaign flyer that pretty clearly suggested, albeit implicitly, that if the Democratic candidate won, there would be blacks all over our lily-white neighborhood. Enraged, I called local Republican headquarters to tell them that I never would have voted Republican if they were peddling this sort of thing.

The reaction, predictably, was, "Who, us?" And a blanket denial that "Republicans wouldn't do this." Innocence personified.

And pigs fly.

If McCain is President will we call it 'The Shite House'

Fellow funkateers,

"Paint the White House Black" is one of George Clinton's lesser-known ditties.

HusseinTenaX,

How do you explain those final vote tallies in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky? Oh, that's right...they were cast by "Repugs" masquerading as Democrats.

Quasar,

"George Clinton should sue."

Bullshit. George Clinton caught a lot of hell back in the day for "Chocolate City". That was back when white people were still genuinely scared of us rioting and burning down DC...again. The empty brick buildings in the Fourteenth Street corridor were still charred and deserted. Dupont Circle, Adams-Morgan, and Shaw weren't the gentrified yuppie havens they are now. "Chocolate City" made quite a few nervous non-ethnic types too frightened to cross the de facto border to anyplace east of Rock Creek Park. Of course, the song was on heavy rotation on WOL for weeks.

"Paint the White House Black" pissed off more than a few Bill Clinton supporters. Since you probably haven't read a single liner note from a Parliament album in your entire life, you probably wouldn't know how subversive and dangerous p-funk was or how the songs were often topical and political in nature. We weren't just about shakin' our butts, back in the day. As far as the button is concerned, at least the Republicans in Texas are upfront about their racism. Sure is a refreshing change from certain Democratic voters in the states I previously mentioned.