While Rick Perry & Co. crept around the Texas Republican Convention claiming to have actually accomplished something and John "McBush" McCain sold off our coastline to Houston oil and gas executives, a Texas GOP-sponsored vendor sold racially charged campaign buttons at the state convention asking, "If Obama is president ... will we still call it the White House?" Sorry, Texas conservatives -- contrary to popular Republican belief, The Dallas Morning News did not make this up.
Right-wing bloggers, upon hearing of their latest gaffe, claimed that The Dallas Morning News made it all up, as if the ghost of FDR tricked Texas Republicans into selling racist campaign buttons at their convention. Just like in the aftermath of their failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, their failure to respond after Hurricane Katrina and their failure to accept the science surrounding global warming, Texas Republicans merely pointed their fingers and claimed the controversy was a figment of the liberal media's imagination.
All the proof anyone needed, however, was on the GOP-sponsored vendor's Web site, republicanmarket.com. A quick glance by any Texas Republican staffer would have confirmed that, perhaps, it was not the best group to accept money from at a convention. For $5, the GOP vendor allows you to mix and match a variety of racially charged, homophobic and sexist campaign buttons including, "Press 1 for English ... Press 2 for Deportation" and the anti-Hillary Clinton, "Life's a bitch ... don't vote for one" button.
A Texas Republican Party spokesperson told The Associated Press that vendors don't go through a vetting process for the right to sell items at the convention. Yet media reports show that for years the Texas Republican Party has denied a booth to the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay Republicans, saying that homosexuality is not "an acceptable 'alternative' lifestyle" and sodomy should be criminalized.