Just when you thought the last vestiges of Dixie were fading from view, Jim Crow is resurrected and flies high, guiding the direction of the field of Republican presidential candidates. The Monday debate and what we anticipate will be another romp through the mud tonight in South Carolina has put on full display a party that honestly does believe that “Happy Days” existed in the racially segregated South. As the candidates trip over one another to prove that they will be most unyielding to Blacks, the Republican Party is setting the nation up for a period of vengeance and hate filled politics, no matter who wins the 2012 presidential election.

The behavior of the GOP field is a recipe for disaster and you would think by now Republicans who know better would voice their outrage over the depths these candidates have sunk their party. It seems each candidate is trying to outdo the other in appeasing to a fanatical element within the Republican voting bloc that subscribes to the view that African-Americans are a pariah. Their solution to solving the nation’s economic difficulties is returning us to the policies of the Bush administration that got us in this mess in the first place. When Newt Gingrich rumbles that President Obama has put more Americans on food stamps than any U.S. President he fails to qualify that statement by noting that it was the policies of George W. Bush that created the conditions for so much despair. By the candidates’ rhetoric it seems as though some would like to take us back even further than the Bush years and restore the days of legalized segregation. They would have us work for free, or at a minimal pay scale, and restrict access to federal programs while denying us health care and taxing us disproportionately. If that doesn’t temper our demand for full inclusion, there is certainly a war Republicans can muster to send our children into harm’s way and reward political donors with contracts.

The depth of Republican’s gutter politics is evident by the fact that when their hate is not trained on African-Americans and the poor, they turn on each other. This is a party that is now consumed with hate and driven by a faction of this country that sees as its mission to put Black people in their place. Whether it is Ron Paul or Mitt Romney, all the candidates are carrying heavy racial baggage. Rather than get rid of the overage, the GOP keeps chugging along all the while the supposed leadership class of the party steps deeper into the muck.

You can’t take enough baths to get rid of the stench from this field of candidates. The best we can do is prepare ourselves for the pending battle in November and make clear our intention to reject the nonsense and re-elect the President.