the national interest

Ben Stein’s Search for the Mythical Republican Racist Is Finally Over

Ben Stein.
Photo: Charley Gallay/London Entertainment/Splash News

When he last reappeared on the national consciousness, Ben Stein was expressing bewilderment that anybody would suspect the Republican Party might be somehow tainted by racism. (“The idea that Republicans are in some way making life difficult for black people is nonsense, it’s just absolute nonsense. I mean, they might as well say Republicans are coming down from the moon.”)

Now Stein returns to television on Newsmax, and he has more thoughts on the Negro:

I mean, the real problem with race in America is a very, very beaten-down, pathetic, self-defeating black underclass that is —uh, just can’t seem to get its way going in the way that blacks were able to before the scourge of drugs and the scourge of gangs.

Name a single Republican racist! Just one! Other than myself, obviously.

Ben Stein’s Search for Republican Racist Over