Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves is a Republican as well as being the answer to the question "What if the Pillsbury Doughboy were in the Klan?" He's being challenged for the governorship by Democrat Brandon Presley, a member of the state's Public Service Commission and nobody's idea of a firebrand.

Whom Reeves is running against doesn't actually matter, though. Mississippi Free Press news editor Ashton Pittman notes Reeves has one specific ploy he uses in every race he runs, and he's never particularly subtle about it.

Ah yes, the old "oh no, if Democrats have their way, smiling Black women will teach our children proper hygiene to help thwart a deadly pandemic" bit. The man knows his base; you've got to give him that.

But Pittman has the receipts to show that Reeves repeatedly paints his opponent of the moment as being in league with Black Americans, or adjacent to Black Americans, or being Black themselves, or having once used the word "progressive" in a sentence. He did it against his Republican primary opponent. He did it way back in 2003, and he did it in 2019.

If anything, he's just gotten more odious about it with each race. Here's his current fare.

It's not likely that anybody is going to be surprised to hear that Tate Reeves, of all people, is doubling down on racism in a state party that exists solely for the purposes of enabling racism. But it still needs to be pointed out. Yet again.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.