On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “NOW w/Alex Wagner,” network contributor and former DNC communications director Karen Finney used coarse language to describe factions within the Republican Party that might challenge bipartisan efforts to reform immigration — then urged Republicans to keep their “hateful” tone in check.

“We had evangelical Latinos wanting to meet with Howard Dean at the DNC,” Finney said. “That’s a shift, right? We saw in droves the Latino community moving over to the Democratic Party largely because of the tone. Even Republicans in the Republican Party who were Latino [were] just disgusted with the tone. Those crazy crackers on the right — if they start with their very hateful language — that is going to kill them in the same way that they learned, at their little retreat, let’s not talking about rape.”

Finney later tweeted that she had used “crackers” simply as another term for “crazy” — not a racial epithet.

During the 2012 Republican nomination contest, Finney suggested that then-candidate Herman Cain would have some problems with his sexual harassment allegations because his accuser was a white women.

(h/t Mediaite)

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