Harry Reid: Racist Idiot

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is under fire for remarks he made to reporters about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008:

Republicans called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resign his leadership post over remarks he made in 2008 about then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, adding to the Nevada Democrat’s political troubles.

Mr. Reid, who supported Mr. Obama’s candidacy, said in private remarks during the campaign that the country was ready for a “light-skinned” African-American president with “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” The remarks are recounted in a new book, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.”

A spokesman for Mr. Reid said the senator wouldn’t resign his leadership post. “He has no intention of stepping down,” Jim Manley said. “Unlike others who advocate moving our nation backwards and viewing this moment for political gain, he’s working…to move our country forward.”

The controversy comes at a critical moment for Mr. Reid, who is facing an uphill battle for re-election this year and is trying to shepherd Mr. Obama’s health-care overhaul through the Senate.

I’m not going to waste your time with rants about the blatant double standards of the media, Congressional Democrats or even Al Sharpton… Any sane person instinctively understands that Senator Reid’s remarks were foolish and racially insensitive, if not out right racist.

The sad reality is that, as the Washington Times points out many of the people now trying to excuse or defend Sen Reid are the same people who were calling for the Senate Majority Leader Trett Lott’s resigantion:

But several Democrats — including Mrs. Feinstein — did in fact target Mr. Lott after his remarks. “This statement casts a dark shadow over Sen. Lott’s ability to be a credible party leader,” she said in 2002, according to an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin news story.

“I can tell you if a Democratic leader said such a thing, they would not be allowed to keep their position,” Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, said of Mr. Lott in 2002.

Sen. John Kerry also called on Mr. Lott to resign, saying “I simply do not believe the country can today afford to have someone who has made these statements again and again be the leader of the United States Senate,” according to a Boston Globe article.

Bottom line our elected representatives should be held to highest standard of conduct, not the lowest. Harry Reid has shown himself to be a racially insensitive idiot and he should step down… Period.

The Obligatory Jimmy Carter is a Tool Post

I wasn’t going to comment on Jimmy Carter’s asinine remarks on race because frankly they don’t deserve comment. But after America’s crazy aunt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mumbled something about political violence in her weekly press briefing I thought I should take a moment to point out that these are two people that no sane person should take seriously.

Let’s not forget Jimmy Carter was one of the worst Presidents in American history, his term in office was marked by faltering economy, high unemployment, high interest rates, crippling inflation and an energy crisis… this is a man whose bumbling led to 53 American diplomats being held hostage in Iran for 444 days.

This is man how kissed a totalitarian on the cheek and pronounced American fears of Soviet Communism overblown.

This is a man who addressed the nation during an economic crisis and told us to more or less to get used to it.

If there is politically inspired violence it will be because people like former Pres. Carter and Speaker Pelosi irresponsibly throw around charges of racism. Never mind that her interpretation of the entire Moscone-Milk-White episode in San Francisco is just off the wall… As Ed Morrissey points out “Dan White was not a right-wing politician; he was a registered Democrat and considered a moderate. He assassinated Moscone after the mayor refused to reappoint him as supervisor, a post White had resigned but then regretted leaving. He shot Milk five times on the way out of City Hall after personal animosity between the two had erupted earlier over a zoning dispute.”

If there is anyone who is stoking racial and/or political anger is this country it’s Democrats who have lost the argument the on merits and who are trying to demonize those they disagree with. Let’s not forget it was Speaker Pelosi who along with America’s crazy uncle, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who called those who disagreed with their health care reform agenda un-American in a USA Today op-ed.

Madam Speaker, Mr. President, our opposition to Pres. Obama’s policies is not about race. We simply have fundamentally different vision of the role government and as Americans we have a God given, constitutionally protected right to disagree.

Related

• Dueling ‘racist’ claims defuse once powerful word – Associated Press

Are American Voters Susceptible To Blackmail?

Daniel Johnson, the editor of Standpoint has an interesting Op-Ed in today’s New York Sun:

LONDON — Are American voters susceptible to blackmail? Ever since Sarah Palin lifted John McCain’s campaign, it is becoming increasingly clear that America will be branded racist if Europe does not wake up on November 5 to find that Barack Obama has been elected.

Here is what Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian had to say last week: “If [the election] is deemed to have been about race — that Obama was rejected because of his colour — the world’s verdict will be harsh.”

His view is that the anti-Americanism that has demonized President Bush will be as nothing to the global wrath that will greet a McCain presidency. “Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves.”

Such self-fulfilling prophecies are to be heard at all the most elegant dinner tables in London. This week’s crash on Wall Street is already evoking a new round of gloating among those who always wanted to believe that the free market was ultimately doomed.

Now both American democracy and American capitalism are on trial in the court of European public opinion. And the only plea that the court will accept from America is: guilty.

I hate to break this to Mr. Freeland and his ilk… This election isn’t about race, it’s policies. I personally I disagree with Senator Obama’s policy positions and I won’t vote for him on that basis and on that basis only. Period.

For the record I’m not terribly happy with the alternative either. Particuarly after the way John McCain has been spouting populist crap about the credit crisis over the last couple days. Yes, greed and mismanagement played their part but we can not and should not overlook the role policy decisions made by Federal Government in 1990s played in creating this crisis.