THANK YOU RUSH LIMBAUGH! Rush Says Republicans Won’t Work With Black President.
Remember when Barack Obama was running against Hillary Clinton for president in 2008? Remember the question that was on everyone’s mind: Was America “ready” for an African American president?
To those on the left, the question itself was treated as evidence of racism, as if to say: “How could you even ask such a question?” But, to any honest, thinking or traveled person over 40, that was just evidence of an abundance of liberal or youthful naiveté.
So, the question remained on everyone’s mind: “Would this country prove “ready” for a black president?” I mean… it wasn’t the only question. Had Hillary been running against McCain, sans Obama, the pressing question would have been: “Is the country ready for a female president?” But, with Obama in the mix, the question of gender, or Hillary redecorating the Oval Office seemed almost pedestrian.
I remember asking a friend of mine, baseball Hall of Famer, Ernie Banks, what he thought about the question. Ernie started his career playing in the Negro Leagues, and he’s told me stories of arriving on the bus to play in the South under segregation only to find the Klu Klux Klan blocking their entrance and de facto cancelling the game.
So, I asked Ernie if he thought this country was ready for an African American president and his response came without hesitation: “No, no… I don’t believe so, no.” And I wasn’t at all sure that I didn’t completely agree with him.
After all, I can tell you this for sure… this country’s nowhere near ready for a Jewish president. And I heard plenty of people asking about our readiness for a Mormon president when Mitt Romney was making headlines.
But at the same time, I suppose it’s also true that we’ve come a long way since 1960 when the question being asked about JFK was whether the country was ready for a Catholic president, which is a question that now seems pretty much ridiculous.
Well, I decided that I had found the answer to the question about our readiness for an African American president, not when Obama won… to me that was largely the result of him essentially running unopposed, because let’s face it, McCain/Palin didn’t even deserve to place second in that contest.
No, it was after the question of who would win the race to the White House was answered that I got my answer to the question of race in the White House. And it didn’t take long at all… I don’t even think it was more than a few days after Obama was sworn in as our 44th Commander-in-Chief that it seemed obvious to me that the answer, at least for the Republicans in Congress was a resounding… NO.
It was like nothing I had ever seen, House Republicans were voting as a block against absolutely anything our new racially diverse president proposed… and I do mean absolutely anything and everything. Obama said he wanted bi-partisan compromise and the GOP on the Hill even opposed that. It seemed clear to me that had Obama proposed putting cream in coffee, the Republicans would have screamed Noooo, in unison.
The whole thing looked highly suspicious to me. The Republican response was just so unified… so coordinated… so early in the game… and in opposition to an economic stimulus bill that everyone knew would have to be passed, that it seemed obvious that something was rotten in the District of Colombia.
The economic stimulus bill, called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the first piece of legislation proposed by the new Obama Administration, was a literal no brainer. If anything, it was too small, something most everyone recognizes today. And yet, the House Republicans were opposing the bill’s passage, showing up on the Sunday morning political news programs complaining of things that amounted to miniscule fractions of the bill’s total amount… and I do mean miniscule.
Some, apparently pro-teen-pregnancy Republicans, didn’t want to fund condoms for public schools. Some others were offended by having to seed the grass on the National Mall. Here was a bill for close to $800 billion in spending, needed to rescue an economy under siege, and I was watching grown men and women… actually I think pretty much all men because we are talking about Republicans here… express indignant outrage over spending the equivalent of $1.95.
And it wasn’t like just some of the Republicans were opposed to the bill… even though everyone knew that it would ultimately have to pass, all of them were in lock-step agreement that the vote would be a resounding NO. I remember thinking at the time that the House Republicans should be required to wear matching sweaters, because I reasoned that if you act and vote as if you’re a glee club, you should have to look like one too.
Was it racism that was fueling the behavior that was unusual, even by congressional standards? Oh hell yes it was racism. I’m not saying that the Republicans were pro-segregation, or anything like that, but clearly they didn’t trust the new guy in charge, and their distrust was exhibited so quickly, and on the basis of so little substance, that it simply had to have something to do with the fact that the new guy wasn’t part of their clan.
There was a black guy heading up the Executive Branch and he was talking about wealth redistribution and socialized medicine, making Wall Street pay, and helping poor people rise up… all of the things that scare the pants off any self-respecting member of the RNC. He was a Kenyan born, socialist, Muslim, follower of the Reverend Wright and Louis Farrakhan, who hung out with the Weather Underground that wanted to take away their money and give it to people too lazy to work for a living.
And as Senator Mitch McConnell, “A Man Called Insipid,” and the leader of the Senate Republicans at the time admitted in 2010, “… my number one priority is making sure president Obama’s a one-term president.”
Really, Mitch? Your number one priority? Where does “representing your constituents” fall on your list of priorities? Or, how about “protecting and defending the constitution of the United States?” Where would that one fall, assuming it’s on your list at all? I don’t suppose it’s even worth asking about, the whole “supporting your president” thing, right?
I’m sorry for poking fun at Mitch like that, but I’ve just never heard a politician say such a thing about a sitting president before, have you? Especially in a year like 2010, which one might think of as being a 1932 sort of year? I mean, when times are good… fine… but considering that the unemployment rate in Mitch’s home state was running at 10 percent when he said that, it would seem to me that he’s had his priorities jumbled up something terrible.
So, I’ll admit it… I have been thinking for some time now that we were not ready for an African American president, because at the end of Obama’s first couple of years in office, when I’d hear the Republicans complain about his presidency, I’d always think to myself…
I understand why I’m more than a little disappointed over Obama’s performance, but why are you guys mad? He’s done everything George W. Bush would have done.
Didn’t close Guantanamo… check. Wrote Wall Street a blank check… check. Increased the gap between the rich and everyone else… check. Extended Bush’s tax cuts… check. Watered down health care reform bill until it was little more than a gift to insurance companies… check, check. And allowed the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill to pass without regulating derivatives or doing anything that might stop what had happened from happening again… check, check, check.
What am I forgetting? Oh yeah… and completely ignored every aspect of the foreclosure crisis… check please.
The only difference I could see between the Barack Obama presidency and that of his predecessor was… well, let’s see… I had it a minute ago… his last name wasn’t “Bush,” but that’s not it… was it that Obama went to Harvard instead of Yale? No. Something to do with his ability to shoot the three-pointer? Nah… hang on… I remember now… he was a horse of a different color, that’s it.
And come on… you know race is part of it… and probably a big part for some of those inconceivably closed minded asshats in congress. Would any of this be going on were Hillary riding on Air Force One?
Well, one of the key differences is that mine is only this big.
Oh, and speaking of close minded asshats in congress, Politicus.com just now reported that Paul Ryan (R-WI) was a guest on a radio program today, of all days, “Morning in America,” hosted by uber-conservative, Bill Bennett, and he was describing one of the major problems facing our troubled society today. Was it the fact that we’ve got 50 million living in poverty, or the disparity between the rich and poor… the numbers on food stamps… untold millions of foreclosures?
Not even close. Here’s our boy Paul word for word…
“We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with…”
Inner city men that are not only not working, but not even thinking of working? A cultural problem?
Which kind of inner city, urban, ghetto, cultural problem are we having in the hood, Paul? And apparently, Imperial Wizard Ryan even went on to quote author, Charles Murray, who wrote “The Bell Curve,” which argues that intelligence is genetic, and that whites are naturally smarter than blacks.
I’ll tell you what… Ryan is lucky he’s a Republican because if her were a Democrat, that’s the sort of appearance that would flat out put an end to his career for sure.
Okay, but just because Ryan is a racist piece of itinerant trash, doesn’t mean all of the House Republicans are too, right? Well, leave it to the man who does his show with half his brain tied behind his back, and the other half on some heavy medication… the man who once described Barack Obama as “the magic negro,” without even blinking an eye… with talent on loan from God… welcome to the EIB Network… … it’s Rush Limbaugh to save the day and straighten things out.
Rush finally said what I’ve been thinking is the case… and so have you… oh, yes you have… that the Republicans Refuse to Work With Obama Because He’s Black.
Oh no he didn’t… but, oh yes he did.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: I also think, folks, I that there will be dramatic changes once we… Let me just put it this way. The fact that we are living in the historic era with the first African-American president has everybody paralyzed and everybody scared. Political leadership in Washington is literally paralyzed. Political consultant leadership in Washington literally paralyzed.
The Republican Party is literally paralyzed. Many American citizens are literally paralyzed, frightened to death to say anything to anybody about what they really think “” and while this is happening, things are going down the tubes at a rapid rate.
So once we get past this historical era, I think a lot of this is going to change. I think the paralysis will end. Even if we get the first female president, it’s still not gonna’ be near the paralysis that exists today.
Now, for whatever reason Jason Easley seemed to think that, on the surface at least, Rush wasn’t making sense. I’m not reading between the lines, I’m saying that because one of the sentences in his article read: “On the surface, Limbaugh’s comments make no sense.”
I just don’t agree. I think Rush made complete sense, both on the surface and… would that be under the surface or above it? I don’t know… the point is Rush was absolutely right about the right… and I for one am damn glad he was courageous enough to say it publicly.
And why should it be so shocking? This country has a rich tradition of rampant racism, and I’m not just talking about the unthinkable abomination that was human slavery. I’m talking about stuff that went on… umm… how about… yesterday, somewhere in this country. In my lifetime we’ve had “colored” drinking fountains, segregated Woolworth counters, we’ve funded studies that gave black men syphilis, and someone assassinated Martin Luther King.
Thank the Lord Gandhi didn’t live in Baltimore, that’s all I’ve got to say.
I have a friend whose skin color is dark brown. He doesn’t like to drive late at night even in my neighborhood because he drives a Mercedes, and fears ending up in jail charged with Grand Theft Auto because it’s registered in his company’s name.
During WWII we took Japanese Americans from their homes, and away from their businesses, and deposited them in concentration camps…. oh wait, no… “internment camps.” German Americans at the time were working in the Pentagon, but those slanty eyed Japs… hell no.
So, no… many among us were not quite ready for a black president, notably many on the right side of the aisle… and what else could have possibly made House Republicans long for… HILLARY IN 2016?
Mandelman out.
~~~
By the way… I think Jason Easley, writing for PoliticusUSA, broke the story… and a big giant hat tip to Richard Zombeck of the Huffington Post, zombeck.com, zombeckink.com, bluzeink.com, and homepreservationnetwork.com for posting it on his Facebook page… and I’d also like to thank The Academy and my wife for putting up with me, and my second cousin David for… Ooops… sorry… got carried away there and forgot what I was writing about.