This is the 400-pound-gorilla-in-the-room that very few will dare to mention. Having a black man in the white house is rattling enough for the political right. Having a successful black man who may just well get re-elected threatens to cause them to unhinge.
No. They have no shame. They are so very well insulated by the cocoon of Washington and all that money they have. They hardly share the reality most of us are currently enduring. And yes, I think there is a definite undercurrent of race involved in a lot of their politics. Nobody on the political stage has the guts to point it out. But there it is.
And here’s another example of thinly veiled racism…
Former South Carolina Governor and Fox News contributor Mark Sanford wandered off the Appalachian Trail again Sunday morning when, in yet another completely isolated example of a Republican being totally-not-racist even though he sounds racist, said that President Obama is going to “come out and throw a lot of spears” at Tuesday’s upcoming debate.
America’s News HQ anchor Shannon Bream wasn’t in the shot, but she didn’t react audibly, and never skipped a beat in continuing to discuss expectations for Tuesday’s debate.
Gov. Sanford first praised former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney‘s performance at the first debate, then predicted that…
“You know, obviously Obama will come out in this case much more forcefully and he will throw a lot of spears.”
Completely coincidentally, and not at all related to this, the term “spearchucker” is a racial slur against black people, but what would a 52 year-old white guy from South Carolina know about that? Also, he didn’t call President Obama a “spearchucker,” he just said he would be throwing spears. That’s completely different
Bream ignored Sanford’s declaration, instead guiding the discussion around to a sort of warning about President Obama being “too aggressive” at the next debate. “We got mixed signals from the Obama campaign that the President intends to be more aggressive this time around,” she said. “We know it’s a town hall format where the candidate will be taking questions from undecided voters, but also with a moderator in place. How well does that play in an audience, and with real live average citizen voters? I mean, there has to be a balance in the tone, I would imagine, for how aggressive you can be in that kind of setting.”
Here’s the clip, from Fox News
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff during his time as secretary of state, decried John Sununu’s comment that Powell only endorsed Barack Obama because they are both black. “To say that Colin Powell would endorse President Obama because of his skin color is like saying Mother Teresa worked for profit,” Wilkerson told Ed Schultz.
Wilkerson said on The Ed Show that though he respects Sununu, a top Romney adviser and surrogate, “I don’t have any respect for the integrity of the position that he seemed to codify. Look at me, Ed, I’m white. I’m not black. Colin Powell picked me because of the content of my character and my competence.”
He added that he thinks Sununu’s remark was an “unfortunate slip of words,” but that it speaks to larger problem in the Republican party.
My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people, not all of them, but most of them, who are still basing their decision on race,” Wilkerson said. “Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.