Posted on 05/26/2010 6:37:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Skip ahead to 4:30 of the clip. Between the racial politics involved, his duty as chairman to defend a Republican nominee, and bipartisan consensus that the Civil Rights Act was not only necessary but long overdue, he’s got a fine line to walk here. And it shows: When Tapper pressed him about this on ABC, he conceded that Paul’s position on discrimination by private businesses made him “uncomfortable” but refused to denounce it on grounds that, er, “I can’t condemn a person’s view.” (You can watch here.) In fairness, there’s really no smooth “spin” to be had in this case, which explains why Karl Rove reportedly encouraged Paul to back out of his “Meet the Press” appearance. Steele tried gamely in Tapper’s segment to steer the conversation onto safer ground, but couldn’t quite get there; Palin, when asked about Paul on “Fox News Sunday,” resorted predictably to complaining about media bias. The problem is that, even if you take the J.E. Dyer approach and emphasize that Paul’s not a racist, just a guy who worries about federal overreach, you run into this point from Sam Tanenhaus:
However attractive it may be just now to depict all political conflict as a neatly bifurcated either/or, with the heroic individual pitted against the faceless federal Leviathan, the truth is that legislative battles over civil rights laws were waged within government, and between competing incarnations of it, federal vs. state. Passage of the Civil Rights Act, as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina observed last week, hinged on the Interstate Commerce Clause, which “was properly used by the courts and the Congress.”
The fact that the feds have since overreached doesn’t mean the feds should have no reach at all, and to argue that way at a moment when the GOP’s attacking ObamaCare as an abuse of the Commerce Clause is as dangerous as it is unnecessary. If the conservative take is that Congress took a mile in passing the individual mandate only because we gave them an inch by, um, letting them desegregate lunch counters, you’ve just raised the moral stakes on O-Care considerably for a whole lot of undecideds and not in a way that favors our side. The smart, and I think legally correct, way to defend the CRA while opposing the mandate is to follow Randy Barnett and Ace by arguing that the Thirteenth Amendment, not the Commerce Clause, gives Congress power to reach private actors in matters of racial discrimination. With race, as with religion, the normal constitutional rules don’t apply, and it’s the Constitution itself that says so. Read Ace, especially, for an elaboration on that point. It’s okay for the feds to operate a business (ask any GM shareholder) but it’s not okay for them to operate a church. The Establishment Clause makes a special exception because of the historical risk of religious persecution. It’s not okay for the feds to tell people whom they should associate with but it’s okay to tell business owners that they can’t racially discriminate. The Thirteenth Amendment makes a special exception because of the historical reality of America’s racial caste system. What’s ironic about Paul’s position is that in his own way he’s made the leftist mistake of reading the Constitution that he wished existed instead of the one that does. It’s a libertarian document, but it’s not perfectly libertarian. And a good thing, too.
Steele is a clueless, spineless, eunuch that must be replaced ASAP.
It doesn't make sense.
Michael Steele is misplaced in these times...
New CONSERVATIVE mantra: THROW THE BUMS OUT (Ray Stevens)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q59ZcFguUOo&feature=channel
dump steele
Michael Steele has been a huge disappointment. He should just shut up.
Michael Steele has been a huge disappointment. He should just shut up.
A very bad analysis by people who become cowards when “race prejudice” epithets are threatened.
We voted to ban affirmative action in Michigan. Wonder if Michael Steele feels that it was a regressive act?
And thank God we've found it again in Kentucky! Let freedom ring in every government oppressed business in Kentucky.
Let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
– Martin Luther King Jr., excerpt from his "I Have A Dream" speech
Scrap Steele!
Steele + RNC = No $$$ from ME
Got anyone else in mind ?
Is Michael Steele only around because the GOP is afraid of how un-PC it would be to oust a black chairman? The guy is to the GOP as Obama is to America. That is...he doesn’t seem to be a fan of it.
Actually I think they wanted a house one if you get my drift. Steele is such a tool it is beyond belief.
I think Steele is a nice man. Just not sufficiently conservative.
I MIGHT be able to be convinced that replacing one form of discrimination for another is okay, PROVIDED the person on the receiving end of this “gift” is the one who was harmed in the first place.
But this notion of a new form of discrimination to remedy something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago is a bit much.
Seriously, does anyone seriously believe that LeBron James’ kids should be entitled to some kind of special treatment, as part of an aggrieved class? Or Michael Jordan’s? Geez.
They are paying this guy to be a pundit on talk shows? Not with my money.
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