Posted on 10/07/2008 6:30:03 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As the McCain campaign ratchets up the intensity of its attacks on Barack Obama, some black elected officials are calling the tactics desperate, unseemly and racist.
“They are trying to throw out these codes,” said Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York.
“He’s ‘not one of us?’” Mr. Meeks said, referring to a comment Sarah Palin made at a campaign rally on Oct. 6 in Florida. “That’s racial. That’s fear. They know they can’t win on the issues, so the last resort they have is race and fear.”
“Racism is alive and well in this country, and McCain and Palin are trying to appeal to that and it’s unfortunate,” said Representative Ed Towns, also from New York.
In recent days, as polls have shown a steady lead for the Democratic ticket, Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin have used reports of Mr. Obama’s loose association with Bill Ayers, a former member of the ’60s radical group the Weather Underground, as evidence that he is different from them.
“Our opponent,” Ms. Palin told donors in Englewood, Colo., “is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
She added, “This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”
An Associated Press analysis characterized those remarks as “unsubstantiated” and carrying “a racially tinged subtext.”
Neither Mr. McCain nor Ms. Palin has backed off the line of attack.
Again invoking Mr. Obama’s intermittent encounters with Mr. Ayers, Mr. McCain asked a crowd in Albuquerque, N.M., on Oct. 6, “Who is the real Barack Obama?” Someone in the crowd screamed in reply, “a terrorist!” Mr. McCain grimaced, but kept going.
Before Ms. Palin took the stage in Estero, Fla., at the Oct. 6 event, one of the introductory speakers, Mike Scott, the sheriff of Lee County, referred to the Democratic candidate as “Barack Hussein Obama,” a practice the McCain campaign has distanced itself from in the past. Apparently, no longer. Ms. Palin also said that she had advised Mr. McCain to “take the gloves off” and said Mr. Obama was “not one of us.”
David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and an expert on African-American issues, said that most Americans were too busy worrying about their economic future to concentrate on Mr. McCain’s comments on the stump. To the extent that people were listening, though, he said his remarks would be “not just crossing the line but introducing serious ugliness into the race.”
Other black members of Congress, all Democrats who support Mr. Obama, said they were dismayed by the new and vicious tenor of the McCain attacks.
“If McCain’s attacks don’t cross the line, they’re certainly teetering on it,” said Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois. “He is certainly appealing to people’s fears and not their hopes.”
Mr. Jackson took issue with the McCain campaign’s attack on Mr. Obama’s connection to Mr. Ayers, who committed acts of domestic terrorism when Mr. Obama was 8 years old, and contrasted that with Mr. McCain’s long relationships with erstwhile supporters of segregation in the Senate like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.
“Should McCain be held responsible for having served with segregationalists when he was 8 years old, 18 years old, 28 years old, 38 years old, 48 years old, 58 years old, 68 years old?” Mr. Jackson said. “Did he ever meet with any of them? Did he ever conference with them or work with them? Did McCain quit the Senate instead of work with them?”
He added: “Did Sarah Palin throw her husband out of the house for advocating secession from the union?”
“I guess they are suggesting that he is a terrorist; it’s just patently absurd,” said Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia. “John McCain himself said he wouldn’t participate in such things, but I guess that changes when you’re losing.”
“Some may say their true colors are showing,” said Representative Yvette Clarke of New York. “Others may say they’re just not being thoughtful. But certainly a lot of the language I’ve heard I consider to be incendiary. I believe it is meant to generate a certain sentiment within their base that engenders fear and certainly appeals to a group of people within our society who would pursue this along racial lines.
“It’s very clear,” she said.
Ms. Clarke also found a racial subtext in Ms. Palin’s repeated appeals to “Joe Six-Pack” and “hockey moms.”
“Who exactly is Joe Six-Pack and who are these hockey moms? That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. “Is that supposed to be terminology that is of common ground to all Americans? I don’t find that. It leaves a lot of people out.”
New York State Senator Bill Perkins, an early supporter of Mr. Obama, said, “They are obviously playing on people’s fears and prejudices in a desperate way. While not explicitly relating to race, they are clearly creating the opportunity for those inclined to come to those conclusions. I think it is going to become more explicit as we move forward. It’s subtle now, but not so subtle as to be mistaken.”
And Kevin Parker, a New York state senator from Brooklyn, said, “If you have to remind people that Barack Obama is African-American, you have reached the bottom.”
In response to the Obama supporters’ comments, McCain campaign spokesman Peter Feldman provided the following statement: “It is disappointing that Barack Obama and his supporters continue to play the race card from the bottom of the deck. This is a tactic that the Obama Campaign has used before, and which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis correctly called ‘divisive, shameful, and wrong.’ It is legitimate for John McCain to ask questions about Barack Obama’s relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers because Senator Obama has not been truthful about this relationship. Many Americans want these questions answered. Despite the fact that Barack Obama has been running for president since joining the Senate, many Americans are still wondering, ‘who is Barack Obama?’ These comments are a sure sign of a flailing campaign that refuses to be honest with voters and that is bordering on desperation.”
The Obama campaign did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
Moreover, Obama will use the Dept. of Justice to prosecute his critics.
I don't vote for Affirmative Action candidates.
In the last year or so a councilman in some great city of this nation got upset and alleged a racial slur when someone said he’s department was a black hole.
So it wouldn’t surprise me.
This is the same Meek who attacked the regulators trying to rein in the largest scams in history Fannie & Freddie.
Racist = any criticism or accusation of a Black.
Desperate = a modifier used as a rebuttal when "racist" is too silly for any mental adult to believe.
The issues = What I want to change the subject to, and talk about, when you are getting dangerously close to really embarrassing past actions on my part.
So is having a homogenous, disaffected group that is organized and ready to Mau-Mau the Man at a moment's notice. That is one of the missions of the congressional black caucus. Predictably,they're doing their job.
So is having a homogenous, disaffected group that is organized and ready to Mau-Mau the Man at a moment's notice. That is one of the missions of the congressional black caucus. Predictably,they're doing their job.
Well hell yeah. After all, "angel food cake is white, devil's food cake is black"...what does that tell you? (Besides the fact that I'd be a racist paranoid a-hole for saying it?)
Some people are paranoid, and there should not be any coddling of that paranoia.
More of the same from a typical Congressional Black Caucus $hitweasel who was last seen, with his idiot pals Maxine Waters and Lacy Clay, tossing the racist charge at regulators who wanted to restrain the Fannie/Freddie shenanigans in 2005. Those 3 along with Barney Fwank, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelicked, should all be in a Federal Prison doing a RICO sentence.
Starting the racist attacks this early? Should have held their fire - this will backfire.
They will remind everyone that if Obama is president, he will be above criticism because he is half black.
The pervayers of hate and racial slurs just can’t help themselves. If a Caucausian, Asian or whatever speaks, it’s RACIAL!!! I’m BLACK and everyone who speaks, speaks racial. I’m really sick of these racial baters. I just wish they’d either go on welfare or get a real job.
She also gave Jerky Joe a BLACK eye, uses a BLACKberry and sometimes rides in a BLACK limo to the airport where she flies in an airplane on night trips when it’s coal BLACK outside.
Someone said she secretly uses only pens with BLACK ink too.
And as Governor of Alaska she has kept their budget in the BLACK.
Exactly right. We saw a prime example of that with the attempt to Mau-Mau* the Duke lacrosse players into prison.
From the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000:
*Mau-Mau: To attack or denounce vociferously, especially so as to intimidate: "In years past, [the civil rights leadership] … would mau-mau the government or the corporate sector or the white community" (Joseph Perkins, Atlanta Constitution January 12, 1994).
ETYMOLOGY: After the Mau Mau, a secret society of Kikuyu terrorists that led a rebellion against the ruling Europeans in Kenya in the 1950s, from Kikuyu mau-mau, sound of the voracious gobbling of a hyena.
That's not racist. That's a fact Jack! One of us. as in AMERICAN. It looks doubtful that B Hussein O Jr's. is even a citizen. Why all the forged COLB's?????? How did he get that Indonesian passport to Pakistan?????
Mr Meeks, If you don't want to be singled out, stop singling yourself out! Start acting like a citizen of this Christian nation, and not a G_dless Communist!
The entire Black Caucus isn’t “one of us”. They are ignorant communists that are elected by a brain dead electorate. A politburo in search of a Chairman.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.