Posted on 07/09/2019 5:00:16 PM PDT by Kaslin
The guy’s pretty good.
I mean, love him or hate him, he knows what he’s doing.
He can barely suppress a smile here:
Senator Mitch McConnell Claims He And Barack Obama Are 'Descendants Of Slaveholders'
The snark about him once again finding himself in the same position as Obama is icing on the cake, a kick aimed right at the left’s collective ass.
Is it true that Obama’s ancestors owned slaves? It is — more than one ancestor, in fact. It may also be true, though, that not only was Obama descended from American slaves, he was descended from the first American slave. The very first one, again on his mother’s side (his father was from Africa):
President Obama is the 11th great-grandson of John Punch, a black man who came to America in the 1600s as an indentured servant and was enslaved for life in 1640 after trying to escape his servitude, according to a two-year Ancestry.com study of thousands of records from colonial Virginia.
Although Obama’s father was a black man from Kenya, his ties to slavery stem instead from his white mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, Harman said. The enslaved, black Punch had children with a free white woman. Because their mother was free, Punch’s mixed-race kids were born free and went on to become “prominent” land owners in Virginia, Harman said.
A complicated family tree, but that’s how American family trees tend to be. As for Obama opposing reparations, I’m not sure “oppose” is the right word. O’s view of that seems to track with his view of passing single-payer circa 2010. It’s not that he’s against it in theory, it’s that he just doesn’t see how it can be done realistically:
Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument. But as a practical matter, it is hard to think of any society in human history in which a majority population has said that as a consequence of historic wrongs, we are now going to take a big chunk of the nation’s resources over a long period of time to make that right…
And what makes America complicated as well is the degree to which this is not just a black/white society, and it is becoming less so every year. So how do Latinos feel if there’s a big investment just in the African American community, and they’re looking around and saying, “We’re poor as well. What kind of help are we getting?” Or Asian Americans who say, “Look, I’m a first-generation immigrant, and clearly I didn’t have anything to do with what was taking place.”
Good luck trying to get it passed even if a majority of the country supported it, Obama added: “I have much more confidence in my ability, or any president or any leader’s ability, to mobilize the American people around a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to help every child in poverty in this country than I am in being able to mobilize the country around providing a benefit specific to African Americans as a consequence of slavery and Jim Crow.” The cleverness of McConnell’s answer today, of course, is that it pits Obama’s perfectly sensible view of the politics of reparations — and his authority on the issue as America’s first black president — against the panderfest happening in the Democratic primary. Your argument isn’t with me, McConnell’s saying to reparations advocates, your argument is with the most popular man in your own party. Let Democratic candidates take a deep sniff of Obama’s reality check and see what they think then. If they want to call O a sellout on racial justice, by all means have at it.
Oh — if you’re wondering why he’s being asked about this at all, it’s because NBC went digging through his family tree to see if they could nail him with a gotcha on the issue. The first argument typically offered against reparations is the fact that not all whites directly benefited from slavery. (Supporters would counter that all whites *indirectly* benefited from it in the form of white privilege.) The McConnells did directly benefit, though, which makes Cocaine Mitch’s recent statement of opposition a bit stickier than the average white American’s. Knowing that the debate over this issue is entirely academic, NBC’s genealogical investigation of him is their version of a consolation prize to lefties, I guess.
Not to worry. Hussein has proven himself quite facile at announcing when his heartfelt and deep-seated convictions change into the wake of the shifting political winds.
Wow, good one by McConnell. Set and match.
Why, of course. You can tell that by all of the white trash, hillbilly, redneck jokes you hear out there. It seems those are the only people you can freely ridicule anymore.
The Kenyan side of his family probably sold slaves, particularly since there was a strong Arab\Muslim connection in Kenya.
Isn’t slavery still a reality today? Black owning black slaves, no?
That story should be told.
What a coincidence!
One news cycle ahead!
almost like they were synced together?
Marine combat aviator Amy McGrath announces Senate campaign against Mitch McConnell
He should have also mentioned the recent revelation that Kamala Harris family also owned slaves.
This is just a form of the “well...they did it too argument”, the real argument should be no one will be paying for any slavery that happened 150 years ago and the Republican party is focused on ending slavery in the world today in places like Africa, and Democratic cities like Houston, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles just like we did back then.
Obama’s grandfather converted to Islam. So far as we know, the family weren’t Muslim traders in slaves. We do know that two ancestors on his mother’s side of the family were slave owners.
and in this case it worked like a charm. You can't reason with leftists, you have to beat them at their own game. And McConnell played it to perfection.
I’m white but half my ancestors dug coal and the other half arrived in the 1600s and were Yankees who fought in the revolutionary war and civil war
In the coming cultural revolution and Bosnia style war, am not sure if that helps me or not
“The Kenyan side of his family probably sold slaves, particularly since there was a strong Arab\Muslim connection in Kenya.”
Mombasa was a big slave-exporting port.
Not to mention the possibility of camelatoe harris’ ancestors being slave drivers. Mon!
Like Harris you mean. Her family owned two can plantations. Plus her Indian mother’s family had families of servants.
Africa still has slavery in it to this day.
“He should have also mentioned the recent revelation that Kamala Harris family also owned slaves.”
That little tidbit is reserved for Hillary for when it comes time to clear the field so she can run again.
Don’t worry, there is plenty of ammo for the right person to use against harris. But it has to wait because Hillary doesn’t have the energy to run a campaign for more than a week or two.
For Pete’s sake, it was over a hundred ears ago. Who gives a rat’s ass?
Good for Mitch McConnell... funny, true and on the mark...
So they can trace Obamas to the very first slave hundreds of years ago, but have yet to find 1 convincing birth certificate over 50 years ago.
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.