Friday, July 12, 2013

America gets a wake-up call

Following the election of Barack Obama in 2008, there were many who suggested that the United States had finally entered a "post-racial" phase. And then after he won re-election in 2012, there was talk about the Republican Party reforming and reaching out to people of color.

We now know that both of those assumptions were incorrect.

If you had any doubts about that, take a look at what happened when House Republicans met this week to discuss what to do about immigration reform.
Much of the opposition that tea party members voiced in Wednesday's meeting goes deeper than a policy difference about a pathway to citizenship, and comes down to an issue of trust. Many Republicans continue to reject the basic legitimacy of the Obama presidency, and they don't trust the president to faithfully carry out laws designed to secure the border, with some pointing to the president's decision to delay implementation of an element of Obamacare until 2015.

"I made a comment in there, kind of offhand, that trusting Barack Obama with border security is like trusting my daughter with Bill Clinton," Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said. "We just don't trust him."
I'm not sure how they can make it any clearer - that final quote being one of the ugliest statements ever made by an elected official.

Commenting on this issue of not trusting President Obama to carry out aspects of the immigration reform bill, even David Brooks demonstrates that he understands exactly where things stand.
...at some point, this argument just becomes an excuse to oppose every piece of legislation, ever. All legislation allows the executive branch to have some discretion. It’s always possible to imagine ways in which a law may be distorted in violation of its intent. But if you are going to use that logic to oppose something, you are going to end up opposing tax reform, welfare reform, the Civil Rights Act and everything else...

Whether this bill passes or not, this country is heading toward a multiethnic future. Republicans can either shape that future in a conservative direction or, as I’ve tried to argue, they can become the receding roar of a white America that is never coming back.

That’s what’s at stake.
Yep. That pretty well sums up the "logic" of the Republican Party today. The President a majority of the American people elected...twice...happens to be black. Ergo, he is illegitimate. Therefore we will refuse to govern.

This is our moment to decide whether or not we are going to let that happen...whether we'll pass or fail this next step in our long slow struggle with this country's original sin of slavery and racism. I'd suggest that the turning point just might be the 2014 election. Typically a lot of people sit the midterms out. If we do that this time, we'll be giving the Huelskamp's of the world a pass on their racist (not to mention misogynist) agenda.

We're not going to let that happen - right?

2 comments:

  1. The moment Obama was first elected; I knew that things were going to get worse first if they were ever going to get better.

    Politicians like Tim Huelskamp are why I'm so glad my parents moved the family out of Kansas in the late '80s. Kansas was a good place to grow up, but there's no freakin' way I'd live there now. This is still a place where the term “liberal” is a bad word and you’d be hard pressed to find any Kansas liberal identify themselves as such.

    Kansans don't even have the sense to know that their beloved GOP of 1861 died 100 years later with the "Southern Strategy." The state has racial issues of its own despite its strong abolitionist past. Not even Tom Frank, the author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas” wants to touch on these issues. The state is in deep denial about this. Especially as it continues its rivalry with Missouri for being a former slave state while forgetting that the Supreme Court case that declared segregation was unconstitutional originated from their own state capital! Kansans should remember this the next time they tease Missourians at sporting events where this ongoing interstate rivalry (which began with “Bleeding Kansas”) is continued in a safer and much less violent manner.

    So, to make a long story short, Huelskamp doesn’t surprise me. But, you know what’s so ironic about all of this; President Obama is the closest a Kansan has come to occupying the White House since Dwight Eisenhower. Huelskamp probably doesn’t even know that Obama’s mother was from Wichita. Ha! Oh, how I just love the irony.

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  2. Leaving Bill Clinton with my daughter? Isn't it his people covering up sexual harassment, wearing pampers with their escorts, encouraging gay rumors, leaving their wives for someone in Argentina, leaving their wives while they have cancer, and many more questionable activities? I wish someone that's not a comedian would bring those facts up. You can't use public bathrooms around them. They're talking about trust? Obama doesn't have to pretend to be a raving lunatic when he talks to his base.


    Vic78

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