Harry Reid Must Resign! by Frances Rice
January 12th, 2010 . by TexasFredI bring you an excellent piece of work, this time it’s an Op/Ed from Frances Rice. I hope you enjoy her viewpoint as much as I did!
HARRY REID MUST RESIGN!
By Frances RiceWielding a sharp racial sword, Democrats ruthlessly destroy the careers of Republicans on racial matters, accepting no apologies. Yet, using a glaring double standard, those same Democrats quickly give a pass to any Democrat, such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who again displayed egregious racism.
Hardly a ripple of protest was made in 2004 when Reid shamelessly slurred Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as an incompetent Negro who could not write good English. “Slap at Thomas stinks of racism,” was the headline of the New York Daily News’ December 7, 2004 editorial.
Now, Reid has described then-Senator Barack Obama as “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” With this racial slur, Reid denigrates not only Obama, but also the entire population of black Americans as being uneducated Negroes who cannot speak standard English, the same type of disgusting remark he made over five years ago about Justice Thomas, a graduate of Yale Law School. A tribute to Justice Thomas that includes details about his stellar career is posted on the NBRA website.
Any American with an ounce of decency would not tolerate the type of disgusting racial epithets hurled by Reid at black Americans. If Reid had a scrap of politesse or common decency, he would apologize immediately to all black Americans, not just President Obama, and resign. It says a lot about his character and his innate disdain for blacks that he has refused to do so.
Obama’s readiness to give Reid a pass is in sharp contrast to how Obama reacted in 2002, wasting no time issuing a challenge to the Republican Party to repudiate Republican Senator Trent Lott’s remarks about Senator Strom Thurmond and seek his resignation as the Republican senate majority leader. The article “Obama in ‘02: ‘The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott’” by John McCormack uncovers the following quote from Obama that was printed in the December 12, 2002 issue of the “Chicago Defender”.
“It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do,” said Obama.
He said: “The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party.”
In the arsenal of excuses for Reid not resigning, as did Lott, is the claim that Reid’s racist comments were not of the same caliber as Lott’s remarks made on the occasion of Thurmond’s 100th birthday. Lott was criticized and later apologized for his favorable comments about Thurmond’s life’s work that encompassed his ill-fated 1948 presidential bid when Thurmond was a racist Democrat, and Lott was only seven years old. Thurmond died in 2003.
The fine line of racial calibration afforded Reid is never permitted any Republican under any circumstances. Resign! That’s the universal cry from Democrats to Republicans, regardless of the nature of the charge of racism, and even when the charges are false. Further, Democrats are not shy about embracing or speaking well of their aging leaders who have engaged in horrendous acts of racism.
Democrats who called for Lott’s resignation were silent when Democrat Senator Christopher Dodd praised former Klansman Democrat Senator Robert Byrd as someone who would have been “a great senator for any moment”. Unlike Byrd, Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan that was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party. After he reformed on racial issues and joined the Republican Party - the party of freedom and equality for blacks - Thurmond defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats.
