Conservatives warned liberals of the dangers of playing the race card too often without substantiation. But with the election of President Obama, progressives went crazy.
Every time conservatives opposed our inexperienced president on policy, progressive pundits were quick to dismiss the objections as a simple expression of conservatives’ supposed distaste for an African-American president. Recall how Karen Hunter, MSNBC contributor, described challenges to the Obama agenda? “Post-Traumatic First African-American President Syndrome.”
The 5th District watchdog group in Virginia chronicles the net effect of such dangerous use of the race card:
Even the Daily Show lampooned the excessive use of the race card, declaring it “maxed out.”
Well, if by liberalism’s standards the act of objecting to a person of color on policy is tantamount to racism, then Americans now have clear evidence that progressives are racist toward Hispanics.
Democrats, through Bill Clinton and reportedly the White House, conspired to defeat a conservative Latino in a Senate race in Florida. The liberals in charge of the Democrat Party tried to convince their candidate, Kendrick Meek (an African-American), to drop out of that race so that the linguini-spined Charlie Crist would have a shot at beating Marco Rubio.
The message, largely ignored by the press, was that Marco Rubio could not be allowed to win because he was the wrong kind of Hispanic.
His family fled the left-wing utopia of Cuba. Thus, he had too much knowledge about where liberal policies lead. Worse yet, for liberals, he could articulate his family’s experience with the destructive results of leftist policies.
Liberals knew he had to be stopped, and thus were willing to throw an African-American under the bus in favor of the white guy who had been a Republican five minutes ago.
It wasn’t so much the man that liberals were trying to defeat, though Rubio is a magnificent candidate and will be a great senator. It was the idea that Rubio represents: he puts an exclamation point on the fact that not all Latinos believe in open borders and the welfare state. He shatters the narrative that liberals have worked for decades to craft. Now, not only will white America know that not all Latinos are liberal, Hispanics will now see their traditional conservative values displayed by a man that has an (R) next to his name. Rubio is something the Democrats have long feared: a conservative role model for the Latino community.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time liberals have conspired to keep Hispanics out of high office to maintain a narrative.
In 2001 and 2002, President Bush — the Republican who appointed the first African-American secretary of state, the first African-American female secretary of state, and the first Hispanic attorney general of the United States — was busy trying to fulfill his duties under the Constitution. One of those duties was to appoint judges. In natural course, the opposing party lets the president know what nominees would be acceptable. But outside forces influenced prominent Democrats to filibuster a very qualified Hispanic judge who was up for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia: Miguel Estrada. Leaked memos showed that Senate liberals were working in close consultation with groups like People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, NARAL, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in an effort to defeat President Bush’s judicial nominees.
One memo dated November 7, 2001, from a staffer to Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin described a meeting with the liberal interest groups in which the groups targeted Estrada as:
Especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is a Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.
After two years of active opposition from liberal senators like Durbin and Kennedy, Estrada withdrew his nomination.
Let there be no ambiguity here: liberal groups and their lap-dog senators targeted Miguel Estrada because he was a Latino.
And these leftists have the temerity to call conservatives racists? But this incident went largely unreported. The few in the mainstream press who bothered to show a shred of journalistic integrity by asking about the memos bought the senators’ explanation. And that explanation was essentially: “I’m a Democrat, how can I be racist?”
For the record, conservatives oppose liberal progressive policies regardless of the race of the person pushing them. Liberals say they love and advocate for people of color. That’s true, as long as the people of color are also committed Democrats, ascribe to leftist thought, and believe the only way for success in life is with government help. If you are a conservative, they call you all kinds of delightful names like, “Oreo,” “Uncle Tom,” “Coconut,” or my favorite: “race-traitor.”
The liberal message is: “If you wander off the victimhood reservation, don’t bother looking to us for support.” The left has used and abused the race card to stifle debate for decades. And it seems their loud advocacy as “race-warriors” was to compensate for and hide their own deep-seated racism.
Progressives support so-called minorities only if they are the “right kind” of minority.
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