Just what exactly is a “Negro dialect,” Senator Reid?
It just keeps getting worse for Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid. Not only do his ratings continue to sag in his home state of Nevada, bringing into question whether or not he can be re-elected this year, but he’s also in hot water over racially insensitive remarks he made during then-candidate Barack Obama’s presidential bid:
WASHINGTON (AP) – The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate apologized on Saturday for comments he made about Barack Obama’s race during the 2008 presidential bid.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described then-Sen. Barack Obama as “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect.” Obama is the nation’s first African-American president.
“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments,” Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.
“I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama’s legislative agenda.”
Reid remained neutral during the bitter Democratic primary that became a marathon contest between Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Obama tapped as the United States’ top diplomat after the election.
Reid’s comments are included in a book set to be published on Monday. “Game Change” was written by Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin and New York magazine’s John Heilemann; the pair describe the book in interviews during Sunday’s “60 Minutes” on CBS.
His potential GOP opponent, Sue Lowden, wasted no time in reminding people of some of the other stupid things Reid has said in the (recent) past:
There’s dozens over the years,” Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sue Lowden said of Reid’s eyebrow-raising remarks of the past.
Lowden cited better known remarks by Reid, such as:
His summertime comparison of a lack of health insurance coverage to slavery;
His April 2007 conclusion that the war in Iraq was lost;
His description of tea partiers as “evil-mongers”; and
His pleasure that the Capitol Visitors Center meant he wouldn’t have to “smell the tourists” filling up the Capitol in the summertime.
Among some of his finer moments, Reid also declared to the Reno Gazette-Journal in September that Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death “is going to help” Democrats pass health care.
Last summer, he told a Fox News reporter to “turn up your hearing aid” at a press conference.
“He called our former president a loser in a high school classroom here in Nevada,” Lowden said, referring to a civics class discussion a few months after George W. Bush’s second inauguration.
Let’s also not forget what he said about the Las Vegas Review-Journal last year:
On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber’s board members for a meet-’n’-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal’s director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.
Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: “I hope you go out of business.”
Later, in his public speech, Reid said he wanted to let everyone know that he wants the Review-Journal to continue selling advertising because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside the Review-Journal.
This is not a guy to feel sorry for in any way, shape or form. He’s demagogued Republicans for years on numerous issues, and, as they say, what comes around goes around – he’s getting his just desserts today.
Numerous GOP leaders are calling on Reid to step down from his leadership position, some of them citing an obvious double standard between the treatment of Reid’s racially insensitive remarks to the treatment of then-Majority Leader Senator Lott’s controversial remarks delivered to Senator Strom Thurmond back in 2002. But as we all know here, as long as Reid continues to deliver the “goods” black “leaders” want him to in the Senate, no matter what he says, he will be forgiven.
As Al Sharpton and President Obama already have. Like the radical feminists repeatedly sold out feminism during the era of the adulterer and liar liar, pants on fire Bill Clinton, black “leaders” will usually look the other way when Democrats make remarks that would cause a Republican to lose a lot of respect, if not his career.
And isn’t it interesting – but not surprising – on how most of the time Democrats are asked to apologize over racial remarks only if they’re made about other Democrats? Yet it almost never happens when the remarks are made about Republicans. We’ve seen it happen when black Democrats routinely racially demagogue Republicans, and we’ve seen it when white Democrats do the same. The media don’t call them out on it, nor do other Democrats. Gotta love it that Democrats claim to want a “color-blind” society yet they will play the race card every chance they get in order to keep a lock on the black vote in this country. As I’ve said before, the primary reason we can’t make much progress on racial issues in this country is because so many people, mainly those on the left, prefer to stay stuck in the past, in most cases because it advances their careers.
Blog Prof reminds us of how President Obama viewed Trent Lott’s remarks, as well as what he thought about Don Imus’ “nappy headed hos” comments he made on his radio program. Suffice it to say that Obama has been, er, a lot more forgiving of Reid’s remarks. And why not? Reid’s getting ready to deliver some sort of healthcare “reform” bill to sign in the next few weeks, primarily in order for the President to be able to truthfully claim he has “accomplished” something, even though “accomplishment” in this case would be most definitely in the eye of the beholder.
But I digress.
As for the calls for him to step down from his leadership position, my personal view is that I don’t want him to step down from it (as of this point, he’s saying he won’t). With how he’s conducted himself over the last several years, and how his ratings have taken a nosedive, he’s a bigger asset to Republicans as the Majority Leader than he would be out of his leadership position.