COLIN POWELL: GOP 'LOOKS DOWN ON MINORITIES'
Colin Powell: Republican Party Has 'Dark Vein Of Intolerance' |
As if we needed more proof that Colin Powell is a Progressive fulfilling his role pretending to be a conservative. Republican's wanted this guy to run for office.....what a disaster that would have been...oh wait, it was a disaster anyway. Oh well, back to my point; Republican's are such raging racists that they wanted him to lead their party. If that makes sense to you, you may want to consider cutting back on the Kool-aid. Oh, and he of course puts down the "birthers" and what do you know, Shapiro does too, again. I just got a headache.
- W.E.
Breitbart
This morning, former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press
to discuss the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to
Secretary of Defense. During the discussion, David Gregory asked the
liberal Powell, nominally a Republican but a longtime supporter of
President Barack Obama, about the Republican Party. “I’m struck when you
talk about Republicans as they. I know you insist despite voting for
President Obama twice now that you’re still a Republican. But as-- as I
go through your record on some social issues and even foreign policy
issues, I challenge you a little bit to say on what basis are you still a
Republican? Do you feel like this Republican Party has left you or have
you left it?”
Now, this is a half-decent question, given that Powell has been quite liberal on the issues for years now. But Powell’s answer wasn’t that he differed from Republicans on the issues. Instead, he went directly to the most common liberal meme these days in defending a radical left president: Republicans are racist. It’s a bully tactic that has become all the rage these days – Republicans don’t oppose Obama on policy, and they don’t have a good rationale for standing against liberalism. It’s just that they secretly hate black people.
Here’s what he said:
I think the Republican Party right now is
having an identity problem. And I’m still a Republican. I’m a
Republican who grew up along with George Bush XLI. I grew up with Ronald
Reagan, Cap Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, that Republican Party, the
Republican Party of Dick Lugar and John Tower. But in recent years,
there’s been a significant shift to the right and we have seen what that
shift has produced, two losing presidential campaigns.
So far, this is a typical leftist talking point. The Republican Party has not moved to the right. In fact, it has moved in rather extreme ways to the left, given its spending record and establishment opposition to the Tea Party. Ronald Reagan was significantly more conservative than George W. Bush. But this was prelude to Powell’s real agenda: labeling Republicans closet bigots.
I think what the Republican Party needs
to do now is take a very hard look at itself and understand that the
country has changed. The country is changing demographically. And if the
Republican Party does not change along with that demographic, they’re
going to be in trouble. And so, when we see that in one more generation,
the minorities of America, African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and
Asian Americans will be the majority of the country, you can’t go around
saying we don’t want to have a solid immigration policy. We’re going to
dismiss the 47 percent. We are going to make it hard for these
minorities to vote as they did in the last election. What did that
produce? The court struck most of that down and most importantly, it
caused people to turn out and stand in line because these Republicans
were trying to keep us from voting. There’s also a dark-- a dark vein of
intolerance in some parts of the Party. What I do mean by that? I mean
by that is they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I
evidence that? When I see a former governor say that the president is
shuckin’ and jivin’, that’s a racial era slave term. When I see another
former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do
very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow,
he was tired, he didn’t do well, he said he was lazy. Now, it may not
mean anything to most Americans but to those of us who are
African-Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third
word that goes along with it. Birther, the whole Birther Movement. Why
do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the
Party? I think the Party has to take a look at itself. It has to take a
look at its responsibilities for health care. It has to take a look at
immigration. It has to take a look at those less fortunate than us. The
Party has gathered unto itself a reputation that it is the party of the
rich. It is the party of lower taxes. But there are a lot of people who
are lower down the food chain, the economic chain, who are also paying
lots of taxes relative to their income and they need help. We need more
education work being done in this country. We need a solid immigration
policy. We have to look at climate change. There are a lot of things
that the American people are expecting and the Republican Party, as they
get ready for the next election, really has to focus on some of these
issues and not ignore them. Everybody wants to talk about who’s going to
be the candidate. You better think first about what’s the party they’re
actually going to represent. If it’s just going to represent the far
right-wing of the political spectrum, I think the Party is in
difficulty. I’m a moderate but I’m still a Republican, that’s how I was
raised. And until I voted for Mister Obama twice, I had voted for seven
straight Republican presidents.
Notice the subtle linkage there: Republicans oppose global warming, immigration reform of the type leftists want, redistribution of income, not out of principle, but out of hatred of those with a different skin color. This is despicable. And it is a lie. Powell’s statements are outrageous. His statements about “shuckin’ and jivin’”? He’s referring to former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AL), who wrote this about President Obama’s feckless foreign policy on Benghazi:
Why the lies? Why the cover up? Why the
dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the
anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve
answers to this. President Obama’s shuck and jive shtick with these
Benghazi lies must end.
Is that racist? Of course not. But Powell labels it racist because it serves his political ends.
Is the word “lazy” racist? If so, half the media hates white folks, because presidents going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower have routinely been labeled lazy.
As for the birthers, nobody in the mainstream of the Republican Party has ever given credibility to them. Only in Colin Powell’s opportunistic mind is the GOP linked with birtherism.
What’s more, Powell is the last person on earth who should be making this claim. He says that he voted for President Obama twice because he’s a moderate Republican whose party has left him. That’s nonsense. In 2008, Republicans ran the most moderate Republican in history in Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). And Powell voted against him. Why? Let Powell, circa 2009, explain:
And I spoke at length with John McCain
about his campaign and I watched Mr. Obama and his campaign. And at the
end, I cannot say I was totally colorblind. But at the end, I convinced
myself, based on the facts as I saw it, that he was the better choice
for this time in our nation’s history.
It is Colin Powell and his perspective that are underlaced with a vein of intolerance. Powell should know better than anyone that the GOP has no such vein – after all, the GOP discussed the possibility of him running for president on its ticket for years. No, this is about liberal bullying and thuggery – claiming that anyone who opposes leftist policies does so out of racism rather than political differences. And it’s vile.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the book “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).