This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:
It never ends. The attempt to turn disagreement with the policies of the Obama administration into a racial issue.
In the past weeks, as there was a dispute over raising the debt ceiling, claims were made that raising the debt ceiling was an issue only because Obama was black:
As the debt ceiling talks progressed, I followed the updates on Twitter over the weekend. While traditional news outlets posted various status updates, “Black Twitter” was up to something else. The hashtag #beforeBlackpresidents emerged some time Friday evening.
You see #beforeBlackpresidents, it would have been deemed unpatriotic to say you wanted the president to fail. If you raised the debt limit 18 times, as in Ronald Reagan’s case, you would’ve been hailed a hero by the GOP and gotten an airport named in your honor. Intelligence was admired back then. We had a space program and everyone generally recognized that Hawaii was a state….
The real deal is they don’t want a deal — not on the debt ceiling or anything else. The president was right to wonder if there was anything the republicans could say “yes” to. The answer is no.
But it isn’t because of some trumped up commitment to so-called core principals. The truth is today’s Republican party is controlled by a fringe group of players who are after one thing: Making sure the first black president is the last.
And thus emerged the Twitter hashtag #BeforeBlackPresidents, with this tweet:
Here are a couple of examples of what emerged, pretty much predictable reduction of every criticism of Obama’s policies to racism:
(link)
(link)
But it didn’t take long before there was a counterattack, with various conservative bloggers making fun of the “point” of the hashtag, including Aaron Worthing of Patterico (who also wrote a blog post about it):
And Jim Treacher of The Daily Caller:
James Taranto wrote an article at The Wall Street Journal putting the hastag in the context of the overall “Obama as victim” narrative, Victim in Chief, and the erroneous assumption that because something happens for the first time under Obama, it is motivated by racism:
The broader point is that there’s a first time for everything, and it is obviously fallacious to think that everything that happens for the first time between Jan. 20, 2009, and Jan. 20, 2013, is the result of racism against a black president.
Still, by now it is clear that a significant number of people are determined to believe that racism is what is ruining Obama’s presidency. The proposition can be argued against, but it cannot be proved false, because it is vague enough that disagreements will persist over just what would constitute proof.
It just never ends. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to fight it.
Push back, quickly, and mock.
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It’d be nice to be understood; that my opposition to Mr. Obama is in reaction to the content of his ideology rather than to the color of his skin.
Each and every time somebody brings this up? Shove this quote in his or her face. Repeatedly.
Mr. [U.S. Senate] President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.
Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is “trillion” with a “T.” That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion…
Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.
– Barack H. Obama
March 16, 2006
One of the very few times he took a stand.
Towson Lawyer | August 7, 2011 at 5:48 am
“One of the very few times he took a stand.”
This is Exactly why he has been very careful Not to leave a paper trail on anything. Robert Bork had written, and published, extensively before his Supreme Court nomination. Barack Hussein Obama didn’t want to grow up to be “Borked”. Either that or he has Never Ever had an original idea in his entire life, and he knows enough not to demonstrate that in public. Wait a minute. Let me correct myself: He knows enough not to demonstrate his lack of originality in writing. We sure can’t keep him from spouting stupidities.
jamestaranto: #BeforeBlackPresidents a failed president had to worry about a primary challenge. http://t.co/M58yzqT
jeromeehudson: #beforeblackpresidents America had a AAA rating.
cadgweep: #beforeblackpresidents they were commonly referred to as “American” presidents
radanneskjold: @jtLOL #BeforeBlackPresidents Mexican drug gangs had to buy their own guns. I think. Maybe not.
stephenkruiser #BeforeBlackPresidents raising the debt ceiling was seen as a ‘failure of leadership.’ http://bit.ly/oiLDMx
americnelephant: #BeforeBlackPresidents Republicans freed blacks, and Democrats kept them down. #AndNothingHasChanged
“#BeforeBlackPresidents you could depict the President as a chimp without being called a racist. @jtLOL http://t.co/XqrFtij ”
Obama isn’t black, he is red. Communist red. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with policy.
Actually he’s black and white and red all over (groans expected) 😉
Red or pink, yes, but also green, as in both Gaia crusader and behind the ears. How could anyone not see those ears? Why didn’t we ask Are you experienced?
Oh well, the narrative’s been updated: feminists see a glass ceiling while half-black Presidents hit a debt one.
BeforeBlackPresidents … faulty wiring on the clip-on microphone would be the cause of a tingle up a newsman’s leg.
BeforeBlackPresidents … one had to actually do something before winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
BeforeBlackPresidents … the superhuman abilities of a man could not be so easily discerned from the crease of his pants leg.
BeforeBlackPresidents … we only had a measly 50 states.
Mine included the following:
#BeforeBlackPresidents it was expected that Presidents have a record of accomplishments BEFORE winning the Nobel Peace Prize. #tcot
#BeforeBlackPresidents the VP was a qualified successor in case of death, not a reason to pray for the President’s continued health.
#BeforeBlackPresidents we never had a national #debt larger than the country’s GDP — bit.ly/obamadebt #tcot #tlot #tiot #EpicFail
#BeforeBlackPresidents passing a budget was considered essential, not optional. #tcot
#BeforeBlackPresidents the idea that affirmative action produced less qualified hirees was only a theory, not a proven fact. #tcot
#BeforeBlackPresidents Jimmy Carter, Pearl Harbor, and Osama bin Laden were the worst things to ever happen to America. #tcot
Let me suggest that George W. Brown was our first Affirmative Action President. The seats that less qualified “under represented groups” took came at the expense of qualified middle- and low-income Whites. Many of those would have been more competent than George. The liberal White elites are using Affirmative Action to squelch possible competition from the lower ranks.
“It never ends.”
It will never end
“The attempt to turn disagreement with the policies of the Obama administration into a racial issue.”
The closer the ’12 election, the more of A “racial issue” it will be.
The streets of the U.S.A. just may turn bloody. Damn shame.
Obama has set back racial integration a generation
Wow. Conservatives just pwned that hashtag. Almost makes me want to get a twitter account.
You have to wade through an Obama/Times lap dance to get to this gem …
A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” (instead of “yea” or “nay”) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.
.. of course, it was only conjecture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html?pagewanted=4
Thanks for the link, Neo. That was funny. Awwww … he was “bewitched” by candidate Obama. Tingly legs everywhere as they projected their liberal idealizations on this empty suit.
Shoot me if I ever fall to the pathetic level of being “bewitched” by a politician.
What an overeducated, sappy doofus.
LukeHandCool (who can be a sappy doofus when he’s drinking).
[…] Saturday Night Card Game (#BeforeBlackPresidents) […]
So now I am a racist and a terrorist. Lovely.
People were bewitched by Reagan, but that was because he had substance and integrity. Those who were bewitched by Obama, did so because of the color of his skin and his ability to give a speech, something the liberals at Times/Newsweek called the “Magic Negro” syndrome, which racist article Rush has had a field day with.
Here is the tweet I did that I liked best. I will probably add more as the day goes on: http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/9936/beforeblackpresidents.png
Check out the hastag: #BeforeBlackPresidents. I don’t think this is going quite the way the originators of this odious tactic had foreseen. Did someone forget to tell them Tea Partiers are masters of the the new forms of social messaging?
Maybe, because he is BIRACIAL, that is the reason we had the largest debt ceiling increase in the history of the United States?
O/T– why do the Libs despise the Tea Party so much; because, at its roots, isn’t the group a successfully organized set of community organizers–like Obama?
Thank you for this. I would probably not have seen this hashtag without your blog post. (I have a Twitter account, but only to receive Tweets not send them out.)
This is PRICELESS! Hoist on their own petard. And, some people questioning why people were tweeting about the raaaaacist meme?! Even more classic!!
Liberals pwned. Yes!!! 😀 Sweet.
[…] Started as a racist liberal black complaint tag , then Prof. Jacobson suggested having fun with it. RhymesWithRight Greg by RoxeanneDeLuca #BeforeBlackPresidents the VP […]
I tend to agree, though I wish I didn’t.
The strong potential for the defeat of the Barack Obama in 2012, will inevitably be characterized by some (possibly including a few of the most irresponsible amongst the existing progressive punditry) as a sort of race-based “political hit job,” for which there would inevitably be a backlash reaction.
Though many of us would see any such reaction as an alarming form of political denial writ large, political violence could become a somewhat inevitable consequence if large numbers of people actually are convinced that the only real reason for opposition to Obama, and the defeat of the President in the voting booth, is because he is black.
The French sociologist and Marxist, Emile Durkheim, once observed, and I think quite correctly, that it is not so much the conditions of poverty as such that lead to social violence, but rather rising expectations that are dashed.
Promises that cannot be kept are much more likely to provoke violent social upheaval in the long run. But in the end, the left will not blame Obama for the failure of his “Hope and Change” agenda. They will blame the “racists.”
The temptation to continue targeting Republicans and Tea Party advocates as racists (and now “terrorists”) who only sought to undo the Obama Presidency because he is black, is just too much to expect them to resist.
Sadly, I believe we are already beginning to see the first signs of the really ugly side of this long fight over the unrealized legacy of “hope and change.” For example, note the recent race-based incidents at the State Fair in Milwaukee. Unquestionably, the failure of rising economic expectations in minority communities will surface as an issue in the election cycle, and neither Obama nor his supporters will blame his own policies! Rather, he and his acolytes will seek a scapegoat.
Therefore, I think we can expect the re-election campaign fight of Barack Obama will be framed in barely concealed racial terms by the President and his handlers. He’ll probably start by sadly noting that his opponents are now, and have been irresponsibly promoting race-based social upheaval.
His Attorney General long ago signaled that there is an open and notorious double standard when it comes to racial intimidation at polling places.
We know that in Philadelphia in 2008, out and out racial intimidation aimed at white voters, caught on tape, was not prosecuted to completion. The case was won, and then summarily tossed away by the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder on race-based grounds. That sort of action can only embolden those would think about taking similar actions going forward.
However, who doubts the Obama Administration is tempted, perhaps at some point soon, to put up a legal fight against voter ID initiatives in at least a few battleground states, perhaps on the claimed basis that they are somehow “de facto” aimed at voter suppression, particularly of minority voters, and therefore constitutionally suspect?
Barack Obama did not hesitate to float race-based notions early on in the 2008 election cycle, and anyone who believes he will hold back this time, particularly when he quite clearly does not have a tail wind of good will going for him, is delusional.
I wish it was not true, but this guy is a radical, not a reformer. His entire political raison d’être, from his days as a community organizer, to his highly divisive healthcare fight, has been to provoke and upend the existing social order, not to try to reform or repair it.
So, I think we can expect a rising tide of race-based provocation from the left that will be tolerated, and perhaps even quietly encouraged by the Administration, between now and November of 2012.
And if, as I fully expect, Barack Obama should lose the Presidential Election, do not be surprised by the possibility of a period of social upheaval thereafter, perhaps similar in some respects to the late 1960s.
I could spend my vacation in Las Vegas:
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/998/beforeblackpresidents5.png
#BeforeBlackPresidents ATF agents prevented stolen guns from going to Mexican drug gangs to kill our own men instead of expediting it.
http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/2606/beforeblackpresidents7.png