Rush Limbaugh: Obama
is Stoking Racial Antagonism September 19, 2008
Following the release
of a Spanish-language campaign ad, in which Obama falsely attempts to tie
together alleged immigration policies of John McCain, with alleged "racist"
remarks of Rush Limbaugh, Limbaugh, to utterly no surprise to those who know
him, unloaded on Obama, and for several days successfully tarred and feather him
as a blatant liar. The Wall Street
Journal then offered Rush 800 words in today's issue to talk about it,
and he did it in only 700:
I
understand the rough and tumble of politics. But Barack Obama -- the
supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change --
has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.
Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own
making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What
kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract
two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and
build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial
tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for
such vile fear-mongering.
Here's the relevant part of the Spanish-language television
commercial Mr. Obama is running in Hispanic communities:
"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with . . . the
intolerance . . . they made us feel marginalized in this country we
love so much."
Then the commercial flashes two quotes from me: ". . . stupid and
unskilled Mexicans" and "You shut your mouth or you get out!"
And then a voice says, "John McCain and his Republican friends have
two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote . . . and
another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that
put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain . . .
more of the same old Republican tricks."
Much of the media that is uninterested in Mr. Obama's connections to
unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and
Rev. Jeremiah Wright have so far gone along with the attempt to tie
me to Mr. McCain. But Mr. McCain and I have not agreed on how to
address illegal immigration. While I am heartened by his willingness
to start by securing the borders, it is no secret that we have
fundamental differences on illegal immigration.
And more to the point, these sound bites are a deception, and Mr.
Obama knows it. The first sound bite was extracted from a 1993
humorous monologue poking fun at the arguments against the North
American Free Trade Agreement. Here's the context:
"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south.
Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those
are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to
start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the
unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do --
let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."
My point, which is obvious, was that the people who were criticizing
Nafta were demeaning workers, particularly low-skilled workers. I
was criticizing the mind-set of the protectionists who opposed the
treaty. There was no racial connotation to it and no one thought
there was at the time. I was demeaning the arguments of the
opponents.
As for the second sound bite, I was mocking the Mexican government's
double standard -- i.e., urging open borders in this country while
imposing draconian immigration requirements within its own borders.
Thus, I took the restrictions Mexico imposes on immigrants and
appropriated them as my own suggestions for a new immigration law.
Here's the context for that sound bite: "And another thing: You
don't have the right to protest. You're allowed no demonstrations,
no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our
president or his policies. You're a foreigner: shut your mouth or
get out! And if you come here illegally, you're going to jail."
At the time, I made abundantly clear that this was a parody on the
Mexican government's hypocrisy and nobody took it otherwise.
The malignant aspect of this is that Mr. Obama and his advisers know
exactly what they are doing. They had to listen to both monologues
or read the transcripts. They then had to pick the particular
excerpts they used in order to create a commercial of distortions.
Their hoped-for result is to inflame racial tensions. In doing this,
Mr. Obama and his advisers have demonstrated a pernicious contempt
for American society.
We've made much racial progress in this country. Any candidate who
employs the tactics of the old segregationists is unworthy of the
presidency.
Here is a copy of the "Rush
Morning Update" from April 6, 2006, from which Obama "extracted" one of the
two alleged anti-Mexican "racist" comments:
Of course, as anyone with two
neurons to rub together, can tell what Rush is doing in this bit: Poking
"fun" at Mexican immigration law, as it compares to our own lax
requirements.