If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wasn’t already busy enough trying to come up with the 60 votes needed for his health care reform package, now he’s found himself caught in the firestorm of a racial controversy. Maybe firestorm is too strong a word, given that he is a Democrat and liberals can say whatever they want because they are the party of the common man. Yes, they stand up for the regular folk, so when Reid said he believed the nation was ready to elect a "light-skinned" black man "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one" in reference to Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, it did not inspire a great reaction from those who heard him.
Reid admitted to making the comments after they were exposed in the new book “Game Change” written by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, of Time Magazine and New York magazine, respectively. As politicians always do when their mouths get them into trouble, he issued a public apology, then proceeded to call the president and every other prominent black leader in his contacts list asking for forgiveness. His list included House Democrats Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Barbara Lee of California; the Rev. Al Sharpton; Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; NAACP chairman Julian Bond; and the head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Wade Henderson, all of whom forgave Reid and spoke out in his defense.
The parallel circumstance everyone is comparing Reid's gaffe to is former Senator Trent Lott’s comment at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party in 2002. Lott was forced out as the Republican leader after he said of the segregationist, “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we [Mississippians] voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either." Even though Lott apologized profusely and to all the right people, his apologies were rejected, liberal politicians and prominent black leaders attacked his character, and he was forced out of his post.
Last year Rush Limbaugh was dropped from a group bidding on a professional football team after some of the same people who instantly accepted Reid’s apology expressed outrage over alleged racists statements he had made. Evidence of those statements never surfaced, but pressure from liberals forced the group to bar Limbaugh from participating in the bid nonetheless.
I’m not supporting any of these men mentioned above, but what I am pointing out is the double standard in play here. It seems like it’s okay to be racist if you’re a Democrat, but a conservative racist will not be tolerated. Obama and other liberals have said in Reid’s defense that you have to look at his record, not just his statements. This isn’t the first time race has been an issue for Reid. It was reported in The Chicago Sun-Times that just last month he called disgraced governor Rod Blagojevich and told him not to appoint Jesse Jackson Jr., Danny Davis or Emil Jones to fill President Obama’s vacated Senate seat due to Reid’s concern that they were not electable. His opposition to the three men, all of whom are black, was labeled racism by a member of the Committee for a Better Chicago. Reid reportedly pressured Blagojevich to appoint either Attorney General Lisa Madigan or Veterans Affairs head Tammy Duckworth. Blagojevich ignored his request and instead appointed former Illinois Attorney General Ronald Burris, who is black, to the seat. Reid, along with other Democratic leaders, has vowed to oppose Burris due to Blagojevich’s arrest and the ongoing investigation into allegations he tried to sell the seat to the highest bidder.
Is Harry Reid a racist? I honestly couldn’t tell you. Were his comments as out of line as Trent Lott’s? Some will think so, others will disagree, but this I can say with certainty: if Harry Reid were a conservative, liberals would be calling for his head on a silver platter and all this talk of forgiveness would not exist.
