Tell me, please, how Republican presidential candidates make political hay with extremist remarks. Such remarks from a leftist would provoke no end of outcry.
Rick Santorum explicitly names blacks as a taxpayer burden and immoral about marriage. Newt Gingrich implicitly references blacks while criticizing child labor laws. He blasts judges for enforcing Congress’ and President John Adams’ declaration that the USA is not founded on Christianity (Treaty of Tripoli, 1797). Michele Bachman equates bullying with free speech. Herman Cain, an African American who should appreciate the magnitude of the crime of slavery, calls our tax code slavery, as if it were the moral equivalent of 200 years of heinous treatment of blacks by, mostly, whites.
Yet people flock to these politicians’ campaign rallies. Don’t they realize they are outing themselves as bigots? Each of these remarks should have been campaign-enders. To risk a cliché, where’s the outrage?
Ed. note: Rick Santorum has told other media that he never said “black” people in his talk in question, but instead blurred a word so it came out sort of “blah.”
This article appears in Jan 12-19, 2012.